Why Jon Bon Jovi Is More Than a Musical Teenage Idol with Hair That’s Too Long
Did you also have a Bon Jovi tape in your Walkman back in the day? And posters of Jon Bon Jovi above your bed? Hang them up again, because this musical teenage idol with the questionable hairstyle is doing very well indeed. At his three restaurants, he helps homeless people in New Jersey. And when the dishwasher backs out at the very last minute, Jon simply rolls up his sleeves and does the washing-up himself.
More superstars are opening a restaurant, or even a restaurant chain. But the restaurant founded by Jon Bon Jovi and his wife Dorothea Hurley is special, because there are no prices on the menu. Everyone pays what they can afford, which also allows the restaurants to provide meals for people who cannot pay for them at all.
Homeless
‘The idea struck me like a bolt of lightning,’ says Jon Bon Jovi. ‘I saw someone sleeping outside and thought: this isn’t what the founding fathers of America intended. And I thought: homeless. It can happen to anyone. Man, woman, young, old, white, Black, Democrat, Republican. And I can make a difference—that’s not difficult.’ Together with his wife, he founded a nonprofit, and with the help of experts, they now run three restaurants.
In the suds
Jon: ‘Our restaurant is called Soul Kitchen. People can work in the kitchen to pay for their meal, and guests can also pay extra so someone else can sit down and eat without paying.’ The Bon Jovis got much busier in their restaurants during the pandemic, as more people were struggling financially. And instead of retreating to a holiday home in a quiet place to wait for the pandemic to blow over, Dorothea and Jon simply carried on. One visitor even snapped a photo of Jon up to his wrists in hot, soapy water, working through a pile of dishes.
New music
And the circle is complete, because that photo of Jon doing the dishes inspired the musician once again. ‘That photo ended up on social media, captioned: If you can’t do what you do, do what you can. I thought that was so powerful that I wrote a new song about it the next day. It’s called Do what you can, and it appears on the album 2020.’
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Source: Big Issue
