[Searching in TX]

Here's the link to the article about storing the sauce in the basement at Buck's Fishing and Camping:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/san-marzanos-the-bible-of-tomatoes/2013/08/12/85485c1a-fa32-11e2-9bde-7ddaa186b751_story.html

[Hardman_T]

In trying to ascertain whether or not Comet Ping Pong has a basement in a general description of the property, which source do we use?
This Metro Weekly interview from 2015 where Alefantis claims Comet Ping Pong has a basement, used for storing canned vegetables and sauces:
Like our sauce — we harvest a whole crop of organic tomatoes — 10 tons of tomatoes every year. Can them all, store them in the basement, have like a harvest party when it gets loaded in.
And this one from the BBC from late 2016, where he emphatically denies having a basement:
"They ignore basic truths," Alefantis tells BBC Trending. For instance, the conspiracy supposedly is run out of the restaurant's basement. "We don't even have a basement."[/size]

What about this one? "Last year, Alefantis estimates, he bought 12 tons of Toigo tomatoes, which Stello turned into sauce and canned before trucking the jars to the basement at Buck’s Fishing & Camping, Alefantis’s other restaurant just a few steps down the block on Connecticut Avenue NW." (previous poster has the link right).  The Metro Weekly interview doesn't specify that the basement is in Comet Pizza. Likely he said "the basement of my other restaurant, Buck's Camping and Fishing" or such, and the author trimmed it, because who cares. Also look at the guided tour of the restaurant in the video I linked to before. Is there a basement door? Did I miss it?

[nrgiseternal]

Property records for ping pong states it has a basement

[nrgiseternal]

Hello and welcome Hardman.

I'm curious what you make of the video of the screams coming from underneath or inside of ping pong filmed from outside

[Searching in TX]

Sounds like they're trying to garner sympathy to me:

Comet Ping Pong is so thankful for the incredible love and compassion that has been directed toward us and our community.
We are grateful for the support of our dedicated customers who have come to visit with us these past few days.

Many friends -  including those who live in other places, have asked how they can support us and our staff -besides drinking and eating pizza with us!  And as a result of recent stories and events, we realize we could use support.  We have been hit with immediate expenses that do not fit into our usual small restaurant model.

Some include:
-  lost wage compensation for our amazing cooks and   FOH staff.
- paid security we have hired to ensure the safety of our patrons and staff.
- legal expenses
- security upgrades.
- physical damage.

SO for those who would like to support us in ways beyond enjoying our pizza and drinks, this is an opportunity to consider.

Love to you all, thank you for your patronage -
and as we keep saying around here -
we are so glad to have each other.

- Comet and Buck's

Comet Ping Pong is a neighborhood pizzeria and ping pong place with great pizzas, beer and free ping pong! We love our neighbors, friends and family.

https://www.gofundme.com/support-cometpingpong

[BigBlue82]

I'm going to offer my personal perspective here from first hand experience in the business of pizza and pizza making since my uncle ran and owned a shop in NJ and since I delivered pizza and later managed a Domino's Pizza myself while in school...

No self respecting pizza maker would serve or make pizza that looked like the pizza on their GO FUND ME website:
https://www.gofundme.com/support-cometpingpong

The pizza crust is terribly mis-shapened and bubbled! That is an indicator of poor dough quality or poor dough proofing! Whether it be under-proofed or over-proofed any self respecting pizza maker would never serve a pizza like that. Pizza dough is the cheapest part of the damn pizza! If your dough is old and over fermented throw it out. If its under fermented, dock it and rotate it towards the back of the freezer to continue to proof. Someone who works in the business should be able to tell perfectly proofed dough just by the look and feel alone. Dough only cost $0.07 cents when bought and made in bulk (at least it did 11 years ago). It's cheap! If it's no good ,throw it out! Don't serve it!

You can also tell from the shape of the outer crust that not only is :
1). Dough either of poor quality or is poorly proofed
2). These fools can't seem to slap and stretch the pizza dough to the point where they can at least make a half way presentable looking pizza before it hits the table...

This leads me to believe that making pizza's is neither their strong suit nor their priority. Just my two cents anyway from someone who use to work in the field...

[ninti]

Ow Em Gee!  @Bigblue , that has to be the worst pizza I have ever seen in my life and that's including amateur attempts..  I went back to look/read a second time to make sure they weren't made by "customers" as part of fund raising attempt.
Complete and utter joke! 

On the video of the Comet Pizza tour I saw earlier I shivered when he showed the "kids party" room. So dark and seedy, (dull colours)  far from what I'd call child friendly surroundings.

[Searching in TX]

A good article laying out the evidence for where the "fake news" is really coming from:

A Clinton Fan Manufactured Fake News That MSNBC Personalities Spread to Discredit WikiLeaks Docs

Glenn Greenwald
December 9 2016, 7:30 a.m.

The phrase “Fake News” has exploded in usage since the election, but the term is similar to other malleable political labels such as “terrorism” and “hate speech”; because the phrase lacks any clear definition, it is essentially useless except as an instrument of propaganda and censorship. The most important fact to realize about this new term: those who most loudly denounce Fake News are typically those most aggressively disseminating it.

One of the most egregious examples was the recent Washington Post article hyping a new anonymous group and its disgusting blacklist of supposedly pro-Russia news outlets – a shameful article mindlessly spread by countless journalists who love to decry Fake News, despite the Post article itself being centrally based on Fake News. (The Post this week finally added a lame editor’s note acknowledging these critiques; the Post editors absurdly claimed that they did not mean to “vouch for the validity” of the blacklist even though the article’s key claims were based on doing exactly that).

Now we have an even more compelling example. Back in October, when WikiLeaks was releasing emails from the John Podesta archive, Clinton campaign officials and their media spokespeople adopted a strategy of outright lying to the public, claiming – with no basis whatsoever – that the emails were doctored or fabricated and thus should be ignored. That lie – and that is what it was: a claim made with knowledge of its falsity or reckless disregard for its truth – was most aggressively amplified by MSNBC personalities such as Joy Ann Reid and Malcolm Nance, The Atlantic’s David Frum, and Newsweek’s Kurt Eichenwald.

https://theintercept.com/2016/12/09/a-clinton-fan-manufactured-fake-news-that-msnbc-personalities-spread-to-discredit-wikileaks-docs/

[GiMPdad]

$15000 for this random pizza joint in one day by 454 people (average about $35 each). Seems like anytime I hear a news story on tv (and it's not that often as I don't have TV, just at other homes when I visit) the first thing to do is start a gofund me page and the news always mentions it at the end of their report.

Reading through the comments makes me doubt the validity even more. "Deplorable fake news" "fake news" blah blah. If it's all real donations then it makes me sad because I've seen some real go fund me efforts which garner less way then this...

[Hardman_T]

Hello and welcome Hardman.

I'm curious what you make of the video of the screams coming from underneath or inside of ping pong filmed from outside

Thanks, hello.

It seems to be a dead end. We don't really know where the screams are coming from and only confirmation bias would account for believing them to be those of a tortured child.
The author of the video is Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner Frank Winstead. He lives about six blocks away from Comet Ping Pong, or did. His social media accounts document his obsession with violations and potential hazards in the neighborhood. He is to this day, probably at this moment, on facebook sharing right-wing news and memes.
Winstead had a well-documented beef with Comet Pizza and James Alefantis around the time the video was taken. If the kid noise were unusual and/or Comet related, I think this guy would have been on it like white on rice.
From Washington City Paper, 6/08:
Winstead staged a live performance at the packed-full ANC meeting held to reassess Comet Ping Pong's voluntary agreement with the commission. (Marc Fisher, hot on the Winstead beat, has his roundup here. DCist, too). During the course of the meeting, Winstead accused Comet owner James Alefantis of lying, cheating, stealing, spitting in a customers food, and encouraging both murderers and rapists.
Now Alefantis is definitely a douche of the highest order. He seems to have a problem obeying little laws and it wouldn't surprise me if he imagined himself above certain bigger ones. Winstead had evidence that he was "filling up his fat wallet", and I can also believe this. But, would a man like Frank Winstead have missed almost a decade of human trafficking in his own backyard? Wouldn't he be looking for any reason to take Alefantis down?
Here is a strange thing, however. Frank Winstead's facebook feed shows him to be up-to-the-minute on politics. He favors The Hill, Rush Limbaugh, Breitbart and the like. There is no way he is unaware of Pizzagate. And yet, from what I can tell he has ignored it. A citizen reporter asks him about it on November 25th, dies "suddenly" on December 2nd. Chalk it up to another strange coincidence...

[Grass is Green]

Cui bono? What does Winstead have to gain by calling out a little pizza place on having a ping pong game outside on the sidewalk? What does he have to gain by posting a video of the ping pong game, pointing out the potential insurance liability, all while we hear the sound of a child crying out for help?

Suppose Winstead came out now and said all along he was picking on that establishment on little things in order to get people to see the "big thing" really going on? What would he have to gain? On the flip side, what does he have to lose?

Andrew Breitbart was not so subtle. Look what happened to him.

[Hardman_T]

Frank Winstead was a commisioner at the time, that's what.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advisory_Neighborhood_Commission
To say that he wants things done by the book would be putting it lightly. Look at his youtube and flickr feed:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/foresthillsdc/
Occam's razor. Pizza Comet is getting away with having bands play at night, which they aren't allowed to do. They don't have a license for outdoor attractions/ seating. The table is a potential motorist distraction and a liability if the ball goes in the road. The idea of the commisioner secretly drawing attention to a child's cries of torment, and then only once, is the least satisfying of solutions.

[nrgiseternal]

Look at the vitriol and threats Frank winstead was met with, for simply insisting that a pizzeria close down at a perfectly reasonable hour for a restaurant.

You don't just take potshots at the 49th most powerful person in Washington DC( I find it ironic you were painting Winsted has the high-powered political bully when in reality it was quite the opposite) unless you have irrefutable evidence that can be disseminated widely and quickly.

And I actually agree with the majority of what you said although I do find it humorous that you believe the sounds and that video could be anything other than a child screaming.

Do this experiment play the audio for someone without telling them what it is and ask them what they hear.

I did that with my Missus and she asked what was happening to that poor child.

[Hardman_T]

Vitriol and threats, or annoyance and mockery?
http://dcist.com/2008/05/outdoor_pingpon.php
(article + comments)

This article
http://dcist.com/2008/05/politics_and_pr.php
and comments also paint an excellent picture of what went on.
I didn't say the guy had political power
Here are some questions you can ask yourself.
How is Ward 3 different from other D.C. neighborhoods?
What is the role of the ANC? DDot? What are the commisioner's actual powers?
When did James Alefantis "become" "the 49th most powerful person in Washington?" What year?
Does NBC4's Carissa DiMargo draw an important distinction between Washington (The Kennedy Center) and D.C.(The 9:30 Club)? (she does.)
It is a little tricky explaining these things to anyone not a local.
Why do you think the screaming child (and it is a screaming child) is connected to the pizza place?
The video was widely disseminated on its release. Nobody remarked on the screaming child. Why?

[Grass is Green]

Here is an Occam's razor's edge that will slice a person's throat like a tomato: either the information, the instagram photos, the otherwise incoherent Podesta emails, the Winstead video, the striking similarities in the logos to known child trafficking symbols, the untimely death of Breitbart, the Majestic Ape child torture "comedy", the sexually charged and MK related art at a supposed family restaurant, etc. are NOT worthy of an investigation by FBI or local law enforcement...

OR

Earnest investigators have their hands strapped to the table like that little girl in Alefantis' instagram photo because very powerful people are willing to add obstruction of justice to the list of things they are willing to do to, you know, NOT go to prison and become sex slaves themselves.