Little Gems

Pier 290 Restaurant.
What are they doing over there in Williams Bay with that world-class restaurant? Murphy is changing the place around, and Slaughter is helping him. New sushi bar on Wednesday when the rest of the place is closed down (Pier 290 is closed on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday), and a new private dining room being built as this is being written.
Sushi you say?
How about a contract between Pier 290 and the Honolulu Fish Company to make sure that what was swimming off the coast of Oahu on Tuesday is served up on a plate in Williams Bay on Wednesday! That’s fresh. Anthony Bourdain fresh!
There seems to be a Hawaiian strain of consumables running through the “meat” of Lake Geneva. The Geneva Java in Lake Geneva serves 100% pure (Lion brand) Kona coffee. From Pier 290 sushi on Wednesday for lunch and the over to Geneva Java for coffee later in the day.
Geneva Java, by the way, is open from seven a.m. to seven p.m. every day of the year (unless you show up earlier and beat on the door or stay later and won’t leave).

Grand Geneva and their “shifting sands” room rate policy. The Grand Geneva that is supposed to be in Lake Geneva (because it says so) but is really in Lyons (because it’s exempted from taxes there), isn’t going to implement a new policy of charging $25.00 for each piece of luggage. Hotels are thinking about implementing this policy brought into the dumbest part of public consciousness by the airlines of the world.
No, the Grand Geneva is not doing that yet.
Yet.
Instead they are waiting until they are really busy and then making sure you can’t book a room unless it is for two nights minimum. When reservations were placed and one room for one night was attempted to be booked this policy was trotted out to one of the GSR X-Files investigators. When the investigator complained, because only one night was needed for the guest coming in, the reservations employee indicated that she would book two nights at a discount so the one night actually stayed would be minimized in price. That would leave an extra room for one night that the hotel could sell to someone else. This policy is legal. Oh, in any ethical structure the policy might be considered theft, but not in the industry of travel and hospitality that is evolving across the world to become one of “get the guest.”

Scott “Donald Trump kicked my butt” Walker, is going to run for governor again. He’s running on the “it didn’t work the first time so we’ll try it again” ticket. Apparently, according to Wisconsin party officials, Mr. Walker will be running for a third term as governor. That when he first started he set the state back about thirty years by destroying the long attempted and heralded bullet train, seems to matter to very few. That he has taken a state with conservatively progressive ideas and practice, and converted those efforts into some sort of retro Dark Age feudalism, can’t be denied so much as it can be audaciously admired. Who would have thought twenty years ago that a state seemingly headed toward a period of healthy growth and care for its citizens and visitors could have pointed downward toward a darkly lit bottom, and then convinced everyone to look down and keep looking down at that bottom? Support Governor Walker’s attempt to win a third term and you assure yourself a place sitting down there, your bottom on that bottom with his.