Submitted By @history-be-written 🤍🧡

This is one of the more ambitious pieces I've done for a bit, and I did it on an absurd deadline, but my trans dragon back patch is done! The project ended up taking 130 hours of working time to finish, using two strands of cotton floss for both fills and outlines. The base pattern was from my own collection and was originally from 1936.

Green-blue chiffon dress

c. 1925

maker unknown

UNT Digital Library

Dressing Gown

c. 1900

unknown maker

Chicago Historical Society

it was too much i had to make my own post

line cook here. ACCURATE

if you don't get the hate, here's what you don't understand.

it takes up to 2 hours to close down the kitchen.

The last 60-90 minutes before closing time you do almost no cooking because the restaurant doesn't have many people in it and you've already cooked most of their diners.

So if someone walks in during, like, the last hour, the cook is in the middle of an industrial deep clean of the kitchen.

(these numbers can vary quite a bit from place to place but i have worked several restaurants with these actual times and the concept remains the same)

Say the place closes at 10. If you wait til the restaurant is already closed to start all your cleaning duties, you'll be there until at least midnight.

More than that your boss knows that on an average night you can start your clean up as soon as the last rush ends and get out of there around 10:45, even 10:15 on a slow night if you get lucky. That means there are plenty of restaurants where if you do take until midnight the manager is going to come up to you at some point that week and ask you what went wrong that night, and you'd better have an answer.

So this example restaurant closes at 10 pm. The dinner rush ends around 8:30, and shortly after that the cook is going to start getting every single dish possible over to the dishwasher because the dishwasher always gets hit hard and late, and the machine runs for 2 full minutes and only holds so many dishes, so the way that works out is if you wait an extra 30 minutes to give the dishwasher all your stuff it can mean adding like 60 minutes to the end of his shift. And you're gonna KEEP finding shit to send to the dishpit right up until you leave probably.

all these little square and rectangle containers in this cold table have to be pulled out and changed over into new containers, replaced by new full ones, or in some cases filled from larger containers in the back, which can result in even more empty containers to send to the dishwasher.

while it's all pulled apart to do this, you have to clean up all the spilled food and sauce and juices and stuff from the joints and ledges and shelves and drip trays

Once you get your line changed over in this way, and fully stocked, anytime someone orders something that makes use of a bunch of that stuff, you have to restock and re-clean it some. It might already be covered in plastic. Some of it might already be stuck in the back to make room to take apart your cutting board counter to clean. To cook a dish isn't TOO much of a problem at this point, but you're really hoping for zero orders because you still have so much other cleaning to do.

Meanwhile the salad bar and appetizer section and server station and everybody are all doing the same thing. Even the bartenders are stocking olives and lemons and sending back whisks and stir spoons and shakers and empty 4quart storage containers that used to hold the back-up lemons and olives and things. Every section is dumping their must-be-cleaneds to the dishpit as fast as possible because early and fast is the only thing they can do to to help that dishpit not absolutely drown into overtime.

The poor dishwasher is always the last to clock out, soaking wet and exhausted.

Around this time you probably scrub the flat top, which has turned black from cooked on grease and is still about 500 degrees. Line cooks are divided in opinion on water-based or oil based cleaning methods for this, but they all involve scrubbing with (usually) a brick of pumice stone using every ounce of your strength while you try not to burn yourself

you scrub it from fully blackened to gleaming silver and now if somebody orders something that needs the flat top to cook, you can either fuck up your cleaning job or fake it in a couple frying pans and pass that tiny fuck you down to your dishwasher (who usually understands, especially if you help them take the garbage out or clean your own floor drain later)

If there's deep fried stuff on the menu then the fryers have to be cleaned out, which includes straining the oil out into enormous and super-heavy pots full of oil so hot that if you spill on yourself then it's probably a hospital visit and if you slip and fall face first into it it'll be the last thing you ever do.

Then you gotta scrub out the fryer. Like you gotta take the (hot) screen out and reach your arm down into the weird rounded pipes and curved areas (so hot, burn you if you brush against them hot) and scrub off whatever is down there

Depending on your kitchen you might have to do up to four of these. Then you'll have to pour the (dangerously hot) oil back in

oh, and if you didn't dry the pipes and get ALL the water out of the trap and tank?

water reacts with hot oil in a sort of mentos and coke way that can send a tidal wave of oil past the open flame of the pilot light ...HUGE dangerous mess and/or burn down the kitchen if the oil lights up.

Unless! If the oil has been used too hard and needs to be changed, it's time to carry those open topped super heavy pots full of will-kill-you-hot oil and dump them in the barrel outside by the dumpsters so you can put room temp fresh oil in the fryers. whew!

The clean up is not just some light wiping down that can be easily interrupted, is what i'm saying.

You might have to do some kind of walk-in duty (moving around 50lb cases of lettuce and 50lb bags of onions to get to the stacks of five gallon buckets full of salad dressings and sauces to move so you can reach the giant metal pots and bus tubs full of prep and get it all organized and make sure it's all labeled and i have to stop now i'm having flashbacks)

THE POINT IS

by 15 or however many minutes to close, the line cook is doing an intense deep clean and probably has the whole stove taken apart to detail.

For some industrial stoves this means lifting off large cast iron plates that weigh like 20 lbs each and are still quite hot. Whatever metal burners are on there, you gotta take off and clean, you can see here the lines that indicate the large thick cast iron rectangles that sit on top of the burners to allow heavy pots to rest on. Those five (each has one front burner hole and one back burner hole, see?) have to be lifted off and cleaned with soap and a wire brush usually, and then the underneath area also has to be cleaned because a lot of shit falls through the burner holes on a busy night.

if you didn't do it when you did the flat top you have to do the grease trap (which can be like a full five minutes and is always disgusting).. You gotta clean out all the little gas jets in each burner with a wire or something so the burners all flame evenly, and sometimes you have to remove some of the natural gas piping that connects the burners to access where you have to clean.

you gotta clean out the bottom of the oven and the wire racks, and, oh gods, you gotta take down the filter vents from the hood fans above the stove.

See all the lined parts along the top of the wall?

those are hood vents, and as they pull air up they also pull a lot of grease and they have to be taken down and cleaned, then you gotta climb up there and scrub where they go before you put them back...

And then there's the mopping and floor drains and...

Anyway, that's what the line cook is doing when you walk in fifteen minutes before closing and order something that needs to be cooked on that stove. They are doing an entire industrial cleaning of a professional kitchen.

In some restaurants maybe one or two of these jobs will be every other night or even only twice a week, but in many, possibly most kitchens, ALL of these things happen EVERY night. You don't want to leave any food mess that might attract insects or rodents for one thing, so a really good kitchen is as close to brand new as you can get it every night.

IF YOU ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO ORDER SOMETHING ANYWAY, HERE IS WHAT TO DO

open with an apology and ask the server to go ask what the cook would prefer you to order.

Any good server will already know what the cook is hoping for and what will make their line cook go into the walk in and scream. If it's significantly less than an hour to close and they say some variant of "oh anything is fine" they are either telling the lie their boss wants them to say, or they actually do not know what their line cook wants, and you can either use human connection and a conspiratorial just-between-us tone to get them to drop the customer-is-always-right act, or get them to actually go ask the cook.

It might be as specific as "the lasagna is easiest on the kitchen" or it might be a simple guideline like "nothing that requires the flat top" or "any of the sautés are easy" but a good line cook will probably have a system for if they have to make a couple of the most popular items after they start their close, so the answer is likely to include something most people like and you should be good to order that.

but for the love of all that's holy, please only do so at great need. Leave that last 30-60 minutes to the truly desperate and the crew's duties.

Finding a colorblind friendly redesign of the rainbow flag has me happy to see a pride flag for once

Dress

c. 1807-1810

DAR Museum

Dress

c. 1860-1864

American

Kent State University Museum

BIG TRANS RIGHTS UK TO DO LIST POST. PLEASE READ, DISSEMINATE, AND DO THE SHIT IN IT.

Trans Actual: We heard last week that the anti-trans lot write to Keir Starmer very regularly, some write at least once a week. And that’s all he’s hearing. He needs to hear from us. Write to him today, then put a note in your diary to write to him again next week, and the next...

Read our guide: buff.ly/4D2xGXs

@natacha.bsky.social

The best advice right now, from @janefae.bsky.social; If you're trans or non-binary, If you're a cis ally, If you oppose stripping an entire demographic of their human rights, Write; Use theyworkforyou.comcontact.no10.gov.uk Be polite, but WRITE. NOW.

Medium

Get writing!

Things you can do today to challenge the UK Government

Comedian @brainmage.bsky.social:

A bit rambly, but I think I got my point across. Cis folks! Write to your MP! It's real easy to do www.writetothem.com And important! Try to also ask specific things so you actually get a specific answer instead of a boilerplate one!

[TEXT:

Dear Fleur Anderson,

I am writing to you today to once again express concern at how trans rights are being eroded by the Labour government. I have previously written to you before about this (see case ref FA, FA &c.).

Today's letter is about the recent Supreme Court ruling which included in it a judgement about the definition of "women" under the Equality Act 2010.

This ruling is appalling. I am a cisgender man. I have trans friends and family, as I also have cis friends and family. The rhetoric whipped up around trans people is not a belief held by the vast majority of the UK population, and there is good evidence that it is pushed from extreme sectors of the American Evalgelical Christian right, who wish to use it as the thin end of the wedge to erode women's rights to contraceptive medications and abortions, as well as the rights of gay people to get married (see this piece in the Guardian, for example https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/09/us-religious-right-lgbtq-global-culture-fronts). Crucially, even were this not the thin end of a wedge, it would still be a cruel, harmful and unjustifiable attack on a minority group who are just trying to live their lives.

With regard to the ruling that trans women cannot use women's toilets, this ruling is both unenforcable, and will only result in more women, trans and cis, being attacked for not looking "sufficiently feminine". This will not protect anyone. I have a dear friend who is a cisgender woman who is over six feet tall. She has, since the "trans issue" has been pushed further into the national conversation, faced increasing holsility and fear when using toilets in public. My wife, who is also a cis woman and has previously had short hair and dressed in a gender non-conforming way, also been met with harassment when using toilets. I am not saying this to suggest that cis women's experiences are more important than trans women's - I also have many trans friends who have reported experiences of public transphobia - I am instead saying this to emphasis that, in spite of the anti-trans activists' insistance that they wish to "protect women", the results of their actions lead to exactly the opposite outcome.

All this ruling will do is empower people to harass women - both cis and trans - who are just going about their day.

The ruling is also unenforcable. Will there be an attendent checking the genitals of people using these bathrooms? If so, by what basis will they check? Will they check everyone, or only women deemed "insufficiently feminine"? If that is the case, please explain how this is anything other than a regressive, patriarchal step that will set back women's rights.

It has also been widely-reported the the Supreme Court did not consult with any transgender people in its ruling, but five dedicated anti-trans organisations were permitted to submit lengthy arguments. I find that staggering.

In summary, please directly address the following points in your reply:

1) Do you support this ruling? 2) Do you agree with Kier Starmer, whose spokesperson recently confirmed that he no longer agrees that trans women are women, and that trans women should use men's bathrooms? 3) If you do support the ruling, or agree with the Prime Minister that trans women should use men's bathrooms, please clearly state how this will be enforced, including the criteria that would deem a person insufficiently feminine, and therefore require intervention, as well as the scope of the intervention 4) If this ruling is upheld, and trans women cannot use female toilets, and feel unsafe in male toilets, where do you expect them to go when in public, given the relative infrequency of mixed-gender toilets? 5) If you do NOT support the ruling, what do you intend to do to push back against this, given your letter to me on December 15th 2023, case ref FA, where you said "I am a strong supporter of trans and LGBTQIA+ rights and I am disappointed that we still have such a long way to go. The safety, dignity, personal freedom and equal opportunity of all people is very important to me."?

I look forward to your reply.

Yours sincerely,

Guy Kelly

P.S. If you are a staffer reading, categorising, and responding to these on behalf of my MP, please think very carefully about the role you are playing, how can you can take an opportunity to stand up for and help protect a marginalised group, and do your part to be on the right side of history.

@nancymk.bsky.social‬

Want to contact your MP about the Supreme Court ruling?

@transsolidarity.bsky.social has created an MP letter template to help get you started:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/17g6X6jR2Xa6mPXY0hTib089xIdzmu5Y_2t6fVfHiDKQ/mobilebasic

if you're not either in the uk or from the uk, please feel free to just reblog. if you're bri'ish or resident here: get writing.

"But I've already written."

Girl (non-gender specific), the TERFs are writing every day. they have an uncontested field. Outweigh their bullshit. There's more of us than there are of them. Make it LOOK like that.