Last July I told myself I was done with Abe Conlon. But here I go again.
But what comes across strongest is the picture of Conlon as arrogant and dismissive; a belittler and a berater prone to unpredictable explosions of rage; exhibit A in the case against culinary toxicity.
Conlon had served cannabis-infused dinners with his underground supper club X-Marx before he opened Fat Rice, and I knew he loved to smoke weed, so of course I wanted to feature him in Kitchen Toke. Independent of myself, the magazine’s founder and designer Joline Rivera had the same idea, and we each pitched Conlon about featuring him in our upcoming fall issue.
One thing you can count on about Rivera is that she doesn’t take shit from anyone. And another: she’s fiercely loyal to the people who work for her. A third: she has no time for drama. She suggested that we kill the Conlon feature and move on to something else, but I was panicked that we had nothing to replace it with in time, and I convinced her to stay the course. “It’s just one day,” I argued. “You’ll shoot [photos of] him. We’ll get the recipes. I’ll write the story, and we never have to deal with him again.” I vouched for him, even after he tried to get me in trouble with the boss. I didn’t tell her about Abe’s text describing her as “kind of a mess.” I desperately wanted to make it work.
Maybe that’s why I kept my mouth shut after I introduced him to Lawlor and Rivera, and he demanded she remove her little Malteses because he didn’t want to “stomp on one of them and kill it.”
“Keep your mouth shut and get out,” I said.
