I don't know what I was thinking but it wasn't the Racines Restaurant. It was The Palate!!!
Hello Mr. LeBlanc,
Someone brought to my attention your online article, "GAY BASHING
ATTACK IN FREDERICTON LAST NIGHT!!! WHAT A BUNCH OF IDIOTS!!!!" I am one of the owners of boom! Nightclub and was at boom! on the night in question. I could not agree more that the act of vandalism that night was stupid, but I wanted to clarify a couple of points.
First, you mentioned both Racines Restaurant and The Palate
Restaurant, but you do not make clear which restaurant owner you were speaking with about the details of the vandalism.
The photos accompanying your story are entirely of The Palate and its owner, and The Palate is the restaurant next door to us that got hit with eggs.
I do not know if Racines was also hit.
You go on to say, "From what I was told? Some youths decided that
they’ll wait near the building for a gay person who left the BOOM Gay
bar."
As far as I know the only people these youths would have spoken
to would be the police; anything else would be guessing.
You then say, "... a Gay individual finally walked by and he got
pelted with eggs." There were actually several people standing
directly outside our door who had been in our club that evening, and
one of them knocked on the door to let us know that some young people had gone by throwing eggs at The Palate; however, neither our club nor anyone standing in front of it had eggs thrown at them, only The Palate.
In addition, I have no idea whether the person who came to
our door is gay or not; we certainly welcome gay people to come to
boom!, but we are also a popular nightspot among a broad range of
people in general of all kinds.
Finally, you say, "The guy quickly turn around and when by to the gay
bar and told his friends." Once again, although we are proud to be
the only club in town that specifically welcomes gay people, even I
would hesitate to call us a gay bar, because such a broad range of
cool people party at our establishment.
Also, the guy came to our door to let me and the staff know, not his friends; if he brought other girls or guys with him to our club that night, they were long gone, as we were closed at that point. I only mention this because we take great pains to abide by the province's liquor regulations, and I would not want your readers to think we stay open after hours.
To summarize, you said at the start of your article, "...a gay
bashing attack happen last evening...".
In fact, not only is there no evidence that it was a gay-bashing, the facts all point to the exact opposite, since a gang of young people looking to bash gay people would surely have thrown their eggs at our club or at the people standing in plain view in front of it rather than the business next door.
I applaud the main part of your story, because throwing eggs at a
business and leaving a huge mess and then leaving a convenience store bag there with a time-stamped receipt in it sounds pretty lame to me too; but I just wanted to clarify the above details.
Thanks very much,
Steven DeWitt
