Gas stoves are so deadly, they must hastily be phased out and ultimately outright banned from use lest they soon suffocate and kill us all.
Unless, apparently, you’re a liberal celebrity chef. The rules – and the pulmonary edema they’re supposed to avoid, apparently – don’t apply to you.
Palo Alto is reportedly granting an exception to its ban on gas stoves for famed chef and restaurateur José Andrés after he threatened to take his new Mediterranean eatery, Zaytinya, out of the area if city officials wouldn’t let him install a gas line in the kitchen. The city had banned gas lines in all new constructions earlier this year.
Andrés’ lawyer pointed out that the plans for the restaurant had been approved in 2019, well before the ban was put in place, before claiming that the appliances the chef planned to put in place "do not have electrically powered equivalents." (Just don't expect that argument to fly if you're a regular Joe who thinks your gas stove is better than a flat-top.)
If the city didn’t waive their gas line mandate, the lawyer threatened, "Zaytinya will likely choose not to locate within the city."
To which the city rushed to sign off on a “one-time exception” to the rule.
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"Due to the years-long planning effort which started in 2019, three years before the City adopted the all-electric requirement, the City and the Mall have agreed that this one project should be able to proceed with gas service consistent with the long-established project plans," the city said.
Which begs the question, if gas stoves and the toxic fumes they purportedly emit are so harmful that they must be banned from public use at the end of a government gun, why make an exception? Are these coiled death traps somehow made less damaging because they’re being used by a famous chef at a restaurant whose business the city wants?
If so-called “public health” is so sacrosanct that it must be protected by endless laws, mandates, and unconstitutional bans, then no one should get an exception – even liberal big-wigs who rant against climate change and hob-knob with big-name Democrats. Otherwise, one might begin to think the rules are simply pieces in a political power play, and only apply to those the ruling elite are seeking to control.