An LA Health Inspector is Caught on Camera Doing a Victory Dance After Shutting Down a Brewery That Should've Stayed Open
Daily Mail - A Los Angeles County health inspector was captured on video dancing inside a brewery after incorrectly ordering the owner to close his doors on Super Bowl Sunday for violating COVID guidelines.
Bart Avery, an owner of Bravery Brewery in Lancaster, California, told Fox News that the inspector came to the establishment around 11am on February 7.
Avery claimed the inspector told an employee that the business was in violation of county guidelines because there was no food truck and needed to close just moments before she broke out in a dance. ...
To make matters worse, the inspector turned out to be wrong and Bravery Brewery was not in violation of any county codes.
Because the brewery was only pouring draft beer to go, they did not need a food truck to operate.
According to Avery, the inspector later admitted that there had been a mistake and that business there could resume.
The next day, one of the inspector's bosses also called Avery to apologize.
I'm not about to go off on all health inspectors like they're monsters just because they're being compelled to enforce Covid regulations. Even the regs that are objectively stupid like the requirement that you have to sell food to any customer that wants a beer. (I went to a local place last summer and they sold $1 hot dogs, just to comply with the state law, and I defy any scientist to explain how that saved a single life.) A million years ago, I worked in some kitchens and never met a health inspector yet who wasn't reasonable and willing to work with you as long as you make the effort to keep the place clean. And as a sometime consumer of food cooked by strangers, I appreciate that they do the work of the angels.
But good gawdamighty, is this just a genocide of wrong. Shutting down a legally licensed business operating in good faith should be the worst moment in a person's professional life. If you're not devastated by the fact you had to look someone in the eye and tell them you're padlocking the place they've invested their money, time and sweat equity into - a brewery on Super Bowl weekend no less - then there is something deeply, deeply wrong with you. Any normal person cutting off someone's livelihood in the middle of a pandemic-fueled economic collapse should be on the verge of suicide, not doing a Happy Dance. And I don't care if some irresistible jam like George Michael's "Freedom '90" just came over the PA system. You should be incapable of enthusiastic movement of any kind.
When this is all over - if it's ever all over - this is one of those images we need to hang onto. To remind us of what happened to Bravery Brewery and tens if not hundreds of thousands of places like it across the country. That we let petty bureaucrats, who are unelected and therefore unaccountable, get drunk with their power, while we ourselves were not allowed to get drunk. Like this one, from a few months ago, where the NYC inspector refused to be even remotely reasonable with a guy desperately struggling to obey all the rules and stay in business:
Scenes like this and the one at Bravery have played out all across the country. Of that there is no doubt. And they've not only made it hard for working people who play by the rules to earn a living, they've undermined the very legitimate responses to the epidemic. As well as the work being done by the true professionals whose job it is to keep everyone safe and get these lockdowns ended.
Unfortunately I'm about 3,000 miles too far outside Bravery's neighborhood to order some 4-packs to keep them afloat. But I'll visit a local place today, just to stand in solidarity with them. No business owner deserves to have some government worker literally dance on their metaphorical grave. But everyone deserves quality craft beer. Cheers to you, for finally getting some justice.