Owner Steve Ricci, who looks like Rick Perry after a weekend bender, doesn’t come off too well in the latest episode of “Bar Rescue” on Spike TV. Serial killers have tested with higher LQ- likeability quotient. The reality show portrays Headhunters on Red River as the most vile nightclub ever, with an owner who doesn’t pay employees. Worse, roaches have crawled inside all the liquor bottles and the place smells of cat piss. Ricci sometimes left his cat inside over night to catch rats.
On the plus side, there’s Looney on national TV. The club doorman since it opened as Ocean’s 11- a tiki bar co-owned by Ricci and Dino Lee- in the late ’90s, Looney is a beloved Austin character who fronts a punk band called the Oklahomos. He used to wrassle on the minor league circuit and promoted hip-hop shows, often featuring his protege Citizen Cope, around 1990.
The club was transformed by “Bar Rescue” into “a steampunk lounge” called Metal & Lace, which is just about the lamest idea for a Red River club I’ve ever heard.
Here’s a paid ad of the show posing as a recap in the New Yord Daily News.
Those sponsored stories feel like the final nail in the coffin of ethical journalism.
The first time I read that story, I got to it thru a link on my smart phone…and I never read anything that indicated that it was a sponsored story.
WHERE are the remaining tiki decorations from the Oceans 11 days?! If that stupid show trashed the stuff still there, I will….um….not watch the stupid TV show!
(That’ll show ’em.)