Fort Smith Eats Project 3/Whatever Challenge

While back, one of our many legions of fans (ha!) nudged us about this 3/50 Project, suggested maybe we could spearhead something locally. Didn’t know much about it and haven’t sharpened our spears all year, but we checked it out and it a seems solid enough idear. We were humbled and flattered to be approached. So, sure, decided we’d do something. Then we walked off and left our blog for what, three months? We’d be convicted for that if it were a child.***

Anywho, we said we’d do something and then we didn’t. First time for everything, right?

Now we want to make amends.

We’re far from official spokespeople for this 3/50 project, but the way we understand it, the general idea is this:

• Pick 3 locally owned, independent businesses you appreciate and would hate to see go out of business.
• Vow to go out of your way to spend $50 at these local places to show your appreciation of them.
• If enough people did this, it would save the world. Or our local economy. Something like that. They give numbers and statistics you are free to look up if you need convincing this is a good thing. All we care about is saving the world. That would be way cool, with or without statistics.

They’re a little vague on the specifics of whether it’s $50 spent at each place or what. Also, we were surprised to see that apparently this is supposed to be $50 a month. Obviously, this concept was come up with before the Great Recession That Ate All Fun (And Dining-Out Budgets) came along.

We’re not really what you’d call sticklers for rules so we’re going to make up our own project.

Here’s what we’ll do:

• You pick your favorite 3 locally owned restaurants  (No offense, shops, but food’s our thang) that you’d HATE HATE HATE to see go out of business. We’re talking true Mom & Pops, not Red Lobster being run by a guy you know. We’re talking all-local dollars that don’t get sent to a corporate headquarters somewhere.
• Tell us which 3 you are picking, either here on our lonesome little blog or on our much more popular Facebook page. Or even tweet @ us. By voting, you’re vowing to go spend some money at these three places when you can, or tell others about them, something to spread the love and increase their business between now and the end of 2010. We’re not telling you how much to spend because we don’t want your spouses, parents and/or accountants coming over and hitting us with blunt objects (No “I’m sorry we had the electricity turned off honey but I PROMISED Fort Smith Eats we’d eat at Doe’s all month!”). You can only nominate three. Though of course you can spread your wealth amongst them all. And they don’t actually have to be in danger of going out of business anytime soon. Just tell us what 3 you love most.

Whichever 3 places get the most votes—we’ll give you till Halloween (that’s Oct. 31, natch) to vote—we’ll write up in our bestest ever reviews. Seriously, they’ll be golden.

We’re going to pick 3, too. So you get 6 reviews for the price of 3! With no shipping and handling! That’s like 8 years of writing for us, but we’ll actually vow to have all these posted by the end of the year. Because we are local food superheroes (yes, we were in fact told this by someone in a position of authority so it must be true) and together we will save the world!!!!!!!!!

Our brilliant local restaurants are why we got into this food-reviewing racket. We want everyone to know how much good eatin’ there really is in and around this town. But the first order of business is keeping it!

So, Citizens of Fort Smith: What places shall we save? Make your case.

***We have had a zillion good intentions on writing more over the past few months. But, apparently, “time” in the world of Fort Smith Eats works like that deepest level of slo-mo dreaming in that Inception movie, you know with the van that takes an hour to fall off the bridge? We swear we JUST posted that Geno’s pepperoni sandwich review a moment ago…