DEAR PROBE: HUNGRY & LOOKING FOR NEW EATERIES
Q“I noticed construction activity at the old Thai restaurant on 4th street south of Ross in El Centro. It’s in the same plaza where Planned Parenthood is located. Is a new restaurant going to go in there? If not, do you know what is?”
A– Hungry & looking for new eateries
Thank you for this question, as we have been wondering this ourselves. As lovers of going out to eat, we are always on the lookout for restaurants with good food but also with exceptional customer service. It was to our dismay – and maybe to yours as well – to find out that a new restaurant is not being built. Instead, Planned Parenthood is expanding their building in El Centro, incorporating into it the old Thai restaurant building.
According to the Imperial County Assessor’s ParcelQuest service, which is available for use to the public, searching for Planned Parenthood’s parcel number resulted in some interesting information. On September 26, 2022, a grant deed was agreed upon for a transfer of real estate in the amount of $1,800,000. The document also details a map with a red rectangular outline over Planned Parenthood’s current building and the old Thai restaurant.
Planned Parenthood responded to our email asking for an interview, but basically to say that they would not be conducting any interviews regarding their expansion. Their official response was “There is some remodeling being done to our administrative space there.”
Yet El Centro’s PP ‘clinic’ has its headquarters in San Diego as “Planned Parenthood of the Pacific Southwest,” so remodeling “administrative” space seems like a bit of a “nothing to see here...” tactic.
Furthermore, during a separate email exchange between IVP and the PP Communications Department, they claimed “we’re not currently working on any expansion of services.”
So their building is getting bigger because they are “remodeling administrative space” – even though they don’t have their regional headquarters in the Imperial Valley – but they are not working on expanding any “services.” Could be.
I don’t know about you, but for an organization that also downplays that their founder, Margaret Sanger, was publicly known to believe in in eugenics and, at least according to Ben Stein’s “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” film, had spoken at KKK-adjacent meetings,, also publicly making thinly veiled references to minorities as “weeds” — this “nothing to see here” tactic smacks of old hat.
To be accurate, certain quotes to Sanger have been misconstrued over social media in years past, but according to Reuters fact checkers, Sanger did use the term “weeds” in a 1923 New York Times article she authored where she wrote:
“Birth Control is not contraception indiscriminately and thoughtlessly practiced. It means the release and cultivation of the better racial elements in our society, and the gradual suppression, elimination and eventual extirpation of defective stocks — those human weeds which threaten the blooming of the finest flowers of American civilization.”
Couple PP’s founder’s belief in eugenics with the fact that PP first planted its roots in the Imperial Valley years ago by 1) trying to furnish it’s own brand of sexual education into the Calexico Unified School District – the district in the Valley with the most overwhelmingly Hispanic population of students – and 2) deciding to open its clinic adjacent to – or on, depending on who you ask – the East side of El Centro, which historically has also predominantly been Hispanic and Black in population, and it all seems a bit fishy, ala seems like something is “rotten in the state of Denmark,” except we’re talking about happenings in our own little Imperial Valley and in reality rather than a Shakespearean play.
We hope PP will be more transparent with us and other news organizations in the future.
Aside from that, for those still with a hankering for Thai food, the restaurant formerly known as “Exotic Thai Bistro” is now known simply as “The Thai Bistro” and, according to their Facebook page, have moved to 775 E. Danenburg Drive, Suite 105, in El Centro near the Imperial Valley Mall (also near Poke Noodle/Chuck E. Cheese, their restaurant worker said).
According to their Facebook, they have been open at that location since September 8, 2022.
Though The Thai Bistro’s DoorDash page still lists their old 4th Street address, the restaurant said they still do