DaTechGuy at Chick Fil A in Burlington MA and the dread scourge of Fedoraphobia

No one will fight me!

High­lander 1986

Tonight my youngest son and I decided to visit the clos­est of the two Chick Fil-​A in Mass­a­chu­setts at the Burling­ton Mall.

We got there around 6 p.m.

When we arrived the first thing I noticed was the rel­a­tive lack of cus­tomers at the other estab­lish­ments com­pared to Chick-​Fil-​A

The sec­ond thing I noticed were three mem­bers of the local police depart­ment in the food court, specif­i­cally in front of the Chick-​Fil-​A (The Quiznois is next to it)

I approached them and asked if there had been any trou­ble, they answered that it was merely Fri­day night and it was rou­tine to have police in the mall late on a Fri­day. I gave them my card and thanked them and headed to the counter when I spot­ted the owner of this Chick-​Fil-​A (he looked VERY young, or maybe I’m just old).

Although he choose not to be inter­viewed he did tell me that busi­ness had been gen­er­ally up since the start of the protests.

My son and I then got in line to order at this point mall secu­rity approached me.

They informed me that mem­bers of the press were not allowed and that no inter­views and pic­tures could be taken, I told them I had already taken three but I would of course respect their wish­ers as I was on pri­vate prop­erty. As a demon­stra­tion of good will I removed the bat­ter­ies from my camera.

Unfor­tu­nately at this point the line at the Chick-​Fil-​A got much longer so we had to wait a bit to order. Both of us had the spicy chicken sand­wich. I had the lemon­ade and he had Dr. Pep­per. I ordered some food for the Radio show tomor­row (and a $10 gift card to give away!) and we sat down to eat.

I found the sand­wich bet­ter than the last time, likely because unlike Nashua I ate the spicy sand­wich at once but in fair­ness I still think the Wendy’s spicy Chicken slightly edges it on taste.

The Lemon­ade was how­ever the best any­where, the owner kindly brought me a re-​fill as well and I noticed he took the time to talk to many cus­tomers. He seemed really on the ball.

I noticed a pair of ladies sit­ting three tables away, they were heavy tat­tooed and seemed to get more and more angry as the lines at the Chick-​Fil-​A con­tin­ued to grow. As we ate I noticed a col­lec­tion of peo­ple mak­ing a point to pass by observ­ing, they were invari­ably pierced and seemed to grow ner­vous as they watched secu­rity and secu­rity watched them back.

Mean­while as I fin­ished my food and my son took off to Gamestop I ran into a fel­low from Mass Resis­tance, we had a pleas­ant chat. He noted the place was absolutely mobbed on Wednes­day. As he was not iden­ti­fied as media he was plan­ning to stay. I also called Karen at the Lonely Con­ser­v­a­tive, Smitty and Bill Jacob­son to report what I had seen so far.

Around 7:15 p.m. after my son got back secu­rity approached me again ask­ing me to leave. They said I had car­ried myself as a gen­tle­men but they really couldn’t allow me to stay as I had fin­ished my meal and other press had not been allowed. We shook hands and my son and I decided to do one lap in the mall. As we left the food court I noted two tables just out­side the area. There were about 30 peo­ple in them and I noted they and secu­rity were keep­ing a close eye on each other. I sur­mised they were plan­ning to launch their protest before or at 8. As we walked the mall I told my son:

“If I were them I’d have a small dis­tur­bance at the other end of the mall to draw away secu­rity and then make my move before the sched­uled 8 p.m. time.”

As we com­pleted our lap and neared the food court by the esca­la­tor that we came in from I noted a secu­rity guard leav­ing the area, it was about 7:45 when sud­denly a chant came out: “Hey Hey , ho ho, Homo­pho­bia has got to go.” I also noted peo­ple with signs duct taped to their chest with a sin­gle with page call­ing Chick-​Fil-​A “hate chicken”. They were quickly sur­rounded by secu­rity at this point and con­tin­ued chant­ing as they were escorted from the mall.

I had a dilemma, I had given my word to the mall folks not to take pic­tures (although the pro­test­ers were) so being the shy with­drawn type I lifted up my Chick-​Fil-​A bag with tomorrow’s food in it and started chant­ing back.

“Hey hey , ho ho, Christo­pho­bia has got to go.”

For some odd rea­son this expres­sion of the same first amend­ment rights they were exer­cis­ing didn’t sit will with them.

At this point my son and I started exit­ing the mall, I did a loop around the place to see if we could find where they had been booted out. As I didn’t spot them and had to be up early I started head­ing for 128.

And just as I was at a point where I was com­mit­ted to the high­way, my son spot­ted the pro­test­ers in the Barns and Noble across the street with a NECN truck.

Although tempted to do a Stacy McCain and attempt a U turn through traf­fic I hit the high­way and looped back at around 80 or so. within 14 min (8:15) I arrived at the park­ing lot, got out of the car and while my son went to check Barnes and nobile I approached the protesters.

They were still not happy to see me.

In fact they attempted to block me from tak­ing pictures.

[cap­tion id=“attachment_39212” align=“aligncenter” width=“450”] Arrugh a fedora! Keep AWAY![/caption]

Oddly enough they seemed to have no prob­lem giv­ing inter­views to others

This was pass­ing strange, I was a sin­gle per­son, out­num­bered at least 10 – 1. They had protested pub­licly and in fact were seek­ing atten­tion yet for some rea­son they were unwill­ing to answer my questions.

I couldn’t under­stand, after all didn’t they believe in what they had said? Could it be in the state that fathered gay mar­riage the brave denounc­ers of “big­ots” could not for­mu­late an answer to any ques­tion not spoon fed?

I pon­dered the question;

YES: they had only drawn 30 peo­ple at a huge mall close to Boston in the state where Gay Mar­riage was sup­pos­edly the strongest.

YES: more peo­ple had eaten at Chick-​Fil-​A in 10 min­utes than they had been able to draw.

YES: the weak­ness of their move­ment com­pared to the hun­dreds of thou­sands who showed up on Wednes­day was apparent.

YES: they weren’t used to tough questions…

…but surely this could not be the rea­son why I scared them so Surely this alone could not cause these brave pro­test­ers to flee before a sin­gle blog­ger with a camera?

Then it hit me. I remem­bered all the peo­ple i had seen that evening near the pro­test­ers. There WAS one unique dif­fer­ence between me and all the oth­ers. I was the only per­son in the entire area, both at the mall and at the park­ing lot who approached them in a Fedora!

As I left for home with my son and our Chick-​Fil-​A I felt sorry for these poor peo­ple. First the scourge of AIDS had dec­i­mated the gay com­mu­nity 30 years ago, and now a new mal­ady had reared it’s ugly head, a mal­ady con­fined to the brave pro­test­ers undaunted by their poor num­bers and inabil­ity to get live media cov­er­age in the mall. A mal­ady called Fedo­ra­pho­bia!

What a shame, if it hadn’t been for fedo­ra­pho­bia, these brave pro­test­ers could have man­aged a 3 minute inter­view and had the chance to make their points and my work would have been done. Instead Fedora pho­bia caused them to run away like Sir Robin before the three headed giant.

Worse of all it had been caught on cam­era. And all those who would see it would think it cow­ardice when in real­ity they had been struck by a new and hor­ri­ble ill­ness of which there is no known cure.

Oh the AGONY!

Update: Insta­lanche. Thanks Glenn for tak­ing steps to com­bat the dread dis­ease of Fedo­ra­pho­bia. BTW for com­par­a­tive pur­poses here is a video from Wednes­day of the line at Chick-​Fil-​A

Update 2: No signs of Fedo­ra­pho­bia nation­wide but it looks like the Chick-​Fil-​A protests nation­ally laid an egg, or at least would have if there were more peo­ple and not advo­cat­ing a lifestyle that doesn’t pro­duce eggs.

[cap­tion id=“attachment_39228” align=“aligncenter” width=“450”] Via Amer­i­can Free­dom by Barbara[/caption]

— — — — — -

The DaT­e­chguy fundraiser is still in progress, yes I would like you to kick in so I can use a car of my own on these trips but now there is a greater cause. To my knowl­edge no per­son is now research­ing the dreaded dis­ease strik­ing pro-​gay mar­riage pro­test­ers known as Fedo­ra­pho­bia. Won’t you give gen­er­ously so I can con­tinue to approach such peo­ple in the hopes of find­ing a cure?

Remem­ber if you’re a pro­tester an on-​camera inter­view is a ter­ri­ble thing to waste!

For details click here for the progress check the ther­mome­ter to the right and to kick in hit DaTipJar”.