Scared, But Not Scared Off: How a Gunman Interrupted Our Lunch and a Community Stands With Comet

Where I grew up, I could walk half a mile to the closest main street. However, all it offered were car dealerships, and the sole business of potential interest to foot traffic, a record store, was bulldozed in the mid-80s to make way for...another car dealership. We lived in a nice neighborhood: it just didn't have good commercial amenities we could walk to.

I'm very luck that where I live now provides easy access to many amenities within short walking distance, particularly the one-block commercial strip along Connecticut Avenue just south of Nebraska Avenue that's just a few blocks away from me. It's a little too far north to be Van Ness and a little too far south to be Chevy Chase. Although technically it straddles two neighborhoods, I've taken calling it Forest Hills, which is both bigger and better known locally than the other option (Wakefield).

The area is home to a CVS, two dry cleaners, three gas stations, a nail salon, a chiropractor, a bank, a liquor store, a kitchen remodeler, a paint store, an art gallery/framing shop, some law offices, a small market/cafe, five full-service restaurants, and the strip's best-known business, Politics & Prose, a popular independent bookstore that survives and thrives in the Amazon era. It's a wonderfully varied collection of mostly independent businesses providing a sort of "small town within the big city" feel for the local inhabitants and any Connecticut Avenue commuters on their way in or out of town.

My husband and I have lived nearby for more than 10 years. We eat out in the neighborhood restaurants almost every weekend. I've met Michael Chabon, Elizabeth Strout and countless other famous authors at Politics & Prose. This is our neighborhood and we love it.

And it's under attack.

For the past month, the neighborhood's pizza restaurant, Comet Ping Pong, has been the target of a an outlandish conspiracy theory claiming the restaurant is a front for child trafficking and pedophilia. The basis of this is some stolen emails between Hillary Clinton's campaign manager and Comet's owner discussing pizza. Convinced this must be a coded message, conspiracy theorists dove into the social media accounts of the restaurant, its owner and its staff (and their friends), looking for photos to convert into nasty memes and anything else they could use to attack the restaurant. Not content to just attack Comet, they decided the whole neighborhood must be in on it, and spread their attacks to the block's other businesses.

Last Sunday, the story evolved from online harassment into something dangerous. As unbelievable as the so-called "pizzagate" story sounds, it was enough to convince Edgar Maddison Welch that children were being held captive in the restaurant. Claiming he intended to free these kids, Welch armed himself and drove 350 miles from his home in Salisbury, North Carolina, to Comet Ping Pong to "self-investigate."

That afternoon, we were sitting in Comet Ping Pong ready to enjoy a laid back pizza lunch in our favorite neighborhood pizzeria. We'd ordered our beers--Firestone IPA on tap--and pizza. Although I usually get a Stanley (sausage and roasted pepper) or a Jimmy (meatball), that day I decided to try the Momma'zu, a white pizza with sausage, fontina, ricotta and a side of meat sauce. Our beers arrived, but I never even took a sip.

A young man (who we later learned was Welch) entered the front of the restaurant and walked quickly through the main dining room, the bar area, and the ping-pong room in the back. He didn't stop or talk anyone. It wouldn't have been so odd except for the fact that he was toting a giant black assault rifle. As he walked by our table, my husband and I looked at each other in surprise. Did that just happen? Was that supposed to happen? Is that a prop for a forthcoming concert? We looked around. It happened so fast that not everyone noticed. A lot of people were happily still eating their pizza. But a few had noticed. And we noticed each other noticing, and so did the staff. And that's when the realization crystallized: We were in danger.

A few people got up and then moments later everyone did. We quickly exited the restaurant, followed by the staff. Not wanting to stick around to see if the gunman would come around from the back or out the front to shoot us, we quickly vacated the area. Soon after, the police arrived in droves. Welch, having searched the place and found nothing (of course), surrendered. He'd fired some shots during his search, but thankfully not at any of us customers. We were rattled for the rest of the day, ashamed we hadn't reacted faster, scared of what could have happened (or what might happen next) and angry, intensely angry, that one of our favorite neighborhood hangouts was (and still is) subject to an unending onslaught of baseless defamation. The next day, it all became national news.

We felt powerless and frustrated. Social media platforms have done little to nothing to stem the tide of harassment against the neighborhood. Despite having terms of use and a community standard against bullying and harassment, Facebook does not consider many of the attacks against Comet to be a violation of this policy. I've reported many of these nasty comments to Facebook, but so far, the company has found that only one of them violates its community standards. Facebook claims they "don’t tolerate bullying or harassment," but clearly the company tolerates it just fine. Having a policy it doesn't enforce may give Facebook users a false sense of security, which is a problem.

And we were concerned for Comet. Surely this would hurt business. Would the staff quit? Would Comet close? Would the attackers then turn to the next neighborhood business and continue their assault until it closed too?

Locals show their support for Comet Ping Pong

Then something remarkable happened: the community came together. I wasn't the only one who was angry. Scores of people turned out to support Comet. They left flowers and messages by the restaurant when it was closed Monday. They showed their support online. And when Comet reopened Tuesday, they ate pizza. The restaurant has been busy as ever, and during the weekend, a concerted effort to encourage people to visit Comet and the surrounding businesses, known as #StandWithComet, meant Comet was so packed they erected a tent to cover the front porch as a waiting area. It was completely full when we walked to the block around 6:45 on Friday.

Yesterday, we went back to Comet. Although it's usually kind of slow on Sunday afternoons, we had to wait 40 minutes for a table. The place was packed! I ordered the same pizza I ordered last Sunday, but didn't get to eat, the Momma'zu, and it was fantastic. We also got two rounds of Firestone IPAs, our usual and favorite tap selection. We talked about TV, our jobs and the amazing response from the community. I thought I might be apprehensive about being in Comet again, but it actually felt totally normal (except for the bigger than usual crowd, but that's a good thing). We've spent so much time in Comet, that we feel right at home there--the only time we haven't felt that way was last weekend when we got chased away. It was nice to have our normal Sunday afternoon back again.

Comet Ping Pong Momma'zu pizza: the pizza I ordered last Sunday but didn't get to enjoy until a week later. Delicious!

After witnessing the conspiracy theory against Comet and the neighborhood unfold, and having been at Comet when it turned really ugly, it has been nice to see the neighborhood rally behind these businesses with such an outpouring of support. In a time when people can act so bitterly against one another, it made us hopeful to be reminded that they can also be caring. The attacks against our neighborhood businesses aren't just felt by their owners and employees--us residents feel it too, and we're not going to put up with it. Our neighborhood is a special place, and we're going to fight to keep it that way. We #StandWithComet and all the local businesses that contribute to making our neighborhood a great place to live.

Want to #StandWithComet too? There are many ways to do so. Of course, the most obvious way is to visit the restaurant and enjoy its great pizza. Don't forget to support the neighborhood's other businesses too: grab a burger at Buck's Fishing and Camping, order a pizza from Besta Pizza, pick up a delicious sandwich from Little Red Fox, take in a warm bowl of Beef Bourguignon from Terasol, or enjoy a pint and a game at Jake's American Grille. And be sure to peruse Politics & Prose afterwards; maybe you'll meet a famous author or find a book you've been meaning to read. There's also a Go Fund Me effort to help Comet defray expenses from the days it was closed and the extra security the restaurant has hired. You can also show your support online, such as on Comet's Facebook page. And finally, importantly, be a critical thinker. There are so many sources for information these days, which means we must evaluate if what we're hearing and reading is sensible, factual and fair. Actions always have consequences and each of us must be responsible for our own actions.

On Food and Language: Evolution of 'Bruschetta'

Let's try a quick exercise. I'm going to toss out a word and I want you to close your eyes and envision what it represents. Here's the word: "bruschetta."

What did you see? A piece of grilled toast rubbed with garlic and drizzled with olive oil? Said toast topped with chopped tomatoes and basil? Or perhaps just the tomato topping and no bread at all?

That all of these answers are possible aren't just examples of variation. It's a specific linguistic phenomenon called semantic change, the change over time in the meaning of a word. In the case of bruschetta, what was once a word to describe a piece of garlic-rubbed and olive-oil-drizzled toast has since come to mean several different things, including seasoned chopped tomatoes and basil--referring to a popular bruschetta topping (sans the toast)--as well as some other meanings. An unscientific poll of my Twitter and Facebook followers revealed this variation: when I asked them what came to mind when they saw the word "bruschetta," I received replies that included garlic toast with something fresh (like tomatoes), a snack of seasoned grilled bread with tomatoes and olive oil and, lastly, just tomatoes.

Traditionally, "bruschetta" referred to a piece of toasted bread rubbed with garlic and drizzled with olive oil.

More recently, the term "bruschetta" has come to sometimes refer to a mixture of tomatoes and herbs,  a popular topping for the garlic toast.

According to the Food Lover's Companion, "bruschetta" comes from the Italian word bruscare, which means to "roast over coals." The book goes on to define bruschetta as a traditional garlic bread made by rubbing slices of toasted bread with garlic cloves, drizzling the bread with extra-virgin olive oil and seasoning it with salt and pepper. Tomatoes and basil are not mentioned.

The book's definition appears to align with the traditional Italian definition. In Marcella Hazan's The Classic Italian Cookbook from 1973, she includes a recipe for bruschetta exactly as described in the Food Lover's Companion: toasted bread rubbed with crushed garlic, drizzled with olive oil and seasoned with salt and pepper. Again, no tomatoes. However, her more recent 1992 cookbook, Essentials of Classic Italian Cookbook, includes a separate recipe for a "tomato version," identical but with the addition of a topping of diced tomatoes with a sprinkle of basil or oregano.

Published around that same time in 1989, Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins' The New Basics Cookbook describes bruschetta as garlic-rubbed and olive oil-drizzed toast but then goes on to say it can be embellished with various toppings, including tomatoes, which are found in all three of their bruschetta recipes, even their "basic" one. It's still clear though that they consider the toasted bread to be the bruschetta. Introducing "our basic bruschetta" recipe they write, "when we make bruschetta, we top it with a heady tomato mixture..." "It" is the toast; the tomato is the topping.

More recently, however, there has been a shift towards using "bruschetta" to mean not the toast, but the toast plus its topping. This is a subtle, but I think very important distinction. When a dish consists of a primary ingredient plus secondary elements, you would not remove that primary ingredient and then use the term to describe only the secondary elements. Tomato sauce, mozzarella and pepperoni could not be called "pizza" unless it is sitting upon a baked bread crust. However, when a dish consists of multiple primary elements, it is possible to remove one (or more) and still refer to the dish with that name. It is not uncommon to see Caesar Salads missing their croutons or anchovies, for examine. And lots of people run around drinking "martinis" that contain neither gin nor vermouth.

In the case of bruschetta, I became aware of its drifting definition earlier this year while tweeting with another food blogger.

She had posted a tweet about a recipe she described as a "fun twist on bruschetta," the Bruschetta Quinoa Casserole from the blog The Iron You. In this recipe, the writer made a quinoa casserole with tomatoes, onion, garlic, cheese, herbs and seasonings. In describing the dish, the writer says, "this casserole tastes like bruschetta, exit the bread, enters the quinoa." Implicit in his statement is that bruschetta is toast and tomato-herb topping, not toast which may have a tomato-herb topping. In such an equation, you could conceivably remove the bread as an element in the dish and still have the dish. Thus, we come to the next evolution: calling a tomato-topping "bruschetta."

Another blogger friend of mine did just that when he posted about bruschetta he had made. The photo accompanying his post had no bread; it was a (rather delicious looking) bowl of seasoned chopped tomatoes with basil. He told me he was serving it with bread, but clearly he considered "bruschetta" to be the topping, with the bread as an important but secondary component. And he's not alone in this thinking. This Kraft salad recipe refers to "bruschetta on French bread," clearly implying that bruschetta is a topping. This Tyson recipe for Better Bruschetta Chicken Salad contains tomatoes, olives and other bruschetta toppings, but doesn't make any reference to bread. The popular restaurant chain Applebees used to have a dish called Bruschetta Chicken, described as "Grilled chicken seasoned with bruschetta, parsley and a blend of Italian cheeses." Although I'm still having trouble understanding how chicken can be "seasoned" with tomatoes and garlic, I'll acknowledge the even greater difficulty of performing that maneuver with toast.

With these and other similar recipes, bread has clearly, if not fully divorced, certainly separated from bruschetta--even though originally that's all bruschetta was. Not surprisingly, at the grocery store I found jars of various toppings that market themselves as "bruschetta," not bruschetta toppings.

Jars of "bruschetta" at the grocery store.

That corporations have had a hand in the changing definition of "bruschetta" should not come as a surprise. Marketing has long played a role in how we think and talk about food. In The Language of Food, linguistics professor Dan Jurafsky details the evolution of ketchup. Today, we think of ketchup as a sweet and sour pureed tomato sauce, but initially, the term referred to a type of Chinese fish sauce. Jurafsky details how the sauce transformed from its fishy roots to its modern day incarnation as an essential American hamburgers and fries condiment. When it comes to ketchup, Heinz is king. Although it's inconceivable today to use the word "ketchup" to refer to a sauce made from anything but tomatoes, Heinz own use of "tomato ketchup" on its label is a nod to the possibility of there being ketchups that aren't tomato-based. The term "ketchup" feels pretty stable at the moment, but Heinz was responsible for settling one of the word's last divisions, whether it should be spelled "catsup" or "ketchup." They chose the latter, and now hardly anyone uses the other spelling (the Merriam-Webster dictionary refers to "catsup" as a variant of "ketchup").

All this is to say that the words that we use to describe what we eat can and do change. As our tastes and culture evolve, so too does our language. "Tweeting" is something that only birds used to do, yet today it means something altogether different, a definition that has become (possibly the more common) only within the last 5-6 years. You can be a linguist and view this as a good thing, or a language "maven" and view it as sacrilege, but once a word develops a new common usage, there's no turning back. Given the current craze for all things gluten-free, perhaps it is conceivable that someday I'll walk into a restaurant, order a pizza and receive a dish that includes no bread.

Related:
Tomato Bruschetta

Book: The Language of Food