[lug] Pre-Meeting Food

[J. Wayde Allen]

On Wed, 10 Jan 2001, Ferdinand P. Schmid wrote:

> So you guys don't like the dark horse?  For a group our size noodles seemed
> small (last time).  Plus they don't like people to hang around after they are
> done eating and there only very limited parking...  So what would the group
> think about throwing the dark horse or Denny's across the street back into the
> discussion?

This will be a general reply, not specifically to Ferdinand.  

Quite frankly, I'm a bit miffed that I asked where people wanted to meet
three days ago, and this discussion is just now starting up.  We've now
got less than a day to work this out.  Oh well, I should have brought it
up last week.  I put the Noodles restaurant in the meeting announcements
since no one responded to my original post.

As far as the private room goes, yes the Dark Horse has a room upstairs,
and yes I've asked about reserving space.  The problems with this are
several fold.  First of all, the Dark Horse wants money to reserve this
space.  We "could" work around that issue, but it isn't clear to me that
we gain much by paying.  This is partly because the sound system that
annoys everyone seems to be piped into all of the rooms.  We "have" met in
the upstairs room before, and we've had just as much trouble getting the
sound turned down there as we do downstairs.  Also, the last time I
talked to the Dark Horse management about this, they weren't too keen on
reserving space for our group since the meeting night coincided with a
sports broadcast, and they didn't want to reserve any space for any groups
on that night.  They figured they'd make more money on the sports crowd
than a reserved party.  Finally, the upstairs room is actually pretty
small.  I think that there are only three small round tables plus the
bar.  Not to mention that the last time I was up there I seem to remember
that two of the tables had been replaced by a pool table.  I can check on
this again, but don't hold your breath.

Rob's comment: "I personally prefer the Dork House and will be having a
beer there before the meeting. Folks are welcome to join me there." is
pretty divisive.  If you didn't want to go to the Noodles restaurant why
didn't you say so in the first place!  This doesn't help and simply splits
up the group.  

So, where do we stand?  Let's see:

  Votes for the Dark Horse:

     - Ferdinand Schmidt
     - Chip Atkinson
     - Rob Riggs
     - Liz Coolbaugh (?)
     - Robert Payne
     - George Sexton
     
  Votes for Noodels:  None

  Votes for Mongolian BBQ (On the hill?):

     - Sean Reifschneider
     - Terry Branaman

So, what to do?  I think that based on this we will attempt to change the
pre-meeting food location back to the Dark Horse.  It seems to be the most
reasonable compromise.

- Wayde
  (wallen at lug.boulder.co.us)