Jeremy,
How about interpreting the following article for us. Basically to me it sounds like the guys saying RAIN sucks but maybe he's one of those guys that thinks anything less than a thousand years old sucks. He definitely would have to cut off Schussler's arms and legs to fit him in that little coffin he made for him. (Not very honest journalism as well by the way. Apparently the author isn't a cricket player.) And what's the political/cultural/economic orientation of the Independent? Supposedly the Observer took a few editorial potshots at RAIN as well.
(From MF RAIN)
Subj: London Review
Date: 01 Jul 1997 22:39:52 EDT
From: IdidMrsA
Message-ID: <19970702023900.WAA10090@ladder02.news.aol.com>
Thought you'd all like this review from The Idependent on June 27.
HEADLINE: This is rainforest in the year 2040, when all that remains are plastic
leaves and silk flowers, the trees draped with toys that wink and growl on
demand
BODY:
As theme parks downsize to move into inner cities and reinvent themselves as
"eatery experiences", they become more preposterous. The Rainforest Cafe which
opened this week in the old Thunderbird disco on Shaftesbury Avenue in London
shows an apocalyptic vision of the future. This is the rainforest in the year
2040, when the last Brazilian trees have been stripped. All that remains are
acres of plastic leaves and silk flowers, the plastic talking trees draped with
dried lichen garlands from China and soft toys from Hamleys that wink, twitch,
growl on demand. Even the alligators are animatronics. Weather is controlled
with rainfall showers as predictable as the sensors on sprinklers, night falls
at the flick of a switch and even the stars are fibre optics.
Sitting on the bar stool with giraffe legs, fanned by an electronic
butterfly at the Magic Mushroom bar, curator Steve Schussler is over from the
States to launch his first transatlantic venture with The Foundation Group of
Companies, whose separate companies operate pubs and hotels. He expounds on the
five Es that make just seven Rainforest Cafes in the US, including one at
Disneyworld in Orlando, serve over 100,000 meals a week. They are Environment,
Entertainment, Earning, Education and Employees and er, I think I must be
hallucinating. Giraffes are savannah creatures, aren't they? How about
elephants? And since when did salmon impale themselves upon the Coral Reef Kebab
featured on the menu? With an eye for detail like this, Steve is unabashed about
never having visited a rainforest. But his Mom served three years in one as a
Peace Corps volunteer.
"Where else could you take a three-year-old or your 103-year-old grandma?"
Steve asks, and in truth, I am stumped.
But it's clear that running a rainforest from a former disco isn't easy.
The fish have gone belly up within their lava-lamp-like aquariums. Maybe it was
the fake corals that unsettled them. Steve is throwing a wobbly about the white
cord on a clamp-light - "It's gotta go, you'd never find that in a Rainforest
Cafe". Worse, the kitchen have had to get used to a weird system where your
adventure in a tropical wonderworld begins with a passport which gives you a
seating time. Till your "safari" name is called, you wander about and hopefully,
shop till you drop in the retail outlet where you can buy Crocodile Dundee
outfits or bean frogs. Getting a thousand free-loaders seated in 340 rustic
chairs imported from America in a trial run last Saturday stretched the kitchen
to breaking point. "So it didn't work out. Know what? We did it on purpose. It
busted. This is training, pushing the limits. It's purposeful."
Just before the official launch on Wednesday to the sound of whirring
insects, birdcalls and thunder - all on the official rainforest CD, "buy one on
your way out" - there's an air of suppressed panic. All the waiters are X-ing
out with black rollerballs the Smoking word on the passport since it will now be
a smoke-free zone. And the shop floor walkers with their "Have a nice day" and
"How can I help you?" are rattling their rain sticks nervously. These rainsticks
are like bamboos from Chile with seeds that slither agreeably as you tip them up
(pounds 10.95 for the medium-sized stick). Not that anyone needs rain. There is
enough dry ice steaming off the ponds to sauna in, and the waterfalls are backed
up with regular showers deluging down from the ceilings in selected areas.
Tracey the Talking Tree at the entrance with her Betty Boo face and lidded blue
eyes that blink is an animatronic like a Spitting Image character designed to
deliver an educational message to the children. Know what children? Look around
at the disposable things in your house and think of aluminium foil as a precious
metal from the earth. And paper towels as trees, plastic bags as oil. Then you
will value them more. This educational out-reach, as they call it, is backed by
school trips with Cassie the curator of the live parrots, third-generation birds
bred in captivity. They perch near the Wishing Pond where visitors are
encouraged to chuck in coins that will be distributed to three charities, The
Rainforest Foundation, Tusk and the World Parrot Trust. So you support the
charities, unlike the Rainforest Cafe or the Foundation Group PLC.
When I asked where the parrots would be giving their first talk, I was
reminded that it was school holidays and that school trips would start in
September. Michael Cockman, group manager of marketing from the Foundation Group
confided that "those birds get more time off than the staff, and 25 changes of
air in an hour just like in their natural habitat."
Steve's inspiration for Rainforest Cafes was his collection of macaws. He
wanted to make them a nice habitat at home in his three-bedroomed house in
Minneapolis so he painted his ceilings black and developed a system to make mist
rise from under the floors. But now he has moved out all that rainforest
memorabilia to furnish the place with aluminium furniture made with aircraft
technology that he found in Chicago. "Post rainforest experience, you could
say." And beware. He keeps a Newfoundland, "the kind of dog that rescues
drowning sailors" and a St Bernard, notorious for their rum-carrying expeditions
in avalanches. Perhaps for his next chain of eateries we can anticipate Arctic
conditions and tidal waves. So the Rainforest turns into Waterworld.
(end repost)
Regards,
Dennis |
