Smugglers' Inn in hot water again.

by James J. Grennel,

crime reporter,

Anoka County Shopper

Special Summer Safety edition

Early Wednesday morning, Blaine Police responded to a complaint of a boisterous, after-hours party at Smugglers’ Inn, a restaurant and bar adjacent to the Northtown Shopping Center complex. At approximately 2. a.m., patrolwoman Corrine Chessman arrived at the establishment and reported finding the front door propped open, in violation of a city ordinance specifying that all establishments serving liquor remain closed with their doors locked from 1:00 AM until 6 AM. Chessman entered and followed the sounds of loud voices and music to the kitchen area, whereupon she encountered “eight or nine” employees of the bar/restaurant. The employees were gathered around a man who was, according to Officer Chessman, ”doing back-flips one after another like one of those of wind-up toy dogs you used to be able to get at Spencer Gifts. Before they closed, I mean.” Because alcohol was present and it was not immediately clear that everyone was of legal age, patrolwoman Chessman started asking for I.D.’s. At this point, the individual who had been doing the back flips hurled a foul-smelling substance in Officer Chessman's face and fled. Chessman fears the substance was human waste. “I remember seeing that in “Lock-up:Raw” and thinking, “What kind of animal would throw his own feces?” This is clearly an individual who’s done hard time. I suspect he was afraid of being written up for a parole violation--he took off like a shot.” The officer drove herself to the emergency Ward of Coon Rapids General Hospital, where antibiotics and anti-viral drugs were administered.

Smugglers’ Inn has not been able to provide information as to the identity of the officer’s assailant, who is described as short, with a rangy build and bright red hair. The management maintains that the individual in question was not an employee, but just “some joker” who had been observed drinking alone in the bar. They offered no explanation as to why this person was in an area of the restaurant off-limits to customers or how he came to be dressed in the checked pants and white shirt of a kitchen worker. “Clearly, we are disappointed with the judgement our employees showed here,” explained a spokesman for the restaurant and sometimes ad agency. “They know the cops come whenever anyone farts.”

Smugglers’ Inn reported that they wished to send flowers to officer Chessman, who, at the time of this writing, was at home recovering after a bout of migraines. Chessman, a Gulf War veteran, suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Sumatra's got it going on.

Happiness has a name, and that name is Pongo! Pongo, Pongo, Pongo! I’m sorry, but I can’t stop saying, “Pongo!” Since coming to work for Smugglers' Inn, this amazing immigrant from Sumatra has transformed our prep/dishwashing area from a house of pain into a stage for the most charismatic performer in the world--Pongo!

Certainly, we regret the departure of Pongo’s predecessor, Old Jorge, who, in the weeks and months he was our dish man/prep cook, had become a member of our family. A shambling, alcoholic member of our family who could not be trusted around money, but a family member just the same. Old Jorge took over responsibility for washing dishes, stocking our salad bar and making sauces and desserts from his nephew, Just Jorge, after the latter made the unwise decision to run from the Spring Lake Park Police Department in a muffler-less Dodge Neon during the course of a routine traffic stop. Old Jorge showed up on our doorstep the following day, explaining that his nephew had leased him his dishwashing post while he was away. We didn’t tell old Jorge that you can’t sublet jobs like they were New York apartments; the fact was, we had some crusty pots and dishes piling up that none of us was about to clean. Anyway, how bad could a relative of our hardest-working employee to date be?

Plenty bad, as it turns out. A cardinal rule in restaurants is, you never fire the dishwasher, but it was clear from the get-go that this grinning, moon-walking yuckster would be unable to meet the high bar set by his nephew. One ugly puking incident that resulted in the loss of 12 gallons of valuable clam chowder made it clear that even minimum wage is too much to pay some help.

Enter WorkForceUSA.com and Pongo. Pongo, Pongo, Pongo! This website connects employers with new Americans who are hungry to establish themselves in this great land of opportunity. In essence, you pay $20 to post your opening on WorkForce and workers bid on it. The worker who pits in the lowest bid gets the job. It’s the invisible hand of the marketplace at work.

We admit, when Pongo (they don’t use last names in Pongo’s homeland), walked in, we were were apprehensive. It’s not that we are prejudiced (oh, no!). We just had never hired any Sumatrans before. Mexicans, Greeks, Pakistanis, Serbs, Hondurans, Ecuadorians, Trinidadians and Somalis, sure, but never someone from this tiny island nation. Pongo doesn’t exactly make a great first impression, it must be said. His hair, though always clean and neatly groomed, is the color of Orange Crush and seems to cover every inch of him but his face and palms. His red-brown eyes are exceedingly close together, almost giving the illusion that the sides of his face had sprouted handles. Pongo is many things, but George Clooney he is not.

Pongo bounced nervously in his chair throughout the screening of the mandatory sexual harassment DVD and threw his pencil when we did not have a W2 form in Sumatra-ese. I wasn’t holding out much hope when we put him in a uniform (XS pants, XXL shirt) and pointed him to what would be his work station. As soon as he saw the teetering pile of blackened pans and scorched chowder pots, he attacked; there’s no other word for it.

With his long arms flailing, Pongo performed his own brand of triage on the unclean utensils, loading the merely greasy onto racks and sending them through the Hobart while simultaneously filling a sink with water for soaking the most charred items. Before the dishes had come out the other side, Pongo had two big, steel fry pans gleaming, (much to the dismay of our cook, who maintained that his blackened utensils “were just getting good”.)

I didn’t need to hover; I had seen enough to know that Pongo was going to be better than Old Jorge and probably his nephew, too. I left to go write up our first social media marketing plan for our advertising sideline. When I checked back in two hours to tell Pongo he could take a break, all pots, pans, silverware and cutlery had been cleaned and put away. Trays of stemware and mousse glasses, set on trays and stacked with military precision, sparkled from a high shelf. Pongo himself was on a short safety ladder, scrubbing a corner by the dish sprayer. The area where the walls came together was so splattered with greasy dish water and carbon particles that it called forth images of a bloody crime scene.

“Pongo” I said, “you are AWESOME.”

At first, I didn’t think he heard me. Then, he stopped scrubbing and, without so much as turning around, executed a perfect back flip. The ladder never even shook.

I went straight to my office and fanned WorkForceUSA. Then I posted a job opening for a busboy to replace one Adolfo “Spanish” Nunez. When you can find an immigrant who’ll do backflips for $3.28 an hour, there’s no point in employing one who asks for more days, then calls in sick every time Real Madrid gets in a tournament. No, I’ve seen the face of the new Smugglers’ Inn work force. That face, rendered on the back of a child’s placemat by Cat, our resident art student and seating hostess extraordinaire, looks like this:

“Pongo No.1”, Catherine Murphy, 2011

“The Triumph of Spring”

Sandro Botticelli

Italian, 1486

“Spring”

Roger Thorgsvald

Minnesotan, 2011

There’s nothing like a weather joke. Especially if you’re it. Until Smugglers’ Inn Rimini becomes a reality, Smug’s zone of influence extends from the water tower in Blaine all the way to the cement Polar Bear at Polar Chev in N. St. Paul. (Stunning—and they say the Midwest doesn’t have great art.) We have, count ‘em, one location in Minneapolis and today, on this fifth day of spring, freezing rain has been followed by five inches of new snow, making driving to the store for a loaf of overpriced Artisan bread an act of bravery or faith, depending on whether you or a Somali cabbie does the steering.

“Yes, but the snow is so pretty!”

Fie upon you, ignorant stranger! Know you not that snow kills more people each year than sharks? Shoveling snow, especially this spring cement with its added weight of accumulated dog turds and sodden cigarette butts, is the leading cause of heart attacks among Lutheran males of a certain age. Look it up. “Snow is pretty?” Are the ambulances that cart the fallen to Minnesota’s 24 cardiac centers pretty? To you, maybe. Their flashing lights probably remind you of Christmas.

Clearly, there’s some cabin fever at work here. Before we start looking at each other and imagining steaming hams and turkey legs like in some Tex Avery cartoon, we ask your help in finding something for the staff at Smugglers’ Inn to do. And, hopefully, someplace else to do it.

To that end, we’ve published a list of businesses that, we’re convinced, need but a coy smile from us before they call, begging to employ the creative geniuses who thought of turning a theme restaurant into an advertising boutique. In Blaine. If you don’t see yourself on the list, fear not. New York and Chicago are temperate to us and even Canada can boast great bodies of water in liquid form. Dentsu Siberia? We may need to get back to you.

AAC Saatchi & Saatchi, Bermuda

Ogilvy & Mather Hawaii, Honolulu

Crispin Porter + Bogusky, Miami

Droga5, Sydney

Grey Global, San Antonio

Prestige Marketing, Barbados

The Jupiter Drawing Room, Cape Town

Zimmerman and Partners, Fort Lauderdale

The Harris Agency, Honolulu

GSD&M, Austin

Strascina Strascina Garcia, Albuquerque

TBWA, Paris

The Richards Group, Dallas

Kessels Kramer, Amsterdam

Saatchi & Saatchi, Sydney

3 Advertising, Albuquerque

Anson-Stoner, Orlando

DDB, Milano

Grey, Paris

Draft FCB, Cape Town

Clemenger BBDO, Melbourne

Lowe Australia

The Campaign Palace, Melbourne

JWT, Sydney

OgilvyOne Worldwide, San Antonio

Saatchi & Saatchi, Aukland

Droga5, Sydney

M&C Saatchi, Australia

The French Laundry, Yountville (we cook)

Ogilvy & Mather, Barbados

Leo Burnett, Bangkok

Lowe Bull, Cape Town

Red Cell, Darlinghurst

Publicis Lowe, Sydney

Tiempo BBDO, Barcelona

DCS Comunicacoes, Porto Alegre (no idea, but it sounds warm)

Smugglers’ Inn. As seen in THE TIMES.

Toby Barlow, CCO at Team Detroit, mentioned the two of us by name when he was interviewed by the New York Times about the 2011 Ford Explorer launch that was conducted on Facebook. No, he didn’t say, “Smugglers’ Inn rules!” and, to be honest, there were some other freelancers mentioned who had also worked on this project. Still, we think we left more than our share of shiny pennies in the Team Detroit fountain. Judge for yourself. While we’re thinking of it, Smugglers’ Inn likes Toby Barlow’s creepy-cool novel, “Sharp Teeth”, available everywhere in paperback. (There, Sir Toby, our bargain is CONCLUDED.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/20/business/media/20adnews.html?nl=business&emc=ata1

Abbey Road, meet Madison Avenue.

“JWT New York is the Coldplay of ad agencies. No other advertising agency or media concern can make that statement, at least not until 2014.” This is according to counsel for the WPP Group, the holding company that owns JWT New York and several hundred other agencies who was celebrating the impending deal with his staff at McSorley’s Tavern in Greenwich Village.

Advertising agencies have long sought to connect their client’s products with consumers through music, but now they’re paying to align their own names with popular artists.

“How do you put a price on the Beatles?” asks Malachi Galpers of EMI, owners of the Beatles recordings, before answering his own question. The price for the Beatles endorsement, Mr. Galpers informs us, is 184 million dollars. A trifle, when compared to the price reportedly thrown out by the second-most famous band in Rock and Roll when they were approached about lending their name to an ad agency. That word begins with a “B”. As in “billion”. Any Beatles deal, if one is completed, will not include rights to any of the group’s songs, but the purchasing agency would be entitled to unlimited use of a “stinger” of up to eight notes, although this could not be from “Norwegian Wood”. Mr. Galpers maintains that interest among agencies has been “serious”, but at that price, the list of potential buyers would probably be quite short.

What kicked off this sudden rush for rock’n roll cred appears to have been one article in the Minneapolis Star and Tribune that referred to local ad professionals Jarl Olsen and Carol Henderson as “The White Stripes of Advertising”. Their two-person business, Smugglers’ Inn, bested every other shop in town by getting two campaigns in the Communication Arts Advertising Annual, prompting the comparison to alt-rock’s beloved brother-sister act.

“We had decided against entering any award shows,” says Henderson, “but we decided to make an exception for CA. They are the class act of awards shows.

“It doesn’t hurt that their entry fees are a fraction of those asked by other shows. I mean, $1,500 to enter a spot in Cannes? Get me in that business.”

Smugglers’ Inn has no intention of making their association with the White Stripes—or any other band official.

“We were sort of mystified by the White Stripes comparison, to be honest,” confesses Henderson. “I mean, it was flattering and everything, but look at us. We’re not hipsters. We aren’t even skinny. Everyone in town hates us now.”

Surely, I asked, it was a boon to be compared to rock stars for free when your competitors are paying big money for those same associations. Shouldn’t this be a windfall for Smugglers’ Inn?”

“No client that would pick two people who shop at Target over an agency with a couple hundred million in billings and a three-story office full of skinny people (*weight seems to be a theme today-jgt) would be impressed with a paid celebrity endorsement. The only reason we’ve been able to have fun with the work is because our clients haven’t insisted their customers aren’t dumber than they were. We aren’t snobs; we don’t turn down lots of business or anything, but we can’t work for fools.”

Olsen explains:

“Smugglers’ Inn refuses to do business with anyone who couldn’t name three state capitols if they had a banana pointed at their head. It’s our law."

Good to know if you’re a client shopping for an alternative to a free-spending agency. To keep up with the latest from the White Stripes of Advertising, visit smugglersinn.blogspot.com.

Albany, Pierre, Sacramento.

--Jordan Gossich-Taber, Media Pulse

Smugglers’ Inn reaches out after embarrassing award show performance.

By Trinity Rosen-Scharff, staff writer, Minneapolis Small Business Journal.

“We knew we had to do something. The flowers are our way of saying, “Thanks for not hiring us,” says Jarl Olsen, chief creative officer and partner of Smugglers’ Inn. “I mean, if we would have been freelancing for these places, any one of them might have a couple of clever campaigns in CA instead of us.”

The CA Mr. Olsen was referring to was Communication Arts. For thirty-five years, this publication has hosted a juried competition to determine the most creative advertising done anywhere in the world in the past year. Selections are published in the CA Advertising Annual and enter the archive of great advertising stretching back several decades. The Minnesota ad agencies, many of which dominated CA in decades past, will be conspicuously under-represented this time—with the exception of tiny Smugglers’ Inn.

“There’s just the two of us here, see,” informs Carol Henderson, co-chief creative officer and partner. “All of these are going out to shops with a hundred or more employees.”

Henderson gestured to two rows of flower boxes lined up along one wall of the cramped Smugglers Inn headquarters in Saint Paul. Taped to each box was a note card adorned with a sticker of either a teddy bear or a glittering cartoon horse with long eyelashes. As the mother of a six-year-old girl, I recognized “Pretty Pony”.

“One for boys, one for girls?” I ventured.

“Kind of,” said Henderson. “The Pretty Ponies go to gatekeepers, mostly women, who will be more likely to hire us after our good showing in a major awards show. The teddy bears…”

“Go to the creative directors,” finished Olsen. “They'll be bitter and resentful, since we’ve outperformed the creative staffs that they’ve hired.”

“What Jarl means,” Henderson was quick to clarify, “is that we want to show our solidarity with all members of our Twin Cities advertising community. Smugglers’ Inn is about community. We are a people agency.”

“Yes! We are into people,” agreed Olsen, reacting to a swift jab to his ribs. “We don’t need our brothers and sisters to feel bad just because we beat them in one awards show. That’s why we plan on entering more awards shows—OUCH!”

Interview concluded, Smugglers’ Inn insisted I not leave without taking a flower arrangement. “Take a Pretty Pony,” Ms. Henderson said. “We have too many of them—and the others have bugs.”

Creative people! We’re all such scamps.

-TRS

September is "Talk Like A Fancy Pirate© Month."

After 112 days, the nightly blame-fest that was the Deepwater oil disaster finally seems to be over, revealing what a slow season for news it really has been. Like all Americans, we were transfixed by the eerie online spectacle of thousand of barrels of crude oil escaping from a broken pipe a mile below the ocean’s surface.

For about two minutes. If you’re like us, you logged on long enough to get the general idea (worst ecological disaster of our time), then watched for another ninety seconds just to make sure that a great white wasn’t going to appear from that petroleum smokestack and attack the camera in typical “Shark Week” fashion.

As a theme restaurant of the nautical kind, Smugglers’ Inn is understandably concerned about the impact the spill will have on the industry that supplies us with half the ingredients in our Surf ‘n Turf.

As an ad agency AND theme restaurant, part of us feels compelled to crack jokes in the face of doom.

It must be the biggest part, because Smugglers’ Inn has declared September, “Talk-Like-A-Fancy-Pirate© Month”.

It’s kicky! It’s kewl! It beats “BP Apology Month” or “More Moaning about the Economy Month.”

Try these phrases in Fancy Pirate©, then make up your own.

”RRR you sure you can’t hear Freddy Mercury under this spot for Michelle Bachmann?”

“Keep the parrot? Lose the parrot?”

”Bugger the cost! And the horse he rode in on!”

“Well, blow me down if ‘taint so! Or, if it’s Thursday.”

“Avast! Hole opens in my heart me when I realize that another agency registered a unicorn app.”

Well, your pals at Smug’s just got word that we have a couple of campaigns in the upcoming CA annual. Who-hoo! Come November, these tables will be filled and we may even have another client who doesn’t pay in Confederate money. Until then, “Aye! Think we’re available…and that eye patch is you!”