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a sad day

Oh please. :roll:

Mr Peng began his food training aged 13, and rose to become the banquet chef for China's Nationalist government.
In 1949, he fled to Taiwan when the Nationalist forces were defeated in the Chinese Civil War.
According to legend, General Tso's Chicken was named in 1952, when Mr Peng was cooking for a visiting US Navy Admiral, Arthur Radford.
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The guy who created it was born and raised in China. Taught to cook in China. Was in fact a Chinese man.

Therefore - it is in fact "authentic" Chinese food.

Simply because it was cooked for a non-Chinese person at first doesn't mean it's not Chinese food.
 
Militant_Vegan_ said:
General Tso's is dumbed down chicken mcnugget invention created to please unsophisticated american tastes. It's the equivalent of a baloney sandwich with ketchup on white bread.
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Are you sure that this isn't just sour grapes because so many people do like it? Maybe when you're stuck saying "It's everyone's fault but mine", it's actually your fault, yeah? So instead of calling people ignorant rubes with no pallet, perhaps people have different tastes and that your pallet is the odd pallet out.
 
Chomsky said:
In my case: Stuff I gleaned from Chicago newspapers in the 80's, and from a book written by, I believe, his lawyer partner.

I've always been fascinating by Ray Kroc and the empire he built.

I've also locally run into interesting tidbits from McDonalds' corporate people that get into the local newspapers and business rags. A corporate R.E. guy once said McDonalds was really in the real-estate business, and they owned (paid for by their franchisers) more desirable real estate throughout the world than any other private business entity save for the Catholic Church (or was it "even more than the Catholic Church" - I don't exactly remember). So his claim was they were actually a real estate empire.

Then there was the Burger King guy I once met through a friend in the late 80's who claimed that early in BK's expansion phase during the 60's & 70's when they were badly trailing McDonald's in locations, rather than do their own individual new technical analysis for determining locations, they would simply scout the highest revenue MickeyDee locations, and plop a BK down nearby - saving themselves tons of work & money! He even asked: "Haven't you noticed where there's a BK, there's often a McDonalds nearby"?

So who knows? My memory of something I read decades ago might be a little less than perfect, and maybe some of this stuff is PR or urban legend. But it's interesting stuff.

But as to the lawsuit(s) prohibiting Corporate ownership of expiring initial franchise agreements, I'd assume there's gotta' be records. I seem to recall reading about this stuff in the very late 70's or ca. 1980, which would be the right time-frame for the initial 20 year franchises to come-up for renewal and end-up in a period of litigation.
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It can be argued McD is actually more in the R.E. business, than the fast food business. That's why they bought Boston Market when it ran into financial trouble. It was for all the Real Estate BM owned. For the most part, they own the land, and lease it to franchisee's. Contracts are for 20 years, but that is SOP in the business.

Ray Kroc established a maximum 30% company owned standard back when he was building the system. Most major FF operations run at 20% or below. McD's is at @ 18% today, with a goal of only 5% at some point in the future. What Percentage of McDonald's Restaurants Are Owned by Franchisees? -- The Motley Fool

McDonald's rarely take back franchise operations. In the early 70's, they did take back an operation in Long Island, NY from a couple who were not meeting their financial obligations to Corporate. Suits and counter suits resulted. Corporate won. That is the only case I'm aware of where McD's tried to take back an operation. I'm sure there have a been some others here and there, but it's never been my knowledge or experience they try to take back operations unless they are hurting the system, or failing to meet contractual obligations.
 
Gee, that's news!!
 
Militant_Vegan_ said:
maybe you misread it. General Tso's is an invention made for unsophisticated american tastes. In China you would get authentic Chinese food.
Not General Tsos
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Yeah I'm aware of that. You can get authentic Chinese food in the USA to. Ever heard of Chinatown, San Francisco?
Many restaurants there cater to Chinese immigrants. There's not a potsticker or a orange chicken in sight.
 
Hawkeye10 said:
As a very young boy and for years I made the trip with my dad in to All Nations hobby at Madison and Wells to look at (and dad buy) O-scale trains, but then we also often went to see some very run down resale jazz/blues record stores that I remember being under or nearly under a freeway...do you have any idea where that might have been? Dad went into only the stores that did jazz/Blues, but there were others, many stores in a few blocks, complete dumps most of them, but man the customers and the owners tended to know everything about music. I liked All-Nations a lot, the record stores not that much, which is why I remember one and not the other.
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Sorry for the long delay on this Hawkeye, it's been a super busy week!

I bet you were on Maxwell Street, which is just west of the loop, and maybe a mile or so south along Halsted Street (Maxwell Street runs east-west at around 1400 south). This market place (street) starts at the Dan Ryan Expressway, and proceeds due west for maybe 1/2 a mile, ending near the "Hill Street Blues" police station (renovated and still active). It's also the home to a local institution, the Maxwell Street Polish. Do you remember eating at the stand pictured below? It was on the N.W. Corner of Maxwell & Halsted, it centrally anchored the neighborhood, and the records stores were just a few doors east on Maxwell and extending towards the expressway, on the north side of Maxwell itself. I frequented those very record stores, and also ate a ton of Polish' in my lifetime.

Those stores were definitely divey to the max, but they were the real deal in terms of characters. This was not mainstream or commercial, but transplanted southerners African-American Chicago electric blues! Performed by the guys that put it on the map, and their locally pressed records in those same stores! Throughout the decades, the market there had many blues musicians get a start by setting-up on the street and playing for coins. When they got popular, they cut records locally on labels like VeeJay, Delmark, & Chess. Maxwell Street was also the site of the John Lee Hooker street performance scene in the Blues Bros movie, and it was shot on scene ca. '79.

Most of the land is now taken over by the University of Illinois. There were years of legal battles to save the market and it's cultural heritage, but the city saw it as a blight affronting the university's southern campus border.

This Polish stand would've been 1 block west of those record stores:

jims 3.jpg

An alternate possibility: Jazz Record Mart. This was a few blocks north of the loop down State Street, at Grand Ave. A truly iconic store, it stood as the lone record store in an otherwise somewhat upscale commercial district, but there's no expressway for at least 5 or 6 blocks. This is the place my old man would go, and it likely was the most complete & authentic jazz record shop in the world, at least it's billed as such and I have no reason to doubt it. The owner owns the oldest (still) proprietor owned record label in the U.S. (Delmark), and he was friends with and also was the main competitor to Leonard Chess (Chess Records) in the 60's. He and his store are iconic, and I can't use the word enough here. He recently closed the store after over a half a century, selling his stock to the Bill Graham Foundation (of '60's Filmore fame), and opened another smaller store in front of his recording studios where he is concentrating on his own label and specifically his label's catalog. He's 84 years old. When he is gone, we lose one of the most important (and the last extant) links to a long-gone era.

Here's what the storefront looked like in decades gone (I'm guessing ca. 1970 here):

Jazz Record Mart.jpg

If you get into this stuff, here's an extended interview with the owner (Bob Koester):



And for memories:

all nations sign.jpg

all ntions wide.jpg
 
Chomsky said:
This was not mainstream or commercial, but transplanted southerners African-American Chicago electric blues
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Ya exactly, off the beaten track and very authentic...and I recall my dad being concerned about taking his kid to a place were muggings happened. . As I remember it Dad only was willing to make the trip when he was looking for something in particular that was hard to find.


Sounds like Maxwell Street does it?

I did google with your info and man, this is exactly what I am talking about, the Places looked like this.:

http://66.media.tumblr.com/3d23ba97f7cb6c6306d3d57813f4d9c6/tumblr_o4ku1qaar91sygg4wo1_1280.jpg



Thanks, very great info.
 
Hawkeye10 said:
Ya exactly, off the beaten track and very authentic...and I recall my dad being concerned about taking his kid to a place were muggings happened. . As I remember it Dad only was willing to make the trip when he was looking for something in particular that was hard to find.


Sounds like Maxwell Street does it?

I did google with your info and man, this is exactly what I am talking about, the Places looked like this.:

http://66.media.tumblr.com/3d23ba97f7cb6c6306d3d57813f4d9c6/tumblr_o4ku1qaar91sygg4wo1_1280.jpg



Thanks, very great info.
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Yes, it sounds very much like Maxwell St.

And that pic you posted has the street number '940', which if it was a Chicago Maxwell St neighborhood address would put it 1-1/2 blocks west of the center of the neighborhood (Halsted & Maxwell - the Polish stand), and near the center of market area. IOW, where it would be expected to be.

There were several other possible locations, but none would likely have the density of multiple record shops so close together. Also, one of the two other locations would be a virtually homogeneously black neighborhood, whereas Maxwell street during that era would still be somewhat mixed in clientèle, with perhaps still a few Jewish property owners around too.

[Maxwell St was known as 'Jewtown' then, due to it being a post turn-of-the-century diaspora destination. The Jews left for the Rogers Park neighborhood & the suburb of Skokie during the 50's & 60's]

FWIW, those other possible but unlikely neighborhoods would be:

- Bronzeville - Much further south along State & Indiana from 35th to 47th St. Solidly African-American, a bit more middle-class or even occasionally a bit upscale, but only integrated in a few of the higher-end clubs. It was Chicago's counterpart to New York's Harlem.

- Near West Side/Madison Ave/Skid Row - Due west of the loop, close by, but it was truly a skid-row and deeply impoverished. Chicago's Bowery. Not many record stores or much of anything there, except flop-houses, junkies, & winos. Even the hookers avoided the area (no money!). It was where the 60's mass murderer Richard Speck successfully hid-out, since the area as so wasted and the inhabitants so dysfunctional that no one knew or cared about much of anything except for getting their next drink or fix. It also was where many of Chicago's infamous phantom & multiple votes often came from. The police essentially avoided the area, except for calls to bring a body to the morgue. When I was a kid, my pop took me and my buddies through the neighborhood during the day (in his car), to show us young impressionable kids the dangers of drugs, alcohol, fraternizing with indecent women, or foregoing an education. This was a pretty common right-of-passage for boys in my neighborhood, along with a neighborhood cop giving the boys a 'tour' of the local precinct, and 'accidentally' locking the kids in a cell while claiming the guy with keys left for the weekend - only to 'locate' the guy with keys maybe a half hour or so later - when the kids were at their breaking point!

Great experiential lessons in life! :thumbs:

But if the area was close to the loop, had multiple nearby record shops, was crowded as hell, and was primarily African-American but with a moderately integrated clientèle - it most likely was Maxwell St. But if so, I can't believe the old man didn't buy you a polish! :2razz:
 
Chomsky said:
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But if the area was close to the loop, had multiple nearby record shops, was crowded as hell, and was primarily African-American but with a moderately integrated clientèle - it most likely was Maxwell St. But if so, I can't believe the old man didn't buy you a polish! :2razz:
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Besides the fact that this was a get in and get out operation as my dad had a healthy respect for ChiTown Thugs during the 70's eating street food was too low rent for him. He aspired to be somebody, his dream was to be Trump (he admired Trump greatly, I remember the conversation), about as low as he would go were those cheapie Loop steak places.

Thanks man.

:thumbs:
 
Eh, 98 is a pretty damned good age to reach.
 
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