Gene Stilp’s Ginger Spice Protest

Spice-gate continues. For those of you who aren’t aware, Monday a server and a bartender at Spice were fired after being quoted in a story by reporter Daniel Victor that appeared in the Sunday edition of the Patriot-News. Molly Turner and John Burkholder were asked whether the downturn in the economy had affected the size of their tips, and both answered candidly. When they went to work on Monday, both were informed that their services were no longer required. Early Tuesday morning (12:01am actually, burning the midnight oil eh, Nancy?) the Patriot posted a follow-up story on pennlive.com quoting both about their ouster.

Around lunchtime today , another story appeared on Pennlive which said that professional rabble-rouser, political showman and activist Gene Stilp was standing in front of Spice in support of Turner and Burkholder. The story did not include a picture [UPDATE: it does now], so I moseyed over to Spice to shoot one and ask Stilp what was up.

Stilp’s antics generally amuse me to no end, and he assured me that he wasn’t trying to get passerby, many of whom stopped to chat, to boycott Spice. Instead, he wanted them to tip the wait staff especially generously and simply ask management to reinstate Turner and Burkholder.

“We’ve got to take care of our servers and bartenders,” he said.

I stopped by about 12:45, and he said that he hadn’t heard anything from Spice management except for a request to move away from the front door. All in all, it seems like the situation has been handled in a pretty genteel manner by both sides. Anyway, figured I’d take a picture for those of you who prefer them to words, but I really don’t have an opinion.