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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bill who wrote (644910)	2/8/2012 12:33:00 PM
From: joseffy	1 Recommendation Respond to of 1579686

It’s Near Impossible To Open An Ice-Cream Shop in San Francisco February 7, 2012 pretenseofknowledge.com That’s what we learn from this piece in the NY Times. I discovered this via the usually very good Boing Boing. The fact that the NYT and Boing Boing are generally left-of-center, statist-supporting, bureaucracy-loving entities adds a bit of irony to the story. I wonder if they really get it yet? I’m not hopeful. Before Ice Cream Shop Can Open, City’s Slow Churn – NYTimes.com: San Francisco Mayor Edwin M. Lee’s office announced last week a $1.5 million fund to help small businesses, calling the sector the “Backbone of SF Economy.” If true, then the saga of a new ice cream shop seems to indicate that the city needs a good chiropractor. … “Many times it almost didn’t happen,” said Juliet Pries, the owner, with a cheerful laugh. Ms. Pries said it took two years to open the restaurant, due largely to the city’s morass of permits, procedures and approvals required to start a small business. While waiting for permission to operate, she still had to pay rent and other costs, going deeper into debt each passing month without knowing for sure if she would ever be allowed to open. “It’s just a huge risk,” she said, noting that the financing came from family and friends, not a bank. “At several points you wonder if you should just walk away and take the loss.” Ms. Pries said she had to endure months of runaround and pay a lawyer to determine whether her location (a former grocery, vacant for years) was eligible to become a restaurant. There were permit fees of $20,000; a demand that she create a detailed map of all existing area businesses (the city didn’t have one); and an $11,000 charge just to turn on the water.