BY DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY

(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, THE WEEKEND EDITION SEPT. 8-10, 2017) — The Rosa Restaurant. The Busy Bee. Ida and John’s. The Highland. The Lantern — three once-seminal Pittsfield eateries now defunct, one still going, and one going, going, gone. The Lantern, a Pittsfield institution gracefully run by the Pappas family for more years than Peter Arlos sat at the foot of Zeus at heaven’s Acropolis, has been driven out of business not by the vagaries of the marketplace; not because of natural calamity; and not by an act of Bog. No, the evidence indicates that this lovely, jazzy bar and grille has seen the ghosts of hamburgers past because of official incompetence. Is that the case? Let’s explore.

You’ve heard of Frankenstein, Einstein, and Gertrude Stein, but could you conjure a mental image of Randy Stein?

Is Randy Stein, Pittsfield Fire Department‘s beer-gutted inspector, the real reason Lantern owner Mark Pappas has sought the downy pillow of premature retirement? Is Stein what happens when you give Barney Fife more than one bullet? You see this all too often in low-level public officials who let a thimble full of power go to the head. Fifeism is a disease striking mostly in the Podunks of the land, with occupational clusters occurring regularly in inspectors and meter maids.  The unfortunate carrier of Fifeism loves shaking down businesses and people for the same reason that a dog licks its balls. Yeah, the greatest punchline of all time: Because he can.

Well-informed sources say that in a series of visits, Stein put Pappas trough a slow-burn water torture of gratuitous gandering. Cruelty, apparently, came in a series of threes, each carrying out a philosophy peculiar to official Pittsfield, one, by the way, that our present mayor has robustly continued from her noble predecessor: “Do whatever you can to inconvenience, discourage, or piss off citizens, home owners, and small business owners.”

• First, sources say, Stein ordered Pappas to get a new Fry-o-Lator. THE PLANET has had Lantern fries on numerous occasions, and we have invariably found the golden morsels of crisped exteriors and fluffy, snow-white insides to be perfect mates for Berkshire County’s best burgers. Nonetheless, Pappas, not ready to give up the toast, complied ad installed the new implement. We cannot say whether the new fry-baby produces a product equal to its predecessors, but our taste buds cannot imagine how.
• Not content with the kitchen, Stein then commanded Pappas to make the restaurant’s phone-booth-sized bathrooms in the rear handicapped accessible. Accessibility has been a problem in The Lantern about as many times as you’ve seen Randy Stein winning the Boston Marathon — or for that matter the 10-yard Kids’ Romp on Walk a Mile in Her Shoes night. Still, the determined Pappas, as fine a fellow as you will ever meet, complied. Thus far, neither this correspondent nor our legions from The Secret Squadron, many of whom dine at The Lantern, have witnessed or heard about a stream of Jerry’s Kids looking to relieve themselves in the eatery’s toilets. As Rodney Dangerfield once said, always look out for No. 1, but when you’re doing it, don’t step in No. 2.
• The final spit came when Stein told Pappas the restaurant needed a new ventilation system. Having to install this boneyard of snake piping would push Pappas’ investment in the changes anywhere from $60,000 to $80,000. Those familiar with such work say the figure would most likely be “in the $80,000-or-more range” to install new venting for the eatery. THE PLANET readily admits we are not competent to judge whether a restaurant needs upon pain of  death upgrades of this kind. Theoretically, and giving large benefit of an even larger doubt, Stein has such competence. We do know people, however, and we can vouch for Mark Pappas. This man knows how to run a restaurant, something Stein has comparatively little experience in doing, except, judging by his waistline, frequenting them. We would take Pappas’ “real world” testimony over Stein’s Fifeism any day. Perhaps, of course, we are fools. In adding to the understanding of Le’affaire Lantern, it must be for valid reasons that Stein is not liked or respected by many of his PFD colleagues — brothers, really — particularly the hard-working, dedicated professionals in a department largely composed of this admirable type.

Think about it. Here we have an honest man whose family has been a bell-weather on the shady-sandy-seedy end of North Street forever, and what does the city do? It stands by idly and allows a man like Stein dictate the terms of his profitability. Finally, of course, Pappas said “Enough!” As a small businessman tryin to maintain profitability in the shrinking downtown, he wasn’t willing to build an $80,000 Temple to honor the god-man Stein by working for the next several years for nothing. Thus it came to pass that Pittsfield lost another large chunk of its past, polluted its present, and helped insure the destruction of its future.

We close with one final question: Why does Randy Stein still have a job with the city of Pitsfield? If there’s a good reason, we’d love to hear it.

Enjoy the weekend!

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“Think I better wait until tomorrow.” — Jimi Hendrix

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”

LOVE TO ALL.

The Usual Disclaimer.