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This paper describes reactions by regular patrons of a family restaurant to an armed robbery that occurred within its premises. One of the victims, the restaurant's co-manager, and these regulars participated in the construction of a narrative in order to restore their normal involvement within the community and to incorporate the profound disturbance of a robbery into the patrons' and manager's shared pasts. We discuss two different types of regulars who view this particular restaurant as a sacred place. In this context, we discuss particular discourse, appearance, and touch codes that support perceptions of the restaurant as sacred. To conclude, we discuss how regulars and management resolved this profound disturbance to establish shared histories in regard to the robbery and to restore communal relations within this restaurant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Twenty years after its publication, the "openings" research of Miller, Hintz, and Couch (1975) continues to be the conceptual foundation of the New Iowa School of Symbolic Interation. However, we believe that this work has been misread. Returning to the original work, we offer a new reading of this groundbreaking research that broadens the scope of the analysis and more closely defines the hierarchical structure of social interation found in all social encounters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]