Pastry Chef’s Sweet Revenge?
One of producer Tony Bill’s best-known films is “The Sting.” Now, reports have his 72 Market Street restaurant in Venice being stung for $190.
The story starts with the May seizure by Colorado officials of the restaurant 72 Aspen in the famed ski resort. The restaurant failed to pay more than $30,000 in sales taxes. Workers were left being owed thousands of dollars in back pay, which infuriated Aspen city officials.
The restaurant was loosely affiliated with 72 Market Street. Some of the same Hollywood investors financially backed both restaurants (such as actor Dudley Moore), and it was run by 72 Market’s former manager, Julie Stone. In an interview, Bill, one of the key partners in 72 Market, said he was only “tangentially” involved with 72 Aspen, adding that he put no money into it.
According to writer Greg Trinker of the Aspen Daily News, the eatery’s former pastry chef, Patricia Nelson, was so angry that $550 worth of her paychecks bounced that she and her husband traveled to Southern California to dine at 72 Market.
The tab: $230 of food and wine, including a $90 bottle. Trinker quotes Nelson as saying that when the bill came, she left a $190 bounced paycheck, $40 in cash and a $50 tip for the waitress.
Expensive Typo
A $56 fare between Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.? It’s enough to make one think that the fare-slashing days of Frank Lorenzo are back.
Actually, Lorenzo’s former airline, Continental, launched an unintentional fare war one Saturday morning last month with a keystroke goof. A $562 unrestricted coach fare was inadvertently listed at $56.
The error went undetected for three hours, during which time anyone buying a ticket on the flight got a $506 bargain. Continental, now operating under bankruptcy proceedings, acknowledges that it sold some seats at $56 but said it doesn’t know how many.
To Protect and to Keep Secret
Channel 7’s broken embargo aside, printer R. R. Donnelley is now boasting in national ads of having successfully carried out the top-secret printing of the Christopher Commission report on the Los Angeles Police Department.
The Chicago firm says it is available for “large-scale projects with tight deadlines that need absolute security.”
Things haven’t always gone so smoothly for Donnelley in trying to keep secrets. A former salesman for the firm’s Torrance office was just sentenced to five years’ probation for illegal stock trading for passing on early copies of Business Week printed by Donnelley to his stockbroker, who then traded on information from the magazine’s Wall Street column.
Briefly. . .
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