Restaurant Where Men's Rights Group Planned Meetup Has Called The Cops
By Mae Rice in News on Feb 3, 2016 9:51PM
Men’s rights activists plan to meet up in the parking lot of a Homewood restaurant on Saturday—and the restaurant owners aren’t happy about it. In fact, they’ve called the police for assistance with the situation.
Mike Galderio, Jr., who owns Balagio Ristorante with his dad, said the police promised to send “a couple squads,” essentially for security.
“I don’t know why out of the whole state of Illinois, we’ve been named [as a meetup location],” said Galderio, Jr. "What kind of scares me... is that people just assume we’re a part of it.”
As we noted Tuesday, there are two Chicago-area meetups planned as part of the "International Meetup Day,” an event organized by Roosh Valizadeh’s loathsome Return of Kings blog.
The Homewood meetup is slated to start in Balagio Ristorante’s parking lot at 8 p.m., and then, by 8:20 p.m., move to a second location.
“We’re a family business,” Gaulderio, Jr. said. "90 percent of my workers are women. I have a mom. I have a stepmom. I have three sisters. It's sickening."
A quick recap of the most abhorrent views espoused by Return of Kings community: Validazeh himself condones rape on private property, and a cursory look at the blog turns up a post calling feminism “institutionalized man-hating,” a post endorsing an app called TrampAdvisor, and plenty of Trump endorsements.
Galderio, Jr. hand’t heard of the men’s rights movements until Monday. That day, an unnamed woman called the restaurant to let them know that a meetup was planned for their parking lot.
“It’s hard, because we are open for business [that night],” Gaulderio, Jr. said. “We do have some functions going on.”
The local high school has a dance Saturday night, and teens will be stopping by the restaurant beforehand, he said. The restaurant will also be hosting Cancer Support’s annual pre-Super Bowl poker game that night.
He added that though it could be hard to distinguish between regular customers and patrons there because of the meetup, he would refuse service to anyone who he knew to be involved with the meetup.