Famous In King City

I'm not really sure why I put off writing the lease letter to the CR Company for so long. Possibly because while in real life I'm a respectable, business-owning matron, in my heart I'm still the little acidhead whose idea of a really good time is to drop by Moe's bookstore at two in the morning and read Joseph Campbell while hallucinating.

The CR Company is Da Man. I don't want to negotiate with them. I want to bomb their front office.

Anyway, I'd put off writing the letter for so long that by the time I finally got around to it, the automatic re-up of the option had passed. So I had to pretend that was part of my strategy. Which it probably should have been all along since the CR Company is in intense denial about what they can get away charging per square foot.

Well. Maybe not entirely. I did go for it the first time.

But that was when I was a new, untested shopkeeper! Now I'm famous in King City! (Honest to God. A bus driver carting nasty, ill-behaved children to the Aquarium took refuge in the store yesterday where he ran his hand wearily across his forehead and told me, "This place is famous in King City.")

Do I have any leverage here beyond the overpriced rent I pay to the commercial overlords each month?

Well, we're about to find out.

"Dear Miss Hideously-Underpaid and Doubtless-Humiliated-On-a-Daily-Basis Leasing Assistant," I wrote.

Presently we are in the process of examining SLOW Burn's options for Fall 2006 and beyond. While our present location on Cannery Row has been well-suited to our start-up years – indeed we've become something of a "destination" for our many repeat customers – we must consider whether our present location affords us the necessary opportunities and traffic to grow the business over the next years.

One important factor in our location consideration is the opportunity to find partners for a food festival modeled after the successful Hot Licks Fiery Food Festival held in Seaport Village (San Diego) which draws thousands of visitors annually. We believe such a Festival could become another one of the signature events for which Monterey is justly famous. As we envision it, a Central Coast Fiery Foods event, in addition to live music and fun, will focus on local manufacturers of hot and spicy foods, and feature an amateur division in which home chefs can enter their prized recipes. Besides the marketability of this event and its sheer entertainment value, proceeds from the amateur division entries can be donated to a charitable organization.

We welcome the opportunity to share this vision at greater length with representatives of the CR Company and to negotiate terms that will allow SLOW Burn to bring this event – and its attendant peak in tourism traffic – to Cannery Row in years to come. I will be contacting your immensely arrogant and rude Corporate Overlord within the next week to set up a meeting."

Not bad for the spur of the moment! The Central Coast Fiery Foods Festival! I forwarded a copy of the letter to my lawyer (JL – father of Nathan) who emailed back instantly, "What a brilliant idea!" His bestest friend owns a lot of commercial real estate on Alvarado which in many ways is a better fit for the store and I'm sure JL will show him the letter. So I think I have options.

In other news, weary of the continuing debates with Robin over homework – resolved: Homework Exists Only to Deplete the Ad Revenues of MySpace.com (cause that's half an hour I won't be clicking on pop-ups) – I devoted last night to making a poster (see left) which I am hanging prominently in Robin's room.