What, you ask, ever happened to the Golden Calf Cafe? The controversial 12 Tribes cult that plopped $1.2 mil down to buy the Ithaca Fitness Center and the Home Dairy building? Did they find the ithaca community so much more "holier than thou", so intolerant and moralizingly self-righteous that they chucked the idea of opening a new cult center in Tompkins County? Judging from the tone of recent letters to the editor in local rags, you might have come to the same conclusion. Ithaca is not exactly opening their arms to the fuzzy apostles of venture capitalism. Some of the letters that Ez read were downright mean-spirited and sounded like a thinly veiled rehash of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Like the Tribes were going to start abducting and turning Christian babies into muffins or something. Imagine that. Go in and order some Mate with a Christian baby biscotti.
So the 12 Tribes decided to host a community forum at the Holiday Inn to greet and meet the local community and dispel the growing cloud of negative publicity. Weren't they surprised when the only people that showed up were the Loaves & Fishes crowd. Yeah, everybody started filling up their pockets with the free baked goods and plastic tableware. They're the only people that ever show up for anything that's free in town.
So what's the status of the infamous Golden Calf Cafe? From what Ez can see, it's looking more New Jersey baroque all the time. Like a theme park for the United Fruit Company. Rain forest chic. Ez hears that they've got some poor brainwashed artist type chained to a paint brush, cranking out the cult's own version of the Sistine Chapel ceiling with Eugene Earl Spriggs as the creator handing a cup of life-giving Mate to Adam. This is going to be one weird restaurant. A cross between Night of the Iguana, the Greatest Story Ever Told and Elmer Gantry. The waiter comes out looking like Charleton Heston playing Mad Dog Earl. How strange is that?
If you're in doubt about how whacked these folks really are, check out their website. http://www.twelvetribes.com/
Now a word about tolerance. People in Ithaca shouldn't throw stones. Look around. The two tallest structures around Ithaca house the Mental Health and Social Service establishments. That's right, folks. That 8 story building on Green Street is, yes, you've guessed it, the Tompkins County Mental Health Department. Not General Motors. Not Prudential Insurance. Not Wrigley Chewing Gum. Ithaca boasts more social workers, more ex mental patients and more people per capita below the poverty line than Detroit . In Ez's book, at least, Ithaca hardly resembles Pleasantville. We should be more tolerant, don't you think? Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 7:46 AM
