Text The Times.

Text The Times.

I just don’t understand why we can’t get any nice sit down restaurants in Marion. The two decent restaurants we have are always busy! Why can’t our city leadership get anyone to come here? I don’t get it. [Editor’s Note: Let me preface this by saying that I have zero experience running a restaurant and outside of some time spent during my college years as a “sandwich artist ” at Subway, I have little experience working in the food industry. But with that in mind, I have read a lot of stories about restaurants and how hard it is to keep one open. The one that stuck with me the most was an article about lottery winners. For whatever reason, the number one business venture lottety winners enter into is starting a restaurant, either one of their own or they fund someone else’s start-up idea, and the article basically said that it was the worst idea due to the failure rate of restaurants, which according to both the article I read and a quick Google search to confirm, is 90 to 95percent within the first year. So, basically if you opened 20 restaurants next week, by this time in 2019, 18 or 19 of them will have closed.

You only need to look at some local examples: Penn’s, Funkee’s, More Than Bread, Station BBQ, Huddle House, the revolving door of places Dixie Queen currently occupies (I could go on). Marion had a Starbucks for what, two months? It takes a big leap to open up a restaurant anywhere, and to open one here, where history has shown it to be a risky proposition, is just not a gamble many seem to be willing to take. Just be glad that places like Colton’s and Mi Pueblo and Shake Shack are always busy.

That means they’re generating enough business to stay open. As much as I agree with you that it'd be nice to have more options, if you cut each of their business by 20 to 30 percent to support another restaurant, that might no longer be the case]

Loved this typo in Friday’s Marion Police report. Question: Was it found or returned and was it reattached? LOL, thanks for the laugh, good one!

[Editor’s Note: What? You mean “Theft of a Forearm?” What makes you think it was a typo? Folks be stealing everything these days.

Occasionally “Terrostic Threatening” shows up in the police reports, too, but that’s not nearly as funny] I just want to say that I look forward to reading your column everyday with all your straightforward answers. Keep up the great work. [Editor’sNote: I don’t know that I can claim to be straightforward ALL the time, but when someone asks a legitimate question or has a legitimate issue, I do tiy my best to be helpful. Now, obviously we live in a world where everyone has their own opinions andperspective, so I suppose you can’t please everyone. Take this next texter, for example…] I hope you include this information in the times.

Which I am sure you want.

You are one of the most bias editors I have had the misfortune of encountering. I read your article on a continuous basis and I have noticed you actually attempt to feed racism into the mind of individuals.

First everyone knows the work Senator Ingram has done in Arkansas and the works of Ms. Cooper. We do not need an uninformed individual dividing the minds of people that have grown up together and worked together whether brown, pink, orange or grey people. Give these communities the opportunity to make their own decisions at the polls and you my friend attempt to do journalism without your bias touch. You really underestimate the intelligence of people in Arkansas. We are not all eating watermelon and getting high or living in trailer parks smoking meth. To sum it up if they were their diversity as a whole is better than the person you portray. And talk about Shabaka and Bass. You are just as bad….Evening Times it’s time to hire a more qualified person to do this job before the next initiative be boycotting your paper. Social Media is awesome when you have a large following. It’s time to clean this racially charged gossip up… His opinion is not needed. It’s Text the Times not Ask me what I Think Mr. Gossiper….

[Editor’s Note: Since my opinion is not needed, I probably should just leave this alone… but I can't.

First of all, and I only bring this up because you seemed to struggle in some other grammatical areas, kudos for spelling “continuous” correctly, because that is a tough one. I get that and “commemorative” wrong on the first shot, like all the time.

Anyway, I simply can not even begin to guess where this claim that I “feed racism into the mind of individuals” is coming from. Seriously, one exam- pie? Show me ONE example! Where are you pulling “eating watermelon and getting high” from? You just made that up, and I cringed just typing that out… You do know ’ h> e run a column from Senator Ingram eveiy week, right? And we have run more stories from Turrell since Mayor Cooper was elected than in any other time in history, so if you’re suggesting they don’t have this paper’s support (and I’m only guessing that’s what you're suggesting, I really couldn’t tell), I don't know what you’re basing that on.

Anyway, since you asked, that’s what I think…]

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One of our readers sent in a couple of cool photos with the caption: “On Tuesday, outside of Crawfordsville on Hwy. 50, there was just bunches and bunches of geese. A beautiful scenery of the geese just laying there.” Thanks for sending these in. Remember, any time you see something Interesting going on, feel free to snap a pic and send It our way.

Bunch O’ Birds

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