Other Cities’ Yelp Members Much Worse

Art from Foobooz sent this over a while ago, but I misplaced the link ’til now. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, restaurant owners in the Bay Area are upset over patrons demanding free food in exchange for good reviews on Yelp.

Yes, that’s right: People are blackmailing restaurants into giving them free shit. If the restaurants don’t comply, they’re threatened with a bad review on Yelp. Truly, we have entered into the final days. From an email from a restaurateur:

Customers have begun threatening to ‘Yelp’ the restaurant if their demands are not met. Cafe Rouge experienced this phenomenon twice within the past month when comps were demanded with the threat that a harsh review would follow on the Yelp website if we didn’t comply. The expectation of how much to comp is also at issue, where a glass of wine, an appetizer or dessert no longer suffices. People do follow through on their threats as we have witnessed. When most restaurants are struggling to pay the bills in a recession economy, bad publicity is the last thing we want to see. On the other hand, comping lavishly in response to overt threats affects the bottom line.

Hmm, I wonder if I could go into local restaurants and drop the words, “Philadelphia Will Do.” It would be awesome.

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Miss NJ Controversy Somehow Boring

Ahh, let’s keep updated on the ongoing Miss New Jersey Risque Pics Scandal™, the thing we’re paying attention to because it’s summer and it’s not like there’s a war going on and it’s too hot to think about real things. To recap: The current Miss New Jersey, Amy Polumbo, said last week someone had attempted to blackmail her with photos from Facebook. She wouldn’t step down as Miss NJ, because, uh, hello, it’s New Jersey.

Now Polumbo has received a second set of pictures from the blackmailer. She said she wouldn’t step down; the pageant officials and/or authorities now have the photos.

Meanwhile, suspicion has been cast on the runner-up of the Miss NJ pageant as being the one who sent the photos. She denies it, which is kind of lame; if she were the person actually blackmailing Polumbo, it would immediately re-invigorate the, uh, sport of beauty pageants, which haven’t been watched by any human being in America since 1988, except for the Little Miss Sunshine one.

Miss N.J. receives new threat [Camden Courier-Post]