(Note: This blog post was originally published as "Why Do People Think Crack Cocaine Is Funny" on The Fix's website on July 9, 2015.)
In addition to being a writer and a recovery
advocate, I love food. I love to cook it and I love to eat it. So I'm
frequently perusing the Internet for recipes, local restaurant reviews, and
those ever-present lists that rank the best examples of certain categories of
foods.
A couple of weeks ago, I was directed to such a
list by an email I received from the Food Network. "America’s 10 Best French
Fries," the subject line teased. As someone who's been known to enjoy a good french fry from time to time, I clicked through to see just which fries the
Food Network thought stood above and beyond the rest.
When
the page loaded, a photo of the first of the 10 best fries was staring me in
the face, and they looked delicious. So I scrolled down a bit to see which
establishment these mouthwatering fries belonged to. What I saw was a bit of a
shock to me.
The fact that these fries were from
HopCat, a small chain of beer bars that started in
Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 2008, wasn’t a big deal to me. But what HopCat calls
their fries made me a little sick to my stomach.
"Crack Fries."
 |
| They do look addictive, don't they? |
As the Food Network piece parenthetically pointed
out, the fries are "named for how addictive they are." I figured that was the
reason as soon as I saw the name, but it didn’t lessen the impact on me at all.
With addiction being such a huge health crisis in
the United States, it boggled my mind how any responsible restaurant could even
think of naming an item on their menu
after a drug that has ravaged so many people and ripped apart so many families.
So I took to Twitter to ask the question:
Does anyone
else find the name of these fries offensive? Or is it just me? @HopCat
#AddictionIsntFunny #ImSensitive
I received a few responses from some of my
followers in the addiction/recovery community, and they were equally offended.
A little while later, I got a reply from HopCat:
When we started
we honestly didn't think about offending. We just thought it was a good name...
Hm. So at least they admitted that they weren’t
thinking. My next tweet to HopCat:
This might
be a dumb question, but how 'bout just changing the name? There's NOTHING funny
about crack or #addiction.
And their reply?
Not a dumb
question, but we have no plans to change the name. We hope we can do some good
by helping those in need
That part about helping those in need refers to
the fact that HopCat told me on Twitter that--since March of this year--their
Detroit location "has donated $1K from sales of Crack Fries to help treat drug
addiction." According to the person behind HopCat's Twitter feed, that money goes
to
Mariners Inn, a Detroit shelter and
treatment center for the homeless.
While I applaud HopCat's donations to help people
suffering from addiction, I find the whole situation to be kind of
hypocritical. The restaurant is basically exploiting addiction by naming their
popular french fries after a highly addictive drug. Then they're taking a
portion of their profits and donating it to an addiction treatment center. It’s
almost like HopCat is saying, "We screwed up. We'd better fix this."
HopCat's "Crack Fries" got me thinking about crack
in general, and how it's become a joking matter in our society. If something
tastes really good, we say it's "like crack." If someone does something stupid
or desperate, we call the person a "crackhead."
Hell, President Obama even made a
crack-related joke last year. While talking about how much he'd miss the tasty pies
created by his retiring White House pastry chef, the president said, "I don't
know what he does--whether he puts crack in them, or…"
So why is crack funny?
The simple answer is that it's not. There's
nothing funny about addiction, or any drugs that cause people pain and
suffering while destroying their lives and the lives of those around them. Why
crack has been singled out as the go-to drug when trying to be witty is completely
lost on me.
It’s almost like "crack," which used to be a word
with an extremely negative and unpleasant connotation, has become a euphemism
for something that's highly addictive. And that’s completely messed up.
As I told the HopCat folks on Twitter, "Why didn't
you just call them 'Heroin Fries'? Or 'Cocaine Fries'? Or 'Meth Fries'? Those
names are no different." Ah, but apparently those names are different. Why? Because people wouldn't think those names are funny.
Note: In the interest of full disclosure, I should
point out that HopCat's menu describes their fries as "Beer battered fries with
a special cracked black pepper house seasoning." So maybe the "Crack" in "Crack
Fries" has something to do with cracked black pepper, too. But I think we all
know what they're really trying to do
with that name.
I’m curious what others
think about HopCat’s "Crack Fries," and about why we oftentimes just shrug it
off when people reference crack cocaine when trying to be humorous. As the
father of a son in long-term recovery, am I just being overly sensitive? Or do
others feel the same way?
In a statement on their website, HopCat says: "We chose the name more than 11 years ago as a reference to the addictive quality of the fries and their cracked pepper seasoning, without consideration for those the drug negatively affected. We were wrong."
