Talk:Italian Beef/Archive

Replying .... (my responses, line by line, are indented and placed behind these little signs : >

Makes it a little easier to keep straight who said what

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Whoever wrote this article was a total asshat. 6/29/2005 -(Edit by 65.207.129.252)

 > Fuck you too, deep and hard.

I am going to do a re-write shortly. First off I often see cheese on Italian Beefs as an option.

 > Comment: Live in Chicago, have gotten well into adulthood without once
 > ever hearing somebody call one of those "an Italian beef". It's a mistake
 > that brands the person making it a poseur; a non-local trying to pass
 > himself off as a local.

 > It is called "an Italian beef sandwich". Never "a beef", or "an italian
 > beef" or "the Italian beef" (darned pretentious, that one, for something
 > that never rises above the level of comfort food; one almost pictures
 > a maitre d dropping by with a bottle of French's)

In addition to lots of small corner dog and beef places that serve it, most of the big chains like Portillos and Rosati's in the Chicago area also serve cheese on their beefs. Who is disputing that this is common?

 > Answer: I am. Local boy, grew up on the real thing, which is not to
 > be confused with what you're going to get at a chain restaurant.

 > You really thought that you were getting traditional home cooking
 > at the chains? Well, why not, I suppose. If you idiots think that
 > ad copy is an authoritative source of information, then this really
 > isn't any more ridiculous. It's equally ridiculous.

Second ,the article shouldn't be about what an Italian Beef isn't, but what an Italian Beef is.

 >  The article will be about what the most persistant people decide it's
 >  going to be about, which is the whole problem with Wikipedia. But if
 >  one's goal is to inform, instead of to stake out turf, then correcting
 >  misconceptions is a part of the job.

Adding in edit: http://www.rosatispizza.com/store_menu.asp?State=IL&StoreID=1602 There is the Italian Beef with cheese listed as a cheef on Rosati's Menu, http://www.portillos.com/portillos/menu/items.asp?SID=35&MID=23 is the beef and cheddar croissant, a beef on a crossant as opposed to french bread with cheddar.

 > which ought to tip you off, right there, that you're seeing something
 > a corporate chef made up, and not the traditional item. Croissants?
 > Have you ever even been to Chicago?

 > *GROAN* I'm guessing that if you ever get to Rome, you'll
 >  try to go look up where the Olive Garden got some of its recipes,
 >  right? I know you guys are a few slices short of a loaf, but
 >  how hard can it be for you to grasp that a commercial product
 >  is not the same thing as a traditional dish?

 >  Jesus Christ. What's next? Going to Taco Bell to find out how
 >  Mexican food is REALLY made? Please tell me that this is a put on.

A lot of the mom and pop stops don't have menu's, but suffice it to say Italian Beefs with cheese are common and far from unheard of.

 > Is so - is not. You're full of crap, and anybody who lives here can see
 > that with his own two eyes, in a manner which will leave little room for
 > doubt. But this was the problem with Usenet in its heyday, and as
 > Wikipedia seems to be a concentrated form of Usenet, not surprisingly,
 > it's a problem on this site as well - there is no remedy for the damage
 > done to the process of discussion by the pathological bullshit artists
 > who drop by. In the end, kids, you either turn off the fucking computer,
 > and check these claims out in the real world, not to be confused with
 > the Web, or the whole thing becomes one giant exercise in cooperative
 > solipsism, with the group defining its own reality into existence,
 > and the members citing each other's claims as evidence in support of
 > their own. But getting out of the house and seeing the truth for oneself
 > would be "original research", wouldn't it?

 > Enjoy your 15 minutes of semi-anonymous fame, chilluns. People
 > eventually figured out that Usenet had become a huge pile of steaming,
 > politically driven crap, and sooner or later, they'll figure out the
 > same holds true for Wikipedia, only more so.

               - the noneditor

-(Edit by 67.167.117.10)

Yeah, where are you getting you information?

"topped with the vegetables it was cooked with."

I've never seen a place top an italian beef with vegtables it was cooked with. BTW, I've lived in Evanston my whole life. Reub2000 3 July 2005 13:06 (UTC)

    - Wonder how many times I have to write this, you incredible nitwit?
      I'm a local. Firsthand experience.

      As the Italian Beef sandwich is poor people's food from the South
      Side, yes, I could easily believe that somebody from the North Shore,
      aka "rich anglo saxon central", would never have seen the real thing.
      Nevertheless, the authentic item is what it is, and you're not going
      to get it from a fast food franchise.

When can I remove the vfd template? Reub2000

Nobody has said anything, so I'm removing it.Reub2000 22:00, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

____________________________________________________________________

Note: I saw a remark that this article needed to be "cleaned up", which did not make an appearance until after a wealth of inaccurate information had been corrected. (Eg. the claim that the meat in an italian beef sandwich was roasted, as opposed to simmered; that it was covered with cheese, something that is virtually unheard-of in Chicago; etc). However, I see no specific issues raised in this extremely vague complaint, which leads me to suspect that it is nothing more than the product of a previous editor's bruised ego. Learning that all that one has to do to get such a message to appear on an article is stick the word "cleanup" between a pair of curly brackets only serves to firm my suspicions.

In any case, I don't have time to go hunting through the manual in an attempt to find the specific reference that would allow me to guess what the unspecified complaintant's unspecified concern might be.

- the noneditor

-(Edit by 65.182.172.95)

Cleanup

I've tried to resolve some of the internal contradictions of the article by reference to some outside sources. --Dcfleck June 30, 2005 02:52 (UTC)

Yeah, Fleck, "outside sources" being commercial outlets intent on moving a product. This takes "don't believe everything you read" to a new level; you people are persisting in seriously arguing that ad copy should be treated as an authoritative reference.

If you'll buy that one, I know of a few misunderstood souls on the Jackson Street Bridge who'd love to sell you some gold chains for a good price. Hey, they might even throw in the bridge if you haggle a little. - the noneditor

Reality, while it lasts

That's the problem with the "cite your references", Fleck, and part of what I was getting at with my complaints about solipsism - it's as if the world outside the Web doesn't exist, in these arguments. The only "references" accepted are Web pages, raising the question "what keeps somebody from writing whatever the hell he wants on a web page, whether it's true or false?" The Flat Earth Society has a webpage. Want to see them cited in a Geography article?

The recipes, like I said, were imaginative; I won't go so far as to say that they're good. But what you'll get if you follow them will bear little resemblence to the very simple item seen in the real world.

Walk into the kind of semi-fast food establishments that sell Italian beef sandwiches, and notice how cramped it gets in one of those places. Yes, this is one of those times when you turn off the fucking computer.

Where would one set up a "dutch oven"? A big, bulky piece of kitchen equipment, that's going to have to sit on a counter, within easy reach of an outlet, disrupting the flow of traffic on some very limited, and frequently greasy counter space. Even more so, because of the need to keep this piece of domestic equipment away from the radiated heat from the large cooking surfaces to be found throughout the space, on a surface a dutch oven would skate across like a hockey puck. Those counters are made of metal, for crying out loud. Just imagine how slick they get with a little splattering.

The possibilities for disaster are beyond count. Now, look over the counter, and take a look. Notice how the cooking equipment is, in many cases, built right into the working surface; it is not free-standing, like our ill-fated hypothetical dutch oven. Now you know why, though this really should be obvious.

As for home cooking ... these recipes are a little elaborate. Meaning that we're left with recipes that quite obviously couldn't be in general use, because one can't find a large pool of users whose needs they would meet. Who would these recipes suit? Italian beef sandwiches are not going to show up in fine dining establishments. Nor will they appear on holiday tables, very often, so we're not even looking at something that very many home cooks are likely to do as special occasion cookery.

The recipes are dressed up fabrications of the kind seen on many cookery pages, and in the writings of many second-rate cookbook authors, who hope to impress through complexity, bluffing the naive reader who will mistake the author's fumbling through a lengthy set of ingredients for a sign of deep and profound expertise. "Look at this elaborate dish these people in this place you've never been eat; isn't that cool" wows the rubes, sells cookbooks, and gets people to come back to websites. "No, the real thing is kind of plain and simple", doesn't.

This reality is going to distort the portrayal of reality seen, when it comes to things like this, and will continue to do so as long as academics continue to decide that documenting aspects of popular culture like this is beneath them, and the task is left up to the workings of the market. The search for profit, or for popularity, and a respect for the value of the truth, seldom mix - the noneditor - (Edit by 65.182.172.84)

• References don't have to come from the web, that just happens to be the easiest place to find them. But they ought to come from some verifiable source. By all means, if you can point to a published recipe somewhere that supports your contentions, that would be great. In the absence of such a source, we're left with (a) a bunch of recipes that say one thing, or (b) an anonymous, hostile editor who provides no backup for his contentions and insults anyone who disagrees. Surely, if you've got 'reality' on your side, you can point to some outside source that backs you up. --Dcfleck July 3, 2005 14:49 (UTC)

     Fleck - asked and answered.

     This non-point of your has already been addressed, and now you're just
     going for persistence. We're talking about a plain and simple item,
     one so simple that there's no point in even giving a recipe for it,
     traditionally found in the lower middle class and working class kitchens
     of families from the South Side. Where would I find a reference that
     deals with such a subject? 

     As for my "insulting anybody who disagrees with me", note the remarks about
     "asshats" which began this flamewar, notice who made them, and now notice
     who's whining about what followed. If you don't want to get in a fight,
     then don't pick one.

I'm the one who wrote the inital statement about the Beefs with cheese, I am not the one who called the original editor a name, but I am the one who replied to it and made the changes. First off Italian Beefs with cheese are common. I am from Chicago (presently residing in the Western Suburbs) and I have seen Italian Beefs with cheese on them many times. Do all places serve it? No. Do some, absolutely. Unfortunately most mom and pop Dog and Beef type stops don't have their own websites, hence my using chains as a reference since they do have menu's online. I'm using an actual source to show that in fact, what I am saying is correct and that places have cheese on Italian Beefs, just because you either don't like it or haven't encountered it doesn't mean that variants of the Italian Beef with cheese do not exist. As far as complaining that people are acting like kids goes, statements like "It's a mistake that brands the person making it a poseur; a non-local trying to pass himself off as a local" to other native Chicagoans certainly shows your maturity.

I'm guessing that you're the one who censored the comment page. Strange

    > how nobody took exception to you actually doing what I was wrongly
    > accused of.

    > The line is a good one, and I wish I had coined it myself - "On the
    > Internet, nobody knows that you're a dog". Anybody can claim to be
    > anything he wants, and it can be difficult to prove him wrong, until
    > he slips up and does something like anouncing his bedtime when the
    > city he claims to be a resident of is still in early afternoon.

    > The fact of the matter is that people do bullshit on the Net, and
    > doing so frequently and often without shame, and if you have a problem
    > with me calling somebody on it when he slips up and lets the truth show,
    > you're in no position to be giving me lectures about maturity, son.
    > I'm supposed to believe that everybody who posts here is a "native
    > Chicagoan", despite the objective reality that their profiles, when
    > they've specified hometowns, have tended to say otherwise? I notice
    > that somebody deleted the comments by "AlabamaBoy"; would that be you?
    > The name didn't exactly fit into the spin you wanted to put on events,
    > did it?

    > So, I'm supposed to just assume this, ignoring all evidence to the
    > contrary .... why? Because some semi-anonymous person who I've never
    > met thinks that somebody might have said that, and "mature" people
    > never doubt what they're told? Got news for you, kid. The word for
    > that is "credulous" or "gullible", which, not so coincidentally, is
    > also the word for somebody who takes ad copy at face value as if it
    > were the product of scholarly publication, instead of what it is -
    > the product of somebody who will say anything that he can get away
    > with, just to get you to buy a product.::::::

As far as tjhe article being about what an Italian Beef is and what it isn't goes, I've proven variants of the Italian Beef exist as stated in the article,

You've done nothing of the sort. You've found a few chains selling a

commercial product, and on this basis tried to claim that what you're describing is food traditional in Chicago; this, to return to an earlier analogy, is like going to Taco Bell to learn about authentic Mexican home cooking. It's a real sign that you're in desperate need of a clue. ::::::

saying that they don't exist or are uncommon is a misconception that needs to be corrected. As far as the recipe's go, someone obviously has made Italian Beefs using those recipes, just because it's not the recipe you are used to seeing doesn't mean its not an Italian Beef. In closing variations of the Italian Beef exist, I have proven this with references, accept it. ::User:MysteriousMystery 11:53 7,3, 2005.

       In summary, all that you've established is that you're a jackass.

IB?

I agree with Reub2000 that the person who wrote this is a fool. I have lived in Chicago my entire life, and not once have I ever heard anyone call a beef sandwich an "IB". I changed it before, and they changed it back. -(Edit by 69.47.22.195)

I've seen a few places have listed Italian Beefs as IBs (with a short description of what it is to the right of the bold IB) on their takeout menu's.

You have? Name the restaurants and where they're located.

      (Rolls eyes) You people are a trip. First you bitch because I'm not
       compromising with you enough. Now, you come across something that
       one of you wrote that I didn't bother to correct, and you want to
       bitch about that, too. This is one reason why I don't spend a lot
       of time worrying about what will make you happy. The one and only
       thing that does that is you getting to complain, and that's a given.
       You're going to bitch no matter what anybody does. 

       No, I've never seen or heard of it being called "an Italian Beef" or
       a "beef" anywhere outside of Wikipedia and a few fast food places. But,
       given the fact that until recently we were fighting over whether or
       not we should keep the fantasy version involving "beef roasted with
       Italian spices", whatever those would be, this semed like a minor point.
       (As I pointed out in comments since deleted (in what I take to be the
       start of a revert war on this discussion page), with the exception of
       pepper, spices almost completely dropped out of main course cookery
       in most of Italy some centuries back; almost anybody even slightly
       familiar with Italian cookery knows this).

       I'm not being paid to butt heads with you twits. If I don't want to
       bother with something, no explanation for that fact is owed.

sigh

If it's not on a restaurant menu, it doesn't exist? Having read the comments from somebody who thought that claiming lifelong residence in Evanston, of all places, established him as an authority on working class food, I guess I can understand why you might thing that.

Hard as it may be for some of you to understand, poor people tend to do this thing called "cooking their own food", because going out to eat costs a lot of money by their standards, even at relatively cheap places. So, where would you suggest that I look for "documentation" of what working class people did in their own kitchens?

As for your own sources, I repeat astonishment at what some of you consider to be authoritative sources. A traditional Chicago specialty specifically' calls for Vienna Beef products, and has since the 1930s. "How do you know that?", I ask. "The Vienna Beef people said so, in their advertising".

God help us all. You can't really be that stupid, can you? Do you think maybe the Vienna Beef people would have a slight vested interest in getting the suckers to fall for that one? But of course we already had somebody claiming to be a Chicagoan who carelessly announced that his bedtime was coming up, forgetting that the archive would record the time of his remarks - about 3 in the afternoon, Chicago time.

Stranger and stranger. Interesting to notice how much of the earlier comments have been cut, including that rather embarassing slip up by that alleged local. Afraid to let people see the truth?

Did I ever claim to be an authority on Italian Beef? Also, last time I checked, Chicago is walking distance from my house, so what's wrong with Evanston? Reub2000 02:44, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

    One could write an entire article about that Reub, but your childish
    attempt to play the persecution card on behalf of the residents of
    an affluent northern suburb is a cheap attempt to sidestep the
    point. It may be a short walk from Evanston to Rogers Park;
    how long a walk is it from there to the South Side?

    "Them's my people"; being from Evanston marks you as a "rich white
     boy off the lake", to steal a line from "Risky Business". The
    notion that you're going to be familiar with the homecooked
    specialties of a working class population in a location far
    enough from your affluent home for the shift in accent to be
    noticable, is a bit of a stretch.

    Would you like to drop by Englewood, and tell some of the locals
    down there that they don't know how to rap right? I mean, being
    from an upper middle class suburb located next to THE OPPOSITE
    SIDE OF THE CITY makes you an expert on South Side culture, so
    why not? Go for it. Just write me into your will first, OK? I
    got a few things that I want to pick up next week.

    In remarks which have since vanished (revert wars are a two way street,
    Reub), somebody wanted to know where I was getting access to a computer
    "if I was so poor", right after he misspelled "persecuted" and tried
    to pretend that he hadn't posted that remark asking "what's wrong
    with Evanston". Somebody's ignorance is staggering. There is upward
    economic mobility in this society, you snobby waspish fuck, and poor
    doesn't mean stupid, though rich sure seems to. No thanks to our
    arrogant, overbearing shitheaded neighbors to the North, who make
    Malcolm X sound almost reasonable just by being the way they are,
    a good number of us do rise out of poverty, and some of us end up
    with graduate degrees and professional jobs. Where we come from is
    always part of who we are, but it does not define us.

Despite Reub's considerable ignorance to the contrary

Authenticity is not "a matter of opinion"; it is a matter of history. Some items have been made far longer than living memory stretches back; what we're seeing at Rosatti's (sp?) is a fast food item that showed up very recently, borrowing the name of a much older (and known) dish, which is then sold to people who've never seen the traditional item. To say that the new item is "inauthentic" is not to be opinionated; at most, it is to be undiplomatic with Reub, who I'm picturing to be the kind of 18 year old who down deep imagines that the world began when he showed up in it, and that all that's been said about what happened before he came along is just a collection of stories.

Were we to take our little spoiled brat back 20 years, however, he'd quickly find that the commercial item he's trying to pass off as being "equally authentic" did not, in fact, exist yet. What we're seeing on that menu is, in fact, little more than a slightly reworked version of something we'd see at Quiznos. How very intriguing, I might add, that none of his little friends have noticed yet that if you take a look at the items being described on the pages presented in support of this alleged variant, that the items presented not only bear a clear resemblence to other things better known to some of our newer residents (eg. a Philadelphia Cheese steak), >but that they bear little resemblence to each other<.

That's part of what lies at the core of the unfashionably non-postmodern concept of "authenticity", Reub - the fact that you didn't just make it up. What you're seeing on that menus is something that somebody just made up, in some cases so recently that the items are largely unheard of even today, and qualify as early 21st century innovations. To refer to something that Curt Cobain couldn't possibly have eaten in his lifetime as being "traditional" is a little whacky. But then, so are you, Reub.

Regarding authenticity of Italian Beef, and the NPOV policy

Read over Wikipedia:Neutral point of view. Also look at Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/Examples. Italian Beef surved at certain places being of questinable authenticity is an oppinion not fact. Also remember that wikipedia articles do not belong to you, even if you wrote the whole thing. On the editing pages it reads: "If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly and redistributed at will, do not submit it." That means that if you did not want me editing the sentance on the authenticity of Italian Beefs, you shouldn't have submitted it.

Yeah, that one cuts both ways, doesn't it Ruby? Oh, wait, I forgot - just because you can dish it out, that doesn't mean that you have to take it. My bad. I forgot about the North Shore credo. "Everybody's equal, but we're a little more equal, so mind your place, boy". Yeah? Mind this. Oh, and love your spelling. "Opinion" has one p, "questionable" has an o, "sentence" has no "a" ... and you want to be an editor. ::

I think that's remarkable. You're an adorable little cracker, aren't you? ::

Oh, I missed one! "Served" does not have a "u" in it. Reub, have I been overestimating your age, or are you one of those north shore brats who felt that he was too rich to have to stay awake in school? Because the level of literacy I'm seeing out of you is looking more and more like what I'd expect out of a high school freshman who was failing English. English, Reub. My God, the class that even the jocks could pass. You're quite the intellectual presence, aren't you? ::

Please reply to this with a mature reply, and stay on topic. This about Wikipedia's NPOV policy, not where we are from, so stay on topic. Reub2000 02:21, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

Reub, sometimes "Go fuck yourself" IS a mature response, because reason is clearly wasted on the asshole one is responding to, and he doesn't deserve any better. So, Reub, go fuck yourself.::

Your point has been responded to logically, and all that you can manage to do in response is to cover your ears, and yell "NO! NO! NO! Is not!" Accept it and come to terms with it, punk - first hand experience does count, and some of us know a hell of a lot more about the real world than you do now, and probably ever will, given your invinciably ignorant attitudes. ::

Taking a look at past version of your page, I can see that I wasn't mistaken in my estimate of your intellect, Reub. The subjects you've written on - cartoons and videogames. Very impressive. By the way, I'm not the one who initiated the revert war on this page, but if you think that I'm just going to turn the other cheek on this one, you've got another thing coming. By choosing to go there, you gave me the right to go there with you; your whining about my refusal to play along with your double standards doesn't change that fact. ::

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More crap from Reub, as our teen terror tries to play lawyer. Ruby, no matter how yoy try to argue your way around this one through bizarre misinterpretations of the policy, the rules do not give you the right to demand that others not do unto you, as you've felt free to do unto them, and if Wikipedia suggests otherwise, I'll give serious consideration to the possibility of filing a civil rights action against said company. At the very least, I'll spread the bad word, and it isn't going to do much for this site's credibility. ::

Speaking, though, as the first one who got flamed in this exchange ("total asshat", remember?), I'm fascinated by your belief that it's a violation of Wikipedia policy if I insult you or one of your widdle friends, but not one if you or one of your playmates insults me. Now, why would that be. Could it be because I'm not as white as you? Hmmm .... could be, massa! ::

I'm not the one who did this, and probably shouldn't have called you an asshat. Either way, I did not get involed in this flamewar until after that. I am my own person, don't get mad at me over the actions of others. Also, how do you or I know that they where white if we have never ever seen their faces?