Post #621667 by CallDon on Thu, Jan 19, 2012 11:35 PM

BELOW IS MY "SERMON" TO THE RECENT CLOSING OF TRADER VIC'S:

I haven't been on this forum in a while because I simply got busy working, etc. I dropped into T.V. on Mockingbird one afternoon when it had re-opened just to look around and check it out. It is a shame that I didn't have my camera with me. I am a musician who works at the hours most folks are out having a good time. So I was unable to make any of the gatherings at TV although I tried to make a couple of them.

I drive by on Mockingbird several times a week and noticed things changing in the front of the restaurant that did not look good to me. So in the past few minutes, I have read the last seven pages of this thread. I am really heart broken about the actual closing. But I am sicker at the way our culture has changed, that televisions and sports are now the rule rather than the exception.

From 1982 to 1992, I was the featured pianist at the beautiful Fairmont Hotel at Ross and Akard. I saw plenty of change even in those ten years. We remodeled the Fairmont lobby back in 1987 and they converted a retail space into a temporary sports bar. We all thought it was a stupid idea that would fail quickly. But they kept the sports bar open. Then a couple of years later, the Fairmont closed the beautiful Venetian Room where you could enjoy big-band music every night and see EVERY major star except Frank Sinatra. They closed it!!!

Then around the year 2000, the new corporate owners eliminated all of the live music, the piano in the lobby bar, the piano in the Pyramid dining room and live singers on the weekends. Suddenly, the Fairmont which had been noted for great entertainment in Dallas suddenly did not even have a piano player. That generation of businessmen would rather watch the game on television than listen to live music.

Before long, there were big-screen televisions at each end of the once classy lobby bar. The 5-star Pyramid Restaurant (men must wear jackets) was turned into the Pyramid Grill, tennis shorts accepted.

Dakota's Steak House across from the Fairmont used to have live piano music 6 nights a week. When I started back there around four years ago, I only played Saturday nights. Finally they added Friday to the schedule. But it will never again have music six nights. In the past, folks at least wore nice slacks for dinner at a classy joint above a certain price point. In today's culture, everyone is SO casual. I am surprised seeing how some people actually dress to go out and spend $50 a head for dinner.

It's a shame that Trader Vic's kept the high dinner prices after the economy collapsed. But it is even sadder that after all these years with a perfectly preserved T.V. restaurant, they gutted the place instead of simply adjusting the menu and prices and doing a citywide advertising campaign to bring in the new customers.

I'm glad I got to see the restaurant at least once before it was decimated and the pigs moved in.

How the mighty have fallen. It's so sad.

End of my sermon!

Don

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[ Edited by: CallDon 2012-01-19 23:36 ]