Grit and Grub Project Interviews, 2020-2021

Created as a limited podcast series, Grit and Grub documents the experiences of restuarant and food business owners in the Bellingham area during the COVID-19 pandemic. This collection comprises audio recordings capturing conversations between interviewees and Dr. Dharitri Bhattacharjee, a Bellingham resident who teaches in the History Department at Western Washington University. Interviews were conducted between August 2021 and July 2022. The recordings were produced in collaboration with Western Washington University's Video Services, with production work performed by Lara Hefner (Media Services Student Worker and WWU graduate).

Dr. Bhattacharjee's description of the Grit and Grub series is as follows: "You have relied on their food. You have ordered their treats online. Your favorite eating joints in Bellingham gave you a semblance of normalcy when everything else seemed unpredictable and beyond your control. Grit and Grub gives you a sneak peek into how restaurant owners ran their businesses through a scary pandemic."

Episodes from the series have been made available by the public broadcasting station KMRE FM of Bellingham, Washington. Please note that these archived interviews comprise digital mp4 files but are audio recordings only (recordings were captured originally as audio files, and converted to mp4 video files to faciliate production work). Only eight interviews are currently available at the Center for Pacific Northwest Studies - a ninth is pending permissions.