Wednesday night - personal

Was at gym after a nap. (Walked there and back, as I've been doing lately. Not so muggy tonight.) Now watching favorite Wednesday night shows of late: "Restaurant: Impossible" and "Rocco's Dinner Party." New episodes ("Rocco's" is a brand-new show).

"Restaurant: Impossible" is a little hard to watch at times, with its frequent moments of over-blown tension and drama over not getting the work done in the impossibly short time period and within the impossibly measly budget, but I enjoy it anyway, only because the results are always good. I actually like it better than "Rocco's," which has been coming on at the same time. (New season of "Restaurant: Impossible" began last week, so I watched "Rocco's" a little later in rerun.) Maybe it's because I have more empathy, or even sympathy, with the owners of failing businesses - as I myself owned a bar that failed. ("Rocco's" is set in Manhattan, not a place that invokes much empathy or sympathy in me, most especially since the Great Recession that was brought on by the Masters of the Universe on Wall Street.)

I had tried to turn a straight bar gay in kind of an iffy part of town, but the location was good vis-à-vis Interstate access, and overall it was well positioned geographically. (Lots of gay bars have been located in iffy areas.) Made a lot of mistakes, however. It had a full kitchen, e.g, which I didn't really utilize (but had an offer from someone to take it over and possibly have it make money, which I declined). And I should have let a gay square dance club use it for their functions, which would have brought in lots of regular business. (One of the club members even came to measure the floor space to determine whether it was adequate for square-dancing - and it was. But for some reason I declined.)

When some of the people in the neighborhood realized what I was up to, they weren't particularly happy. One day, someone even left a bucket of rotten fish outside the back door, which was normally kept open. The daytime bartender closed the door and called me up to come and deal with it. I almost threw up when I removed it to the dumpster.

I learned the lessons of how to run a successful business only after I'd lost it. I should have let it be what it was going to be to survive, rather than stick to the notions I had at the time. But would I try to do it again? I don't know.