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Bit of Boston history preserved: Pair plan to buy and re-open the Red Hat

Boston Restaurant Talk reports two local bar veterans plan to get the storied Red Hat on Bowdoin Street open again.

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Comments

The term "red hat" has such a stench hanging over it now.

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…might already be copyrighted.

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I'm sorry, but the Red Hat is an institution, and one independent of politics. If the name bothers somebody because of their own snowflake-ness then it's their own problem and not the Red Hat's.

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incompetence, a reflexive *blech* at the term "red hat" is only natural. It's like that time you mistook a long string of Fireball shots for a good idea, and now even the thought of eating a Red Hots candy makes your gorge rise a little.

Not considering a name change now would be negligent from a marketing standpoint. My childhood pizza place was called Sambo's and had a racist caricature on the box: it is no more. Times change, and Trumpie symbols now have similarly gross associations most people would rather forget.

If you want to attract tourists that don't know the Red Hat's history (like the fact that the mascot is a 19th-century toff in a top hat) and aren't MAGAt-y, you might not want that malodorous whiff of criminality, death and corruption attached to your name.

Plus you really don't want to attract that MAGA crowd, even accidentally. If they disagree with the math on their check, and you point out that 2 + 2 does indeed equal 4, they might smash the place up and try to lynch the floor manager.

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After the whole Centos thing, I'm not sure where to go. Maybe it's back to Slackware.

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Conveys a sense of togetherness, and has pleasant associations of being easy to get into ;)

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it isn't The MAGA Hat.

(I hope)

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No one associates "The Red Hat" with Trump hats. Looks like he has some rent free space in that head of yours.

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trade, it's something to consider. Even accidental association with the Bumbling Orange Mass Death-Dealer is a buzzkill. The last thing anyone wants to be reminded of is America's dumbest mistake, especially at happy hour.

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I agree that you can't "fix" Sambo's, but given their prominent tophat logo and the fact that people have short memories, I think in 5 years the idea that this is somehow related to "he who cannot be mentioned" is a stretch.

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quasi-religious devotion of The Cult, it's not hard to imagine a kind of idiot canonization happening once the diet of fries, fried chicken and overcooked beef finally lays him low.

I foresee little plastic gold-tone shrines and cheap reproductions of Jon McNaughton's hilarious paintings holding places of honor in Trumpie dens and kitchens for decades, like portraits of JFK and Reagan have for others. I think we're stuck with that ugly hero-worship and its crass tokens, including Chinese-made red hats, for a long time.

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That is the only association I have with it, other than this establishment.

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A tip of the red hat to them.

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When I worked on Beacon Hill we always called it The Chapeau Rouge.

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Hopefully they clean it up a bit too. Used to love that place, haven’t been back since a roach crawled right across the bar in front of my then girlfriend now wife a few years back.

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Needs a lot of work. Red Hat was an absolute dump. Finn Mccools ended up right where it belonged...Out of biz

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