Is Westport too dangerous for dining?

“Westport’s over,” said a friend of mine this morning, after hearing about yesterday morning’s 7 a.m. robbery at the First Watch restaurant in Westport. (It was reported on the Plog too).

“If you can’t feel safe eating a pancake at 7 in the morning,” said my friend, “where can you feel safe?”

I’ve been hearing rumors of Westport’s demise as a dining location for decades, even back in the 1980s, when The Prospect of Westport and Metropolis were two of the most popular venues in the metro. I’m not sure that Westport was any more or less “safe” then. And I have a friend whose father survived a shooting on the Country Club Plaza in the 1970s — it was a robbery attempt too, during another downturn in the economy. There were always rumor that the J.C. Nichols Company effectively tamped down any negative news about robberies, muggings and the like on the Plaza and maybe that’s true, since two friends of mine were, indeed, mugged in parking garages on the Plaza (one was a waiter, returning to his car after finishing the evening shift at the old Bristol). There wasn’t even a footnote about the crimes in the daily paper.

So what are diners supposed to do now? Take along a gun when they go to brunch? Hide all their valuables in the car before going into a restaurant for dinner?

I guess if I owned diamonds, I wouldn’t be wearing them at First Watch at 7 a.m. anyway.

(Image via Flickr: Arenamontanus)