I've never met the owner of Banbury Cross donuts. I've eaten plenty of his donuts, though—too many in fact. All I know about him is that several years ago, he asked our publisher, Pete Saltas, why he couldn't find City Weekly any longer at the Smith's Food & Drug store where he shopped.
Pete told him, as he told everyone else, that the ownership of Smith's—Ohio-based Kroger foods—had issued a corporatewide mandate to remove all free-standing publications from all Kroger stores. All hell broke loose as a result, but that's another story.
Why it mattered to us, however, is what the Banbury Cross owner did next. He told Pete that he was done with supporting Smith's and was moving his buying dollars to Harmons, though it was less convenient. He never asked about our convictions. We never asked about his. All we knew was that he was speaking with his pocketbook in support of a free, independent voice. He also gave his support to Harmons, which is another local brand.
It's a great feeling to know someone has your back, or at least will vocalize it. In the early 1990s, we were growing like a weed and had a robust distribution in Albertsons food stores—later Fresh Start, later Macey's et al. Our pages were also growing, in part due to a new section of our paper—our paper was called Private Eye back then—voice personals. The two dailies in town already had a personals section, and even the Deseret News ran salacious and sexy personal ads hidden in their thick classifieds section, until we called them out on their hypocrisy—but that, too, is another story.
The distinction of our own voice personals, however, was that for the first time, same-sex ads ran in this community. Let's just say they were a bit controversial at the time with do-gooders of that era promising a swift end to life on this planet as we know it and attempting to cast shame on us for putting poisonous ideas into the heads of Utah youth.
So, it was that a pious group of alarmed citizens complained to Albertsons that our newspaper should not be allowed to be distributed there. Never mind that the Deseret News was running ribald sex ads themselves, of course, and the Deseret News was equally guilty of poisoning the heads of any Utah youth who wasted a quarter buying a copy. In short order, our newspaper racks were kicked out of Albertsons, and we could no longer place our newspapers there.
A gut punch was that those same pious citizens went about calling our advertisers, urging them to discontinue using us or they'd boycott their services. Our crime wasn't sex ads or sex. Our crime was that we did not discriminate against or hate our gay friends and neighbors.
The details are a bit foggy now, but I wrote a column about taking my ramen noodles budget to any grocer other than Albertsons. It certainly wasn't enough to lighten the pockets of Albertsons' Boise, Idaho ownership, but it brought lots of awareness to this newspaper and Utah's gay and lesbian communities. We soon began taking lots of calls from people asking where they should shop instead, but slowly those calls died down.
One day, a fellow called and asked to speak to me. He thanked me for my time, said he loved our newspaper and appreciated that we were the little guy standing up to the big guys. We've gotten plenty of calls like that over time. We've also gotten plenty of calls telling us what assholes we are, but neither of those angles steeped me for what came next. The fellow confided that via our voice personals he had found his gay soulmate, and he was forever grateful to me and the newspaper. Therefore, he said, he wanted to ask me a question.
I went, "Yeah, sure," and he asked, "Is it OK to go back to Albertsons now?" This was a solid 10 years after the kerfuffle. I was floored to learn of the long-term dedication persons have to standing up for causes they believe in and to show support for those who believe like they do.
If you follow local issues on Twitter, you may know that over the weekend, a sign was posted at Banbury Cross Donuts expressing their frustration over staffing issues that caused their donut production, hours of operation and sales to all crater. The sign said that they are short-staffed, it's busy, and that no one wants to work anymore because government handouts are keeping persons out of the workforce, implying, said Twitter, that people are inherently too lazy to work.
You've all seen that sign or something similar before. However, a photograph of this one travelled all over Twitter along with thousands of persons condemning Banbury Cross, ostensibly for not paying a decent wage. "Harumph!" they said, and off they went to buy their donuts elsewhere.
But how would they know if wages alone caused the work shortage there and at every other hospitality business around? Hospitality industry workers couldn't work from home and order their food from a car window. They showed up for work. They became the mask police. They were the mandate police. They were threatened and spat upon. They caught COVID. Would any of the donut-hole police on Twitter change jobs with them?
Today, our publisher, Pete, was at a popular downtown eatery when its owner whisked by. Pete asked where he was going in such a rush. "I'm going to Banbury to buy some donuts," he said laughing. "I don't give a shit about the sign, people have no idea how hard this has been. Those people bitching didn't go through what our industry did."
Send comments to john@cityweekly.net.
