Marion Berry Knots (1 Viewer)

[Optimus Prime]

Bit of a scandal here locally. & Pizza is really good by the way

How many people saw and signed off on this? Nobody thought this might not be the best idea? In Metro DC?
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In the years after D.C. gained a measure of municipal independence in the 1970s, arguably no one personified the triumphs and failures of the capital city more than Marion Barry. Widely beloved as mayor in the District’s poor and marginalized communities, he left a complex legacy when he died a decade ago, having worked to lift thousands of Washingtonians out of poverty while succumbing again and again to personal demons, most notably drug and alcohol abuse.

Now a chain of pizza restaurants, &Pizza, with 10 shops in D.C., is playing on Barry’s history of addiction — and prompting a public backlash — by marketing a pastry dubbed “Marion Berry knots,” a new dessert item coated with sugar, while making thinly veiled references to cocaine. “These knots will blow you away,” the ad reads.

If the coke implication wasn’t clear enough, a photo on &Pizza’s X feed shows a small pile of white powder atop a mirror with tiny glassine packets, the kind used by drug dealers, scattered about. “Our classic knots got a bump,” the photo notes.

“My reaction is, it’s disgusting,” said Bernard Demczuk, who worked with Barry on the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the 1960s and later held a senior post in his mayoral administration. “I will do everything I can to shut down that pizza place. They have no right to monetize someone’s problem that’s a big problem for a lot of people in this country. It’s disgraceful, making a profit off a man who devoted his life to helping people.”

That Barry fostered a thriving African American middle class by putting thousands of struggling Black residents in municipal jobs is sometimes forgotten in today’s Washington, particularly outside the areas that Barry represented. But many recall that Barry, in his third term as mayor, was caught on videotape smoking crack in a 1990 FBI sting. “B---- set me up,” he declared in a quote heard round the world, referring to an ex-girlfriend who was secretly working for the FBI.

It angers many of Barry’s old acquaintances that, to a lot folks these days, the public humiliation of his drug arrest and subsequent six-month prison term define his legacy more than his long-ago accomplishments do. After his release, Barry was elected to a fourth term as mayor and later served on the D.C. Council, representing Ward 8, the city’s poorest precinct.

“My phone has been ringing all day and night,” said Ronald Moten, a longtime community activist and friend of Barry’s who is organizing a boycott and demonstration at several &Pizza outlets in D.C. “People are really p---ed off,” Moten said. “They want to know what they can do. And we’re going be shutting them down Friday and Saturday night, when most people go there, when the clubs let out on U Street and H Street and up by the Rose Bar on Connecticut Avenue.

“We’re going to show them we’ve still got a voice in this city,” he said.

It’s unclear whether Marion Berry knots are being sold in all 41 &Pizza shops, in D.C., Maryland, Virginia, Philadelphia and New Jersey. The company’s chief executive, Mike Burns, did not return a phone message seeking comment. A public relations firm representing &Pizza did not respond to a list of emailed questions, releasing only a brief statement from Burns.

“We’re talking about a marionberry, that’s spelled with an ‘e,’” the statement said. “We stuff that into a knot, drizzle it with icing and then top it with powdered sugar. It’s delicious — we can’t wait for D.C. to try it.”................

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2024/10/22/dc-pizza-marion-berry-knots-dessert-cocaine-controversy/

 

[Optimus Prime]

Outside a pizza restaurant at the heart of D.C.’s vibrant U Street corridor, a crowd of protesters gathered last Friday, enraged, they said, by an appalling insult to a hero of theirs whose legacy they had showed up to defend.

They railed, stomped and chanted outside the empty restaurant at 12th and U streets NW, which had closed in advance of the widely advertised demonstration after a few days of escalating outrage over a menu item lampooning the cocaine addiction of Marion Barry, an icon of a vanished era in the capital city, a man who was called “mayor for life.”

In today’s gentrified Washington, some protesters fear, Barry’s long-ago accomplishments are fading from communal memory, even as his notorious transgressions stick. What appeared to be a White-led business’s attempt to profit off a Black leader’s pain left many native Washingtonians more than furious; their anger seemed tinged with sadness, with a deepening sense of loss in a city transformed over a quarter-century of rapid change.

“It’s like they’re participating in cultural erasure,” Ronald Moten, a protest organizer, said of the &Pizza restaurant chain, which debuted and then quickly scrapped a pastry dubbed “Marion Berry knots,” coated with powdered sugar, and an ad campaign featuring thinly veiled references to Barry’s struggles with addiction and his notorious 1990 drug arrest.

“These type of insults happen to my community every day,” Moten said. “They just usually go unchecked. But not this time.”

In a private meeting this week, the pizza chain, which lists 43 outlets in the Mid-Atlantic region, and a coalition of activists dubbed Knot in DC reached a tentative peace. In a statement Thursday, &Pizza promised several steps to make amends, including partnerships and financial investments to help minority-owned businesses in D.C.; internships for students from local high schools and historically Black colleges; and additional “cultural awareness programs,” including mentorship efforts and diversity training within the company.

“We must do better,” the statement said, “and we will.” The activists, meanwhile, have suspended plans for future protests while they and &Pizza’s chief executive continue to talk.

In some ways, the Friday night protest seemed less about a pastry than about endangered history and who would protect it; it seemed less about Barry than about the memory of a bygone generation of Black leaders who are understood and revered by a dwindling number of D.C. families. That a pizza chain founded in 2012 would ridicule the late mayor’s human weaknesses — as if that were the most notable aspect of his life — seemed to aggravate the cultural anxiety of Washingtonians who feel alienated amid the city’s vast transformation in the new millennium.

“It was not funny,” said Michael Crowder, 51, standing in the crowd at 12th and U. “I don’t think that could’ve been done 20 years ago.”

This trend of cultural erasure — illustrated by the Marion Berry knots and accompanying ad campaign — has impacted communities across the country, said author Brandi T. Summers, a Columbia University sociologist who studies the phenomenon and has written about the District.

As an example, she recalled a sandwich shop and bar that opened in a gentrifying area of Brooklyn in 2017. Its White owner advertised an old “bullet hole-ridden wall” on the premises, as a news release put it, and sold 40-ounce bottles of rosé in paper bags, like malt liquor, in a tone-deaf nod to the neighborhood’s downtrodden past. Protesters descended en masse, decrying the gimmicks as racist.

“It’s very common,” Summers said. “And it’s particularly offensive to people who have been there for a long time and are trying to hold onto their hopes and their places in the city.” Worse still, she said, “they’re making a mockery of these people’s past. It’s not just that Marion Barry’s time is gone, but also that they’re making fun of his particular time.”...............

MSN

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2024/11/01/marion-barry-pizza-protest-dc/