House of Eratosthenes

A former colleague brings to my attention that according to Google Maps, there is a Hooter’s Restaurant in downtown Sacramento. However, the company’s official website does not include this on the list of California locations, and the phone number given by Google Maps does not ring through. According to Hooters’ FAQ, it would not be worth my time to pester them about this, but it seems obvious the real concern is it wouldn’t be worth theirs.

Long-time readers of this blog — there are no readers at all of this blog, let alone any long-time ones, but if there were — know that this is an item of ongoing concern here. Hooters is a special place. It fosters an atmosphere conducive to family fun, through the magical process of making sure that the patriarch is happy first. This is a recipe for assured success, and indeed, it seems to work wherever it’s tried. Many a time I’ve patronized a Hooter’s establishment, by myself or in the company of others, and from wall to wall you see immediate families, apparently-extended families, couples, groups from work, groups of women, etc. just having a ball.

I’ve never seen anything to suggest oppression at Hooter’s. Certainly not some Archie Bunker type lout, yukking it up while a bored-looking double-chinned paramour looks on with feelings of inadequacy or a longing desire to leave. No, I see happy men and happy women. Make the man happy. Everybody else’s happiness will follow.

This principle is nothing new, though. Lots of women know this because they were raised knowing this, watching their mothers make their fathers happy, and a happy family was the result. A good-hearted woman wants to make her man happy. A cold-hearted, brittle bitch doesn’t care about making a man happy — she just wants to have the skinniest ass in the room, even if she measures two feet from cheek-to-cheek. Her man will, therefore, not be going to Hooter’s. In my personal experience of dating women before I moved to Sacramento, and dating women within Sacramento, & finally getting tired of it all and dating outside of Sacramento again, I’ve noticed there is something special about this town.

It’s chock full of bitter old battleaxes like this. To say Sacramento enjoys a monopoly of man-bashing harridans is probably promoting an extravagance that can’t be maintained even under the best of circumstances. But to infer that Sacramento is burdened by a disproportionate share of such testicle-cracking vinegrettes, appears to be inescapable.

Most of them actually think they’re very kind-hearted, which is a real tragedy. They’re in that “gray area”. If they know their honey would like a nice cold beer, well, in their own cloistered minds they’re really nice ladies because you know what? They won’t stop him from getting one. See where I’m going with this yet? They will allow him to have some.

But to borrow a page from the Red States, and actually get him a bottle so he doesn’t have to get up? Open it for him? Run down to the store real quick because you’re out, and it’s not productive to have him run the errand because he’s dead tired? Maybe even — gasp — take turns paying for it? What…are you NUTS???

And that by itself is certainly not a very serious problem. Just like not being able to go to a sports bar restaurant where waitresses wear skimpy shorts, is not serious at all. I’ll be the first to admit the whole concern, is actually kind of silly.

But these issues manifest a societal concern much, much deeper. And serious, too. Serious as a heart attack.

For instance, why exactly is it so “unthinkable” to go out of your way to make a man happy? What would happen if you went and did it? Millions of wives and girlfriends are unable to fully answer these questions, and yet, they haven’t tried it. Letting a man be happy is fine once in awhile, but going out of your way to do it, well, that’s bad. It’s like a farmer with an ox-driven cart, buying the ox an iPod or a turbo-charged Porsche, when a bag of oats is all the ox should be getting. If a “gray area” kind of woman is caught trying to make her man happy, she might have to turn in her laminated angry-bitter-harpy-club membership card. And we can’t have that.

Chapter 7 of “The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands” by Dr. Laura Schlessinger is called A Man Should Be Respected In His Own Home. In her books and on her radio show, Schlessinger says some stuff that, in my opinion, doesn’t have too much pressing need to be heard. Having said that, while I hesitate to recommend the overall book as something approaching “required reading,” this particular chapter, in my opinion, definitely is required reading. It starts on page 143, ends on page 170, the pages are small, the print is huge, and frankly if you can polish off a Harlequin Romance novel in an afternoon over a cup of tea, this should be child’s play. It starts off with the story of a man, in his own home, being flipped off by his mother-in-law. The wife, curiously, was hesitant to take a position in this and even showed an inclination for siding with her mother!

The real stunner was that she turned on her husband. In the most horrible, disdainful, sarcastic manner, she imitated him saying “A man should not be disrespected in his own home.” She particularly emphasized “man” and “own home” with her snotty disregard for him.

I quietly said “You don’t think a man should be respected in his own home?” She flippantly came back with, “I think everyone should be respected everywhere.” I repeated, “You don’t think a man should be respected in his own home?” She wouldn’t answer that.

I tried to reach her, but frighteningly, she clearly saw nothing wrong with her manner or attitude. After the call, I expressed out loud that I felt deeply sorry for this man and his children.

Me too. Divorce seems not only inevitable, but merciful — for the man, for the wife, for the philistine mother-in-law, and maybe even for the kids. Until that happens, no way can that guy go to Hooter’s.

Something is terribly wrong with women like this. And something is terribly wrong with Sacramento. I’ve dated women with the “respect-for-man-ceiling,” who live every waking moment as if respect for masculine figures was some polluting agent that can only be disbursed in tiny volumes and with an eye toward strict rationing. And as I said above, I’ve dated women in Sacramento. There is a high overlap between the two groups. You’ll just have to take my word for it.

That’s Exhibit A. Exhibit B is the careful avoidance of the Sacramento area in planting any Hooter’s restaurants. Does Hooters have something against Sacramento? You would think it would be an untapped market for them. We’re the Home of the Kings! But it would appear a quick bite at Hooter’s is not on the itinerary on the way home from a Kings game. Perhaps a lot of Kings fans have wives like the one described above, and once the final buzzer has sounded, it’s “her turn” with a trip to Blockbuster to rent the latest Meg Ryan & Hugh Grant movie.

I can’t prove that at all. But perhaps the theory can be supported with Exhibit B. I managed to find a high-quality graphic depiction of the population spread in California from tip to tip, based on the 1990 census figures. When I downloaded it, I was able to rotate it left by fifteen degrees so I could angle the map toward “True North”.

This meant I could match it up with the Hooter’s restaurant locations, which the Hooter’s website is nice enough to arrange into an easy-to-read map — angled toward True North. After downloading that, I resized it so it would be as big, dot for dot, as the census map, which is actually enormous. Then I was able to convert it into a really cool transparency by dropping out anything that wasn’t either a state border, or a Hooter’s restaurant location. The result is an electronic version of a real overhead-projector-style transparent overlay (thumbnail only, due to size).

Overlaying the images one on top of the other, with minor correction for deviations for scale and skew, gives us a highly-detailed illustration of where people live, and where they can go to Hooter’s. Notice that each red blotch, which is a mass of people, has at least one blue dot, which is a Hooter’s restaurant. Everywhere there are so-many-millions of people, they must be somewhat near a location. Each and every single place that has that critical mass of population. Every single one. Every one, that is, with one notable exception:

Now, everybody has personal experiences and it’s always tempting to use those personal experiences to explain issues that aren’t personal, issues that in fact are quite public and apply in some way to everyone. So in addition to being unscientific, my exercise is not a completely valid one…but on the other hand it’s not a completely invalid one either. If you’re a woman with an ass that can’t even fit through a doorway, and your husband wants to go to Hooters, there are lots of ways to handle this. You can say “Great idea! Where are the car keys?” which may or may not work…but many women do it. You can refuse to go and refuse to allow him to go, lest he see a derriere that is more attractive than yours. This may or may not work, but many women do that. Or you can lay down a household rule that ostensibly serves “common” interests but in actuality just serves yours: An outing to Hooters must always be followed up by an evening watching the Lifetime Television Network man-bashing movie, although a Lifetime Television Network man-bashing movie does not necessarily have to be followed by a subsequent outing to Hooters.

As a fourteen-year “native” of Sacramento, I can confidently state that the area is chock full of women from the second & third of those three groups, and sorely lacking in women from the first one.

I suspect, although I can’t prove it, that this is why the map above looks the way it does. As the Hooter’s web site points out, the permit process is difficult, burdensome, complicated, and it varies from one location to the next; and as part of that process, “concerned citizens” get to register their comments about whether the franchise serves the public interest, and why or why not.

And nobody ever, ever, ever, not ever, says “I don’t want a Hooter’s restaurant nearby because my ass is as big as a balcony and I don’t want my husband to see any asses smaller than mine.” No, they invent some kind of bull-crap about community standards (while up to their armpits in check-cashing places and strip bars, incidentally), or a school being nearby, or maybe if they want to be a little on the sincere side they’ll quote some feminist tripe about “it’s not the right way to look at a woman.”

But come to the hearings, they do.

And write letters, they do.

And object to Hooters, whether under false pretenses or not, they do.

And they do it here like nowhere else.

Like I’ve said before, I’ll believe Sacramento has a Hooter’s when I’m sitting in it munching on a hot wing. Meanwhile, the closest one is a hundred and ten miles away.

Hello. I came across your blog on a yahoo search for ‘sacramento hooters 2005’. I am a 23 year old female college student living in Davis and I was trying to determine whether the new restaurant was actually opening tomorrow or not. You see, unlike the unfortunate Sacramento women you have met, I do like to please the men in my life, and, regardless of men, I love Hooters. I get my boyfriend to drive me to Dublin or SF every couple of months to get those wings and enjoy a nice beer in a nice, relaxing atmosphere. I declare proudly my love for the place and bring girls there on occasion. I can’t wait for the Sacramento location to open. Maybe I’ll see you there.
- Katharyn | 08/29/2005 @ 02:43

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Sacramento HootersTuesday, August 23rd, 2005

Sacramento Hooters
Tuesday, August 23rd, 2005