This was first mentioned in a Leah Garchik column, but we have actual first-hand knowledge of CapGate from someone who was involved in l'affaire.
Our story began last week when a mens softball team headed off to the Connecticut Yankee for some post-game celebratory drinks. As is softball players' wont as the Yankee is known as a sports bar and a good home for wayward New Englanders. So the group began to order and when the last person, a person who was most definitely wearing their baseball cap backwards, ordered, the bartender told him that they wouldn't serve him unless he turned his cap around. When the guy protested, the bartender announced to all of the backwards baseball cap wearers in the group that none of them would be served again unless they all turned their caps around. Some stayed (hey, they already paid for their drinks), some left in protest.
Afterwards, e-mails went a-flying as word was spread throughout the league about the Yankee's new baseball cap policy. An e-mail was sent to Ms. Garchik who called the Yankee to find out what the deal was. She was told, and we quote: "We're tired of stupid people coming in here with stupid hats...you need to be serious about your baseball and be serious about your hat.''
We here in San Francisco pride ourselves in our tolerance and our hatred of any sort of prejudice. And what we have here is a prejudice most foul-- the owners of the bar are clearly anti-backward-baseball-capites. If this doesn't call for some sort of San Francisco style protest, we don't know what would. Will some frat-dude Rosa Parks brave the bar and refuse to turn around their hat? Will a bunch of Yuppies get together and stage a sit in where they all wear their caps backwards in solidarity and sing "We Shall Overcome" and "Take Me Out to the Ballgame?" Where is Chris Daly when you need him? He's probably worn a baseball cap backwards a few times. And you can't tell me Gavin has never strayed from having his cap forward looking.
Oh, well, we kid, but this is like one of the stupidest things ever.
Anyways, more e-mails are circulating and a boycott is being called for. As is a challenge to the Yankee to play a game of softball to show who the serious baseball people are and who aren't. Others wonder why the Yankee doesn't say anything about the motorcycle gang that makes the bar it's home. Are the bar owners too scared to do something or do they just wear their caps to bar regulations?
Either way, developing....
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I fully support any business that has the nerve to tell its customers that they look like a pack of assclowns.
Aren't all baseball cap wearers backward?
Hey Pal, we don't need a grungy bar with crappy food to tell us we're "assclowns" - that's what we have wives/girlfriends for. All we needed from this dive was for the skanky waitresses to bring us our beer, shut their pie holes, and try to keep their armpit hair out of the fries. STRIKE THREE!!!!
By the way, before you call someone else an assclown, try doing something for exercise besides surfing the Web one-handed.
I've lived near the Connecticut Yankee for 10 years but have gone in only ONCE (when I HAD to w/ a sort of boss) and HATED it when I did. I'm even from Boston. Is that place even clean enough to serve food?
"Connecticut Yankee" is a great, greasy spoon neighborhood spot where you can be hetero, homo, old, or young and not be treated better or worse because of it. In other words, the place is authentically hip and always has been.
The remarks above by "50 and still fly" give me some kind of an idea about why his group was probably treated so rudely by the bartender. (And I've gotten plenty of raspberries playing at Jackson Field next door to Connecticut Yankee over the years, so spare us the macho.) I can't wait to hear the bartender's side of the story, in person.
I thought the whole point of wearing the cap backward was to look like a dipshit.
Ditto wearing a hat indoors in the first place.
I know from experience that the Connecticut Yankee (which is not a bad pub) gets a lot of business from post-game softball teams. It would seem to be pretty short sighted for them to start randomly discriminating against a big chunk of their clientelle on the basis of hat-wearing etiquette.
All the bartender had to do was mention the new hat rule PRIOR to charging for the beer and this thing never would have got rolling. Once you've accepted the money you've accepted the customer no matter how he's dressed or what he looks like but in their long tradition of rude service and bad attitude they decided after the transaction that there's a dress code.That's pause for thought, a dress code in a sports bar and in that neighborhood? Spare me. I'm sure Bloom's or The Parkside will be more appreciative of the business. See you there.
Bogus . . . Bar staff pretending to be patrons in order to post abuse of customers. Class, Connecticut Yankee style.
The issue isn't wearing caps backwards . . . can't work up a head of steam on that . . . even with the racist undertones (the fashion started with, and is associated with, black kids, the patron in question is black). There is no posted or discernable dress code (the bartender: "We gotta post a sign"), plenty of baseball caps, and when you play softball, idiot, you wear one.
The issue is, who the f*ck gives a s*it what a barkeep thinks about the "seriousness" of his customers in any respect whatsoever? He should keep his opinions about his customers to himself and serve the drinks, not engage in gratiuitous ballbusting of the customers AFTER taking their money.
Serious? http://images.encarta.msn.com/xrefmedia/sharemed/targets/images/pho/000a5/000a501a.jpg
And P.S. Connecticut Yankee, let me introduce you to a piece of 20th Century technology: the vacuum cleaner.
P.P.S. I can smell the cooking in the kitchen through the opening in the wall in the men's room, even over the reeking mist of bathroom air deodorizer that permeates the rear of the bar. What can you smell from the other side?
The final point being who gives a s*it about a grungy dump like the CY?
What bothers me is the same thing that bothers "Dave." I find it offensive for bar staff to demand compliance with their non-posted notions of proper attire. Do they think they are reincarnated versions of Edsel Ford Fong? At least offensiveness was part of the schtick at old Sam Wo's. At CY, the bartender and server(s) seem stupid and mean on purpose. Solution: boycott the dump and its idiot staff!
Agreed this is the stupidest excuse for putting ink on paper for years. Nevertheless, its not surprising.
Given that its rolling distance from my flat to the Yankee, on more than a few occasions when a game is being shown on cable (a "service" to which i decline to subscribe) i have chomped on the the perfectly acceptable Yaz sando and Larry Bird-burger, etc. But on no occasion I have received anything better than indifferent service. Most often its bordering on surly. I guess some people like that, gives them a sense of being in an "authentic" New England joint, maybe.
Me, i'll walk the extra block and a half to the parkside (and, no, it doesnt annoy me that its "Thee" parkside, even though i refuse to call it that myself).
I work a bar and the backwards-baseball-cap-wearing crowd are the cheapest drunks ever. They are usually frat boys or middle-aged former frat boys who have nothing to say about anything. They run off the women ,can't hold their booze, and tip lousy. Who needs them ?