Once it reached the 30 day comments-are-closed-automatically mark, I decided to remove the post posted on this day, about a certain incident at a certain Thai restaurant, from public view.

There are several reasons for this. I trust the point has been driven home (like a sledgehammer) about the corrosive effect on the forum’s trust of protecting bad behavior, and the attempt to silence discussion of course blew up into ten times the attention that it would have had if they had dealt with the issue fairly and transparently. But it seems unfair to that Thai restaurant to associate it with the incident forever.

And keeping it, complete with comments, also seemed so contrary to the spirit of my site which should be about the joy of discussing food with all openly, not some pinched cliquish Heathers version of food fandom. A couple of days after the incident happened, I tweeted this to a friend:

I was on Taylor St. yesterday to shoot photo, just wandering around stopping in at last few old time places, the sun was out…

…gorgeous day and thinking… “How did we fuck this up? How did we find a way to turn this into a vicious grind?”

That’s just sad, to turn one of the most simple and joyous things in life into another form of greasy, small-minded oneupsmanship. So I’m just not going to be part of it. I’m not going to dwell in the past. (They already dwell in my past, every time they log in.) And if I see a bunch of them somewhere, next time I’ll just move along before they have the chance to go nutzoid again.

However, I do not believe in making things completely disappear, because I don’t believe in 2012 things really do disappear— they just fester. So in the name of open disclosure, and to answer in advance the criticism that I must have removed it because for some reason it embarrassed me, if you really want a copy of the old post, including comments (no matter how unflattering to myself), I will send it to anyone who requests it by email. This is not a veiled tease to encourage you to read it; I actually hope no one asks for it and it fades into oblivion. But it’s open to you, if you want it, because transparency was important to me on LTH in 2004 and it is now. Beyond that, I think point made, thread quietly moved offstage… and no, I will not be selling these at Christmas:

Hey, you gotta laugh at this stuff. It’s too ridiculous not to.