Reception
Shallal had said he would keep Busboys running even if just broke even, but it proved a success from the beginning, even without committing an advertising budget. C-SPAN, NBC News and ABC's "Good Morning America" all filmed segments inside the restaurant within the restaurant's first few months. Kevin Zeese, manager of Ralph Nader's 2000 presidential campaign and director of Democracy Rising, related to The Hill, "Boom! It just became an incredibly important landmark for the community. It definitely has a progressive feel to it; it's in the 'hood, not disjointed from the community like the National Press Club and Capitol Hill are." Shallal said of the restaurant's popularity, "I've opened many restaurants, this is the first time that people came in and got it right away."
The Busboys clientele has included Nader, Cindy Sheehan, Tom Hayden, Harry Belafonte, Amiri Baraka, Rep. Maxine Waters, Rep. Lynn Woolsey, Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee, Anthony Shadid and Dave Meggyesy, a former St. Louis Cardinals linebacker who quit the NFL in protest of the Vietnam War. Additionally, onetime Washington Wizards center Etan Thomas has performed his poetry at Busboys. Minnesota Senator, Al Franken spoke in Busboys and Poets' Langston Room, Howard Zinn, Alice Walker, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her daughter, actor Matt Dillon, modern hip hop artist Keri Hilson and other celebs have either ate or hosted an event.
Read more about this topic: Busboys And Poets
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“Aesthetic emotion puts man in a state favorable to the reception of erotic emotion.... Art is the accomplice of love. Take love away and there is no longer art.”
—Rémy De Gourmont (1858–1915)
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)