Delirium Trouble
Newly elected TUSD board member gets kicked out of downtown bar
Following a recent visit to downtown’s Highwire Lounge, newly elected Tucson Unified School District board member Rachael Sedgwick slammed the downtown craft cocktail bar on her Facebook page.
“I’m leaving Highwire… I won’t pay $12 for a 6 oz beer!” she wrote. on Dec. 22. “This place…hmmm…?!? Ew…”
What Sedgwick didn’t mention was that she was leaving because she’d been 86’ed from the bar after refusing to pay for a pricey drink.
Sedgwick was out drinking with some friends and decided to order a glass of Delirium Noel, an exclusive Christmas brew imported from Belgium. How exclusive is it? Highwire bar manager John Hardin tells The Skinny that just one keg ended up in Arizona this year and Highwire was the only bar that had it. Most kegs cost him between $60 and $80; Delirium Noel cost $265.
Because of the high price, Hardin charges a premium: In this case, $12 for a snifter glass rather than a full pint.
When Sedgwick saw the size of the pour, she decided it wasn’t worth $12.
Sedgwick said the bartender “kind of had an attitude and said, ‘That’s a $12 beer,’ and I said, ‘That’s fine,’ and it turned out it was only a six-ounce pour, so I said, ‘No I don’t want that,’ and she said, ‘You have to pay for it,’ and I said, ‘I’m not going to drink it but I’ll order this other beer instead.'”
The bartender balked at pouring her a different beer and told her she had to leave the bar if she wouldn’t pay up.
“I loudly said, I’m not going to pay for it,” Sedgwick recalled. “At that point, I was feeling like it was very unclear what I had ordered. The bartender didn’t clarify. And she said I had to leave. And I think I said, ‘We’re leaving,’ but nobody else wanted to leave, so I said, ‘We’re not leaving, but I’m not paying for that, I’m not going to drink it.'”
Sedgwick asked to speak with the manager, so Hardin came over to talk with her. He recalled that Sedgwick “came up to me and said, ‘I hear you’re the one who said I have to leave, I’m not going to pay $12 for that beer,’ and then I told her, ‘If you’re not going to pay for the beer, I’m going to have to ask you to leave. It’s policy and you didn’t pay for the beer.’ She got very irate and started screaming, ‘I just got elected to the school board. Do you know who I am?’ At that point, I told her, ‘You need to leave.'”
Sedgwick said she mentioned her elected post because she wanted the Highwire manager to be aware that she had a significant Facebook following who would hear about the way she was treated in the bar.
“He said, ‘I don’t care.’ And I said, “Well, I just got elected so I have a number of followers,'” she said.
Sedgwick’s status did not impress Hardin, who continued to tell her to leave and had to start calling the police before she finally agreed to go.
Sedgwick said she has since reached out to Highwire’s owner and patched things up.
“I got in touch with the bar owner and we both agreed it’s not really a big deal and next time I’m there, I should give him a call and we’ll have a drink, because I don’t imagine he wants the bar’s reputation to get besmirched in any way and I’m perfectly happy to let it go,” she said.
Chew on This
Lend a helping hand for Southern Arizona’s hungry
The Catalina United Methodist Church, Temple Emanu-El and the Muslim Community Center of Tucson have teamed up to fill a whole bunch of food boxes for hungry folks.
Last year, the three congregations worked together to package 40,000 meals, and this year’s goal is 50,000 meals to be distributed across the region.
If you’d like to help out, you can volunteer to put together 25,000 boxes of rice and beans and 25,000 boxes of pasta/tomato/basil meals, which will be distributed to the Salvation Army Hospitality House, Casa Maria, International Rescue Committee, Tucson Metropolitan Ministries, Primavera Women and Children Shelter, Santa Clara UMC, Menlo Park UMC, El Mesias UMC, Kino Border Initiative, Southside Presbyterian Church and Campus Pantry.
The packathon is from noon to 3 p.m. on Sunday, Jan. 8, at the Muslim Community Center, 5100 N. Kevy Place.
For details on how to volunteer, call Catalina United Methodist Church at 327-4296.
Celebrate Local Women!
Why not nominate someone you know for a Women of Influence award?
Every year, the Weekly‘s sister paper, Inside Tucson Business, celebrates the dynamic women who make our community a better place with its Women of Influence awards.
There’s still time to nominate someone you know for in one of the 18 categories, which include administrative champion, advertising/public relations champion, financial/banking champion, licensed professional champion and minority business owner.
Send in your nomination before 4 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 13 by visiting insidetucsonbusiness.com/events.
Winners will be announced at a grand banquet at Casino del Sol on March 1, 2017, and recognized in a future edition of Inside Tucson Business.
Zona Politics with Jim Nintzel airs at 5 p.m. Sundays on community radio KXCI, 91.3 FM. You can also hear the show at zonapolitics.com.
This article appears in Jan 5-11, 2017.
The words “Do you know who I am?” Should be totally stricken from any elected officials vocabulary.
I know who you are. You were the snob that was elected in error. TUSD sinks further into oblivion as none of them are there for the children. Followers stop following her.
Wow. All that over $12?
Admittedly, I probably wouldn’t have been all too pleased if I had received a 6 oz beer for $12 either; but the difference between her and I is that I would’ve chalked it up as an inexpensive lesson well learned. I also wouldn’t have used the tired “Do you know who I am?” line (although since I’m not an elected “official” that probably makes me a nobody, especially in a snobby woman such as herself’s mind) and I would have either left the establishment after cherishing that beer for what it was worth or I would have stayed and ordered another beverage where I received a better bang for my buck.
Different strokes for different folks, eh?
$4000 in pours for a $265 keg.
$12 for a 6 oz beer is robbery and if not plainly disclosed would and should draw ire.
TUSD deserves her. Thanks a bunch voters. Do you ever get it right?
This woman has the IQ of a carrot. Give her a Bud Light, which sounds like it’s more up her ally.
Looking up the price of the beer in question I found that it sells for $308.85 to the public for a quarter keg, not a half keg. Makes the $12 pour worth $1900 minus any spillage as you never get the whole number of pours. Not too far from normal markup on a keg.
Just what TUSD needs…another egomaniac, imbecile board member.
It can only get worse from here on out….
This entire matter speaks more about her privileged attitude than that of the bar, it’s staff, or the price of anything.
How is she going to view parents at a Board meeting? Instead of seeing them as her employers, I have no doubt she will look upon them as unelected problems she will need to deal with.
Leadership in action?
Kenneth Groves – why in the world would they be paying retail for what you assert is a quarter keg, not a half barrel?
15cents a glass. And if they are pouring everything else at 12oz it should be clearly denoted that it was a puny 6oz for this ripoff.
Amazing that not a single commenter questions whether this story about Sedgwick should have been reported at all by Nintzel, or whether one source who states, “She got very irate and started screaming, ‘I just got elected to the school board. Do you know who I am?'” was in fact accurately reporting the incident. Were there other people in the bar? Were any of them consulted by Nintzel?
Ever hear anything in journalism school, Nintzel (if you ever attended) about the inadvisability of consulting only one source or constructing stories based on templates like “He (bartender) said” / “She (elected official) said”?
The PCDP’s affiliates attempts to discredit and undermine Sedgwick begin. What a great town Tucson is. There will be more good times in store for kids in TUSD schools, no doubt, with Foster and Grijalva’s mean girl network already hard at work doing their nasty business.
TW: Nintzel on local politics, Safier on education. What a crock of crap.
I’ve met Ms. Sedgwick on many occasions, this story doesn’t match her personality at all. Even if she did protest in this manner it would not change my opinion that Ms. Sedgwick will do well for TUSD. I also know the Tucson Weekly well, they are nothing but a dirty rag, a very pore excuses for journalism.
TW is owned by the Grijalvas, they control it, so it is of no surprise that they would try to smear Ms. Sedgwick in this manner. I too was a victim of the Weekly, they wrote a nasty story about me and released personal information retrieved from TUSD without investigating. Well Tucson Weekly I now have the evidence that what you retrieved from TUSD was completely false, written by a man that committed criminal fraud , of which TUSD covered up. Want to do a real story , do that one and leave Ms. Sedgwick alone, or maybe we should both sue you slander.
Is this true Mr Nintzel? Is this a fake news story that Hillary warned us about?
The dispute doesn’t tell you much. But her subsequent misbehavior tells you everything you need to know.
At the school board meeting just after her election was won, she spent her call to the audience time getting on already seated school board members for not accepting her friend request. She was concerned she had been blocked and didn’t appreciate that. Now this? Honey, your facebook friends list shouldn’t be how you measure your worth.
Ms. Steele:
Sedgwick’s point in the call to the audience at that meeting was that public officials like Kristel Foster should not be blocking some citizens and not others from online discussions relating to the public business of the district. It was a valid point. If you’re incapable of understanding these issues, perhaps you should not be commenting about public officials and how they conduct themselves and making recommendations about how they should “measure their worth”?
It remains to be seen how Sedgwick will conduct herself in office, but based on Foster and Grijalva’s conduct in office for the past four years, I’d say Sedgwick has the potential to be worth 10 Adelita Grijalvas and a good 30 or 40 Kristel Fosters.
It’s interesting the way Nintzel fans are all quick to pile on negative commentary based on very slim evidence of misbehavior. As far as I can tell, Sedgwick’s worst faults to date have been:
1) breaking up a disastrous 3 person Board majority that was running a public district serving 40-something thousand students into the ground.
2) calling a spade a spade — i.e. noting that some of Grijalva and Sanchez’s recent conduct has been ignorant of TUSD policy and proper public institution process.
Not faults, in my book, though the language used in the latter instance was perhaps insufficiently tactful. As for this gossip about a bar incident — not worth discussing, and certainly not worth drawing any conclusions from — except perhaps that Foster and Grijalva and their allies are up to their usual standards of behavior, which are depressingly low, even for this hick town.
When I first met the owner, he was incredibly kind to me and I have herd he is like that with everybody. Not a bit of entitlement in him. Rachael Sedgwick looks like a entitled drunk.
My question is did the business state up front that it was only a 6oz beer?
Judging a newly elected official based on one journalist’s account of one (fairly minor) incident after interviewing one bartender does not make sense. Rachael has already shown in many ways that she cares much about students and parents. Let us wait and see how she performs on the board. I think this year in TUSD will be different in a way that most people will like.
So she’s “perfectly happy to let it go?” So she thinks she was in the right to act like an ass hat? Hmmmm . . . glad she’s not in charge of MY kid’s school.
St. Mark’s United Methodist Church is part of the food packing on Sunday, too.
Might I suggest that anyone who does not check potential outgoing funds without checking the price is not qualified to be an elected official in charge of budgetary decisions.
“Elise Collins Shields”:
Might I suggest that you attend some TUSD Board meetings and contemplate how shockingly underqualified, unprofessional, and low performing the two “chicks” who have been running the show in TUSD for the last four years are?
FYI, the appropriate forum for determining whether an elected official is qualified to be in charge of budgetary decisions is the Board room, not the bar. The quality of these women’s decisions about the application of public funds for four years has been unbelievably low.
Looking for decisions to criticize? Try awarding an underqualified, malfeasant liar the highest administrative compensation in the state of Arizona. Or paying him a thousand dollars a day not to take 40 vacation days every year. Or allowing him to hoard money in district bank accounts that should be paid out in teacher bonuses while he gives $10K annual bonuses to overpaid central administrators in his “cabinet.”
Wake up and pay attention to what’s actually going on in local public governance, not what’s going on in Nintzel’s bottom-feeding bar gossip worthless column.
This belongs in the “Police Dispatch” section; what a bunch of silliness all around. Anyone who would seek the experience of consuming a “craft” beer because of its ostensible exclusivity deserves what they get. Any bar owner who would sell it without informing the customer of the unusual premium price in advance deserves what they get too.
The only puzzling aspect of this story is why Jim Nintzel thought it was newsworthy, which it could only have been if Ms. Sedgwick were conducting public business at the time of the incident.
She has 222 followers on Facebook. I don’t think her rant would hurt this bar or any other bar. To tell you the truth I don’t care who you are and really no one else would be to impressed that you are on the TUSD Board. If you want to live big and act like you are someone pay what you ask for. In fact, why did you ask for this type of beer if you weren’t willing to pay the price. Stick with draft beer beer like Bud or Coors if you want cheap beer.
Mister “is this a gossip column” and Mark Stageman, did you miss the part where sedgewick said that she mentioned her position so that the manager would know she had a large facebook following? Clearly both parties involved were interviewed.
The point is that the testimony of one independent witness to Ms. Sedgwick’s behavior (other than Sedgwick herself) is insufficient to establish exactly what happened — or the appropriateness of her tone and words in the exchange. Having some familiarity with her demenanor and goals as they appeared in various public forums before the election, I find it unlikely that she “screamed” during the exchange. I also find it unlikely that her point, if she did make reference to her elected position, was that she was a “big shot” deserving of universal deference, which some commenters in this stream seem to assume.
In any case, interviewing additional witnesses would be necessary to establish exactly what happened, and that was not done. If Nintzel were concerned about fairness, he would be more cautious. He gives the impression here that he is about as concerned about fairness as Safier was in reporting about the IEC “TUSD Kids First” before the election, i.e. not concerned in the least. The intent in both cases seems to be disparagement and mudslinging, not unbiased and cautious reporting of issues of real import in understanding local governance.
This form of “reporting” is beneath contempt.
Thanks, Nintz, for the Throwback Thursday Skinny! This one brings back great memories of The Skinny at its finest.
Perhaps the thin-skinned folks commenting don’t understand The Skinny is the Tucson equivalent of the. NY Post’s Page Six. Granted, it’s been a while since I picked up a hard copy of the Weekly, but I recall the column had a descriptive header that doesn’t appear in the on-line edition.
Hang em with their own words:
“I got in touch with the bar owner and we both agreed it’s not really a big deal and next time I’m there, I should give him a call and we’ll have a drink, because I don’t imagine he wants the bar’s reputation to get besmirched in any way and I’m perfectly happy to let it go,” she said.
Somebody’s jackass ears are showing…
What kind of a disclaimer / “descriptive header” would cover the kind of “reporting” provided here?
“Warning: This is a gossip column where no attempt is being made to cover the behavior of local elected officials in a fair and valid way, or to provide information on local governance that is constructive and useful to citizens / the electorate in Tucson”?
TUSD is a public school district serving close to 50,000 students. It is one of the largest employers in the region and it budgeted funds for FY2017 between $300 and $400 million. For the past four years it has, in the opinions of many, suffered from bad management and chronically poor decisions in the application of public funds, to the detriment of its students, its employees, and the broader community.
The November 2016 election added a new Board member (Sedgwick) and broke up the three person board majority that made many controversial decisions 2012-2016, which included the decision to approve a compensation contract that awards the district’s Superintendent for choosing not to take 40 paid vacation days every year at the rate of $1,000 per day. (That’s right: he banks more than most teachers make in annual salary for choosing not to take 40 vacation days per year. His most recent annual compensation when all the various perks, expense accounts, and benefits were added up was close to $500K.)
The first TUSD Board meeting in which the new Board member will serve will take place this afternoon, Tuesday, November 10, 2017. The week before this Board meeting is to take place, Nintzel publishes this piece, which seems designed to cast Sedgwick in an Ally Miller-style punching bag / figure of fun kind of role, encouraging his readers to assume (in the words of various commenters reacting to the piece) that she is a “snob” with the “IQ of a carrot,” an “egomaniac,” an “imbecile,” an “entitled drunk,” an “ass hat,” and “not qualified to be an elected official in charge of budgetary decisions.”
Interesting. For the record: responsible citizens pay attention to what happens with hundreds of millions of dollars of public funds and ask that these funds be applied in ways that benefit tens of thousands of students in our region. They do not pay attention to SH*T like what is retailed in this irresponsible column, which seems intended to prepare the ground for people to discount what comes out of Sedgwick’s mouth in the Board room, which may be nonsense, and may be sensible evaluation of district policy and budgeting practices.
Jim Nintzel: I believe your mother was an educator. For the sake of the educators in this community who need good governance in TUSD, please do a better job in the future reporting on the behavior of the elected officials who govern the district. The public needs to know what is happening with the application of public funds in our largest local school district. They do not need to know what the bartender said about Rachael Sedgwick’s attempt to return and admittedly overpriced drink in one of our local bars.
I understand that Highwire bar is aligned with the Grijalva clan whose dynasty over Tucson-area public offices is threatened by newcomers such as Sedgwick. I’ve met and discussed some TUSD issues with Ms. Sedgwick and come away with the impression that she’s very sincere about solving the many problems plaguing the district.
As for commentators on this board; either you are cronies of the Grijalvas, employees of Highwire, or are at the level of maturity to dismiss the new board member who’s been in office for three days based upon the gossip of some bartenders.
Oh, and the beer. I used to manage bars. If the $265 Delirium Noel keg was even as small as a quarter barrel (pony) keg. That’s still about 60 full-pint pours coming in at about $4.42 per pour. The ideal pour cost for a draft beer is about 9-12 percent, however, with ultra-premium beers it is simply not realistic to pull in a 90% profit from each pour.
If the price was listed as $12, there’s an expectation that it be a full 16 oz pour. Had Highwire served it that way, they would’ve managed only a measly 64% profit on each pour. However, they’d have sold an impression of their establishment that their customers can expect to not be completely gouged for a beer that is a seasonal treat. If their attitude is to fight with their clientele and try to embarrass their customers to the local media, then they don’t deserve to stay in business.
Wow! Someone who owns 7 devices is really butt-hurt by the commentary they’re reading here.
Everything increases by 7 each day. What a sad and lonely individual.
Yeah, we know what you do, haunting the comment streams, changing the distribution of likes and dislikes on pieces where commenters push your ideological buttons or tell the truth about some of your PCDP cronies, like this one. I’ve caught you at it more than once, and if you keep doing it I will catch you at it — and out you — again.
What a sad jackass you are, as I mentioned in the comment stream on another piece where you were seen playing your little “enforce PCDP orthodoxy” and “create false impressions to achieve PCDP goals” game.
I suggest you get out more — perhaps start attending DGT luncheons every Monday, if you don’t already do so. There you will be able to suck up more of the ignorant slop the local “Democratic” (?) party dishes out to other bottom feeders like yourself.
Perhaps he already does get out — perhaps this “like / dislike” inflater is part of the PCDP sign-stealing contingent.
Every election cycle, they’re at it, stealing the signs of the opponents of PCDP /DGT-favored candidates. In the 2016 election cycle, the IEC “TUSD Kids First” was the biggest victim. (What a surprise — the opponents of the same entrenched TUSD Board politicians whose incompetence is referenced more than once in the comment stream on this contemptible little blog of Nintzel’s.)
Quite a crew of thugs they’ve got trying to block or manipulate information delivery to the public. Very un-democratic of them, isn’t it? But in Southern Arizona, the values of those who go by the name of “Democrat” are distinctly NOT democratic.
Boy, are you mixed up.
Answering your own statements as if you’re someone else and manipulating the like/dislike count by 7 each time you use your devices.
Get a life.
“Get a life.”
What a come back – what eloquence, what complex thought processes. This is no doubt why you waste your time coming back to the same blog posts day after day driving up the “likes” on PCDP BS and inflating dislikes on every post that makes you feel hostile because it has valid facts / ideas in it. Unlike those whose comments you “dislike,” you have nothing of substance to say.
Sad.
You can blow as much smoke as you like — I’ve seen a wide range of PCDP bottom feeding behaviors at this point and not much surprises me — but try not to forget that you’ve been caught red-handed magically loading multiple dislikes onto comments within minutes of their posting: clumsy, and depressingly inept.
What you’re accusing me of is incorrect, but believe what your multiple personalities will believe.
Yet you have not denied your participation in the likes/dislikes which are occurring in multiples of 7 on this post and on the other one in which I pointed out your inability to take the insulting which you so easily dish out. Funny how that works.
Insult me all you like. From viewing your posts on Safier’s blogs, besides being extremely long-winded, it’s all you have. Well, that and 7 devices. Talk about being caught red-handed.
Go ahead and discuss that with one of your other personalities, as you did yesterday, with your 11:18 AM and 1:03 PM posts. It would be nothing new. I’ve read it with your posts before and I’m sure it will continue. Talk about being clumsy and depressingly inept.
There are normal and abnormal patterns of response in these comment streams. Usually, people keep commenting and liking and disliking posts for a few days and then the activity stops. Occasionally, someone like you takes offense to a line of argument and keeps returning to the stream and inflating the likes and dislikes in a systematic way. When there are still multiple commenters visiting the stream, the likes and dislikes fall sometimes here, sometimes there, and in different combinations. When you see patterns like what developed here and in the January comment stream on vouchers, you know there is a troll — in this case you — systematically distorting the responses.
You can protest as much as you like, but what happened here in both of these streams is I caught you at it, tricked you into responding in a way that would make clear to anyone who read the stream what you were doing, and outed you.
Please do keep playing your tricks. I have a very full life but it often involves wait time and I enjoy checking in on the streams on my mobile phone when I’m stuck in a holding pattern. This kind of detective work is amusing, especially when it involves the “outing” of trolls who have nothing to offer but backing up the ignorant PCDP party line with transparent manipulation of comment streams and mean-spirited, below the belt insults of other commenters.
In the unlikely event that anyone besides the two of us is reading this stream I will note that anyone can access the other exchange we had RE your comment stream behaviors through this link:
http://www.tucsonweekly.com/TheRange/archives/2017/01/04/private-school-vouchers-are-bad-for-arizona-discuss
Cheers, troll.
You’re right. There are normal and abnormal patterns of response in these comment streams. There are also normal and abnormal patterns of like and dislike additions. When there are 7 likes or dislikes added to certain comments in less than a 20 hour period, especially on a dead thread, it can be deducted that something is rotten in the state of Denmark. You still haven’t acknowledged that.
Congratulations Sherlock! You have wasted your time on bad leads. Go back to Baker Street and examine the evidence further. Make sure to talk to Watson because he is a valuable resource, especially at this point because the cocaine is ruining your brain.
It’s also making you paranoid. That’s what cocaine and being a major troll does.
Arrivederci, troll.
Thanks for the tip. I talked to Watson and this is what he said:
Congrats, Sherlock. You found someone systematically distorting two comment streams to align the likes and dislikes, which had previously had a different distribution, with PCDP orthodoxy. You provoked the troll into revealing that yes, it was the same troll visiting both streams every day to check on where things stood and alter them if need be. In that both streams relate to PCDP positions on school funding and governance, it seems likely that the troll is a PCDP maven and / or a supporter of the TUSD Board majority which Rachael Sedgwick recently had the gall to criticize and, through her election, to break up.
Case closed.
(Good luck, Rachael. You’ve got a very tough job ahead of you and some of those affiliated with your opponents seem to play dirty.)
Snort snort snort…Paranoia.
Snort snort snort…Paranoia!
The troll here adds
7 likes or dislikes
To the comments.
I read and I
can not believe
All the bullshit.
Paranoia will destroy ya!