Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Signage of the Timeage

1.  Seen on two sides of a big three-sided street poster display: 3x4 matrixes of twelve 8x11 sheets of paper, each with a different color-printed photo of a slim blonde woman looking thoughtful or wistful or creative, with a small area of text at the bottom, which read:

“Would you like to take a social sculptor (conceptual, performative artist) to dinner?

“Media: Conversation, Laughter, Hope, Boredom, Chemistry, Flirtation, Desire, Anticipation, Obligation, Relationship, Discomfort, Hormones, Vulnerability, Romance, Personal History, Status (economic, cultural, etc).

“Date: In Progress.

“To be considered for a date with the artist, please contact...” And there she left her email address.  These little handbills were up for several weeks, but after just a few days I noticed that several had been indelicately ripped down from the kiosk where they’d been individually glued in place.  By whom, I wondered?  An eager suitor?  A jealous boyfriend?  An outraged woman who hadn’t agreed to the publicity?  I sort of wish I’d kept the email address, just to see how things went.  Judging from the condition of the posters, though, I rather doubt that anybody got what he or she wanted.

2.  Seen written in thick black letters on a cheerful orange posterboard tacked to a utility pole at 4th and California:

“Garage Sale!  4th and Calif, 10 to 3!”

Written atop that text, with a sputtering ballpoint pen:

“Dead; turnin into ghost; Im comin back from Dead; in a lot of pain a lot pain; am hurting a lot; Earth Ghost forever; people gang up on me torment me”

And so I wonder: How much were they asking for the Earth Ghost?  And can you really get rid of one of those at a garage sale, anyway?

And furthermore: any good signs on your ride to work these days? 

Saturday, August 25, 2007

Crispy Ham Sandwiches: The PowerSnak

The sandwich, like the salad, does not get the credit it deserves.  Everybody thinks they can make a decent sandwich, just like everybody thinks they’re inherently smarter and more interesting than average.  Salad?  Piece of cake, as it were – who can’t make a salad?  Much more challenging it might be to find someone who can make one well, but that’s an issue that is usually left unexplored…

And similarly, sandwiches are everybody’s stock in trade; every shmo, shmendrik and shiksa with a cutting board thinks they can sandwich it up with the best of the best, even if they never think to pre-toast or to press-n-twist or any of the basic manipulations that can make a sandwich really stand out.  There’s a lot more to it than just getting the mustard to the edge of the bread.  It’s something between skill and art – a skart, if you will.  You will, won’t you?  Won’t you?  You won’t?  Really?

Let me help you out, because you’re clearly foundering in a confused morass of self-doubt and disbelief.  Next time it’s your turn to sandwich up the hungry hungry hippos in your neck of the wallow, why don’t you just freaking BLOW THEM AWAY with a sandwich like they’ve NEVER HAD BEFORE!  Yeah!  Come on, any sandwich that calls for two ALL-CAPS!!! phrases in a single sentence has got to be pretty good!  You’ll love it.  I know you’ll love it.  C’mon, just try it.  We’ll have unimaginable kinds of good clean sandwichy fun here in my cargo van of culinary exploration that is the Recipe Corner.  And our first stop: Ham and Cheese Sandwiches!

Yup, I invented these.  And now you’re thinking, hey, didn’t I have a sandwich once that had, like, ham on it?  And then, next to that ham, that cheesy stuff, that was cheese, right?  With that, that, the bread on the top and the bottom of the whole thing, wasn’t that a ham and cheese sandwich?  So, what exactly is Chuckles claiming to have invented, now?  The CHUTZPAH sandwich, was it? 

No, my friends, no, no, I superciliously murmur, calming your rages with imperturbable calmness as a mountain lake calms the eagle’s questing soul, assuming that it does so, which totally seems reasonable to me really.  Anyway, I invented these ham-and-cheese sandwiches, and I think you’ll find them unlike any other you’ve had afore. 

These turned out to be kind of light, so I’d do up two or three per person.  They go like this: take a whole wheat pita and brush/smear one side with olive oil. If you can tell which side was on the outside when it was baked, use that side.  Lay the pita oiled side down. 

Imagine a line cutting the circle of the pita in two; on one side of that line, spread mustard if you wish (I didn’t) and then layer on some thin-sliced ham – we used a stack of two round slices folded in half, covering one-half of the pita nicely. 

On the other side, put down some thin slices of white cheese (we used jack because we had jack, but I bet havarti or gouda would be great) and then a thin slice of cantaloupe on top of that.  Yes!  Cantaloupe!  Didn’t see that coming, did ya?  This here’s a fruit and meat sandwich, and that’s where you really score the big sandwich points!  It’s like a triple word score with zs and qs in scrabble or something! YOU ROCK!

So, you’ve got this interesting bifurcated sandwich on openfaced oiled pita, and then you put it on a grill or griddle at medium heat.  You want to toast the bottom of the pita while the heat warms up the ham and melts the cheese a little.  But nothing should burn.  For gods sake, nothing should burn. 

Once the cheese has gone runny and the melon is stuck in it nicely, and the ham is warmed up from beneath, use a spatula to transfer the whole flat pita to a cutting board.  Then use a pizza slicer or a large knife to score through the midline of the pita between the two halves of your sandwich.  Lay some fresh baby spinach leaves (remove long stems) atop the ham – 8 or 10 leaves per sandwich – and then flip the melon-and-cheese half over onto the ham and spinach half.  Serve immediately, with napkins (the bread stays somewhat oily, but that’s all part of the fun, of course.) Once you give someone a sandwich like this, they’ll be in your debt for the rest of their lives.  Crispy ham turnover sandwiches: the powersnack.  And by the way, you owe me. 

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Sheeting the Bed

I seem to have gone over, though now it seems all too obvious that it was going to happen. 

I really didn’t want to think of myself as the sort of person who’d go out of his way to buy a cheaply made product that’s basically an advertisement.  I don’t like wearing t-shirts with brand names on them, or to have them on my shoes, or jackets; why should I display someone else’s commercial identity in my own home? 

The thing is, Z has been having sleeping issues.  We’ve had rather a hodgepodge approach to it for some time – first, hoping that it would just resolve itself on its own, then sort of groping blindly for a reasonable strategy, and then finally finding some good resource materials but having to wait before taking any action until after houseguest season.  Now we’re ready to take on the “sleeping toddler” challenge and we’ve got the game plan to make it work.  We’ve got so many ideas now that we have to implement in stages.  It’s a fairly sophisticated tactical package, really.  Can’t say too much here.  Walls have ears, you know.  (You don’t even want to know what crown molding’s got.)

One of our action items, available for implementation immediately if not sooner, is getting Z some bedsheets that he can be excited about.  I’m really surprised how hard it’s been to find decent yet inexpensive toddler sheets for his new big boy bed, but of course there’s a vast conspiracy dire warnings bla bla bla.  Anyway last night the opportunity finally presented itself to go on line and order up some new sheets, and really we had a winner quite quickly out of the gate – a subdued retro pattern featuring characters from Pixar’s Cars, which is a movie Z loves far out of proportion to any other movie, television program, or food product.  Cars is basically the best thing in the world to him, and there’s really no point arguing with him about it.  It’s high quality stuff - beautifully drawn, well-voiced, with a story that’s mostly unobjectionable.  Anyway, Z saw the “Race Car Sheets” at the first page of the first site we hit last night, and he consistently favored them over every other design he saw for as long as we could keep him in front of the computer. 

So there we were, last night, with the boy totally jacked up about his new sheets, and we know it’s going to be another touch-and-go night with him in terms of getting him to sleep and getting him to stay in his own bed… of course, it’s been several weeks now that he’s been keeping us from a decent night’s our own selves…. so we placate the beast by ordering the Race Car Sheets, featuring numerous licensed characterizations courtesy of Pixar, Animators and World Copyright Belongering-to Corporation.  What’s more, we bought the sheets from Walmart, a store I’m really pleased almost never to patronize for shrill political reasons we can discuss at another time if you really want to.  But anyway, WalMart.  We bought’em there.  My pride taketh a hard fall onto its ass. 

And furthermore, we demanded overnight shipping – beloved plaything of the impatient and overindulged.  No, I can’t wait three to five goddamn days for my goddamn Cars TeeEmm Toddlersheets, I need them now, now I say and I’ll back it up with shipping charges so far in excess of the actual costs of manufacture that I can only hang my head in shame. 

So there I go.  I’ve ordered product-placement bedclothes for my child, from a store the existence of which deeply troubles me, to be delivered as rapidly as commercially possible.  What I’ve learned from this is that sleep deprivation works.  I’ve become the devil’s minion, and so far I think I’m okay with it. 

Monday, August 20, 2007

ManCakes: The Legend Is Born

Yes yes yes, the weekend was fun, the weekend was fine, thanks for asking.  The wedding was beautiful, from my vantage shut up in my uncle’s house where I escaped with the other parents-of-two-year-olds-who-couldn’t-be-silenced; the food was delicious; and we wound up making an unintentional trade of a pair of my sister’s crocs for a theater-sports logo shirt, the former of which got left behind and the latter of which got stuffed, inadvertently, I suspect, in one of our party-clothes bags.  Zach got to swim in a pool for, I think, the second or third time, and had a shrieking blast.  All in all, a very nice day – the centerpiece of a very nice weekend with my mom and sister and her family.  Yay.

I have not much time to update you more than that, and really I’ve put off a lot of my writing as I spent my last few weeks on the bus copy-editing a monograph on “Modalities for the Maintenance of Public Order and Public Safety in Medieval Jewish Law (with a brief ((!!)) Excursus : Human Rights, Kavod Habrioth, and Kavod Ha’adam“ (you know better than to think I’m kidding).  I’m done with it now so I can move back to the essay about kaleidoscopes, or the nice lady who cleans up at my cube at night.  Ergo, Chuckles ahoy, but not so many a-here and now. 

Meantime, here’s a brief freshie for those who hunger: I’ve had some challenges over my past lifetime trying to come up with a nickname for myself.  Some folk try to stick me with one; they never seem right.  I even tried to make one up but it always felt forced; every time I brought it out I was asked to justify it and I really just couldn’t.  But now, I think I’ve finally turned the nickname corner.

On Saturday I made my traditional breakfast – pancakes, gussied up.  (FYI it was another dose of blueberry-banana with cardamom, coriander and cinnamon.) They were big and tasty and the kids loved’em.  My sister mentioned something about my “Massive pancakes;” my twisted mind immediately sought the spoonerization and I uttered, barely consciously, something about my “passive mancakes.” And then the epiphany hit: “Passive mancakes” is almost the same series of sounds as constitutes my last name, and “mancakes” is a damn fine thing to be called, if one is to be called something other than one’s own name. 

SO: nicknameage has been established and confirmed.  You can call me Dan, or any variation thereof; you can call me Esquire, Commodore or Late For Dinner – but if you want to call me by my nickname, you now must call me Mancakes.  Passive or not, it’s who I am from now on.  My relief is palpable.  My passivity is yet to be determined. 

Friday, August 17, 2007

The Shoe-In

Hey ho blogsters and blogsterinas, hope you’re looking forward to a fun weekend.  My mom is coming to town this evening; my sister, her husband, and their daughter are arriving early this afternoon.  There’s a family wedding up in Sonoma and I think it’ll be a good time.  The bride is my cousin and the event is at her dad’s house, which is really a pair of beautifully restored/rebuilt places that share a spacious backyard.  There’s fine art, fine wine, fine food and good folk aplenty on tap, and before the event itself they’re having a pre-party at the pool/jacuzzi just to relax everybody (because who can be uptight at a wedding when you have just been checking out the parents of the bride in their speedos?). 

The only catch is that the dress code for the pre-party is “wear interesting shoes.” Really!  There’s even a contest, I think!  And I hate to lose contests, but I’m not too sanguine about my chances in this one.  I don’t know about you, but my shoes are mostly pretty dull.  Dull-looking, anyway.  I wear them to keep me from stubs and punctures, not as conversation starters.  In fact, if I were to try to gussy up my existing shoes with hot glue and a bedazzler or something, I’m pretty sure Zach would bend heaven and earth to tear off all the ornamentation and stuff it in his mouth (if I’m lucky).  So, I’m pretty much resigned to having non-interesting-looking shoes for the pre-party.  And that means my chances of winning the Interesting Shoes contest are pretty slim.

But that doesn’t mean they’re nil.  See, I’ve got a game plan.  I’ve decided to make my dull-looking shoes interesting - not visually, but substantively.  Guh-what?, I hear you wonder in your blogly minds.  Guh-THIS, I respond brightly, referring you to the below-appended item, which I will print out tomorrow on nice paper and keep with me for purposes of disabusing anyone who accuses me of not having interesting shoes:

HURACHE VAMP: Curriculum Vitae
“Though Tongues May Wag, Be Constant In Support”

Construction:
* Natural Uppers (yak-hide and Thompson’s gazelle)
* Artificial Outsole (latex grown in “zero-g” space station conditions)
* Laces: Limoges, France – Jacobin workshops (2nd Empire)

Prior Owners:
* Mr Bojangles
* “Shoeless” Joe Jackson (pre-shoelessness)
* Neil Armstrong (Apollo capsule casual wardrobe)
* Steven Hawkins (minimal wear)

Education:
* U. Istanbul: BA, Art History (personal ornamentation); BS (cum laude), Quantum Mechanics (variable states of grommet); awarded special recognition for work to eradicate footwear deficiencies in Coptic slums on Crete
* U. Sao Paulo: Masters, Musical Composition (Indigenous pedal-driven percussion orchestration)
* All Soles College, Oxford University: Doctoral Diplomate, Applied Philosophy (the Inner Sole)
* Fellow, Rand Institute, Santa Monica: trans-national implications of fastening, lacing and the double-knot

Employment:
* Apprentice (line-walker), Southern Pacific Railways
* The Apprentice, Donald Trump Productions ("shoe-in")
* Antarctic Veterinary Clinic: Chief of Podiatric Surgery
* Toledo Mudhens, Toledo Ohio: Equipment Manager
* National Linguistic College: Special lecturer (Tongue-twisters)

Authored:
Digging to China (nonfiction, 1967); Finding Shipwreck Gold in Your Spare Time (self-help, 1972); My Arch-Nemesis (non-fiction, 1979); The Erotica of Oceania (graphic novel, 1985); Deconstructing Serbia (policy anaysis, 2001); The Life and Times of Pope Posh Spice (nonfiction, 2004)

Affiliations:
Oddfellows Lodge; Goodfellas Lodge; Rotary Club; Internal Combustion Club; External Combustion Club (defunct); Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (emeritus - costumes), International Association of Bikram Instructors; Society for Creative Anachronism (consultant on futuretrending)

So that’s how I intend to persuade a bunch of wedding guests that my regular ol’ birks or steve madden sneakers or timberland streethikers or whatever goes on my feet tomorrow are actually interesting.  And looking over that list, I don’t even care if I win the contest anymore.  I know my shoes will be the most interesting.  I’ve walked enough miles in them to know by now. 

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

A Sack Worth Grabbing

It’s raining feral plums again.  Last weekend (okay, I wrote this a while ago, but let’s call it literary license) when I came back from a run in the park with the boy snoozing in the jogstroller, I stopped at the greenbelt across the street and picked up a fallen pinecone.  I tossed it overhead into the leafy laden boughs of a mature tree and knocked down with it a dozen or so golden plums, each the size of a shooter marble.  They were warm from the sun and pliant to the touch, so obviously full of juice and flavor I could almost taste them with my eager fingertips as I harvested them from the dry grass.  A couple of dapper summery men strolled past; one asked what I was doing.  “Harvesting plums,” I succinctly explained, barely pausing from my seasonal labors; “they just come right down at the slightest touch.” They glanced to each other briefly and as I wheeled my sleeping boy and sweaty self back across to the house, I left them flailing with shopping bags at the branches over their heads.  Good, I thought – it’s good to get more people familiar with the natural sweetness overarching us all. 

This gratis succulence puts me in mind of a sack I snagged a few weeks ago – a sack so luscious, in so many ways, that it almost demands memorialization. It happened, as so many luscious experiences do, on Clement Street.  I’d gone there for to do a little produce shopping at New May Wah, the gigantic Asian onmimart with the double produce overload.  Not only do they have a big indoors produce selection with burdock and bac ha and numerous aromatic greens - a full three aisles of natural-grown goodness (including the only green papayas I’ve been able to find hereabouts), there’s also a rack of wooden carts outside that groan with fruity goodness along the full and significant length of the storefront out on the sidewalk.  That’s where the mangos and plantains and plucots and durian hang out, and that’s where I found the red plastic mesh sacks of bumpy carmine nuggets that inspire this screed. 

I’d only had lychees in restaurants; they seemed to be the kind of delicacy that couldn’t exist at home, like fancy pastries or crème brulee.  Dripping with juices, textured like candy, I didn’t realize I could just up and buy them myself until I caught a whiff of them outside New May Wah by the door to the perishables section. 

It got my attention pretty effectively.  I peeked at the sack of ruddy baubles; I hefted it; I prodded and I sniffed.  Heavier than I’d expected – always a good sign for purchasers of fruit.  Slightly resistant to the probing fingertip, but not overly so.  Barely any green spots; perfumed intensely. 

I was already getting a major load of fruits and veggies so I just dumped a sack of lychees into my basket.  That’s right, a whole damn sack.  That’s how they were being sold - sackwise, tied up tight and rather too generously filled for my preferences.  Given my choice I’d have gotten a handful or so, but that wasn’t the choice they’d given me.  It was a five-pound bag or nothing and they smelled too good to leave them behind.  I spent twenty dollars on produce that day – two bulging sacks worth – and the heaviest, costliest item of all was my load of mysterious lychee. 

I left the store heavily laden, both arms stretching out at shoulder, elbow and wrist with nature’s bounty.  The sidewalk, as is its wont, was teeming.  Tough old ladies prowled and dizzy teens meandered and families tumbled haltingly along in the shadowless midday sun; entering the flow of foot traffic with my unwieldy burden was an exercise in both dexterity and timing.  I made my move swiftly and integrated myself into the throng, winding up adjacent to a handful of folk out and about on their own undisclosed errands.  They seemed to be at the leading edge of being elderly, well-dressed and well-groomed, and they bore an air of local sophistication.  One man and three women, they looked Chinese and they fit very well into the general milieu of the street. 

As I swung out beside them on my way home I couldn’t help but overhear that they were discussing the multiplicity of offerings at the New May Wah outdoor fruit displays.  “Ugh, those lychees,” the man uttered disdainfully.  “Never again.  The worst I’ve ever had.”

Without a thought I replied to him, since he was only a foot or two from me: “Don’t tell me that.  I just spent $5 on a bag and they’re the heaviest thing I’m carrying.”

Instantly I realized I’d crossed a line – not only was it a conversational invasion, but it was rendered more egregious by the cultural lines I was crossing.  A white boy like me really had no place butting into a chat on Clement-Gao among his Asian elders.  However, my disquietude was short-lived, as my new lychee buddy picked up the gambit without missing a beat.  “Oh yeah, they were bitter and sour, hard as rocks – I could hardly put them in my mouth, they just sucked the juice right out of me.” His friends favored me with supportive grins.  Suddenly we were a Gang of Five.

“Well the ones I just bought smell really sweet, that’s why they caught my attention; then I touched them through that plastic mesh they’re wrapped in and they felt pretty ripe.  Maybe they’re better now, riper?  How long ago did you get your bad sack?”

“Couple of weeks, I guess.  Sounds like you’ve done better than I did.  They might be ripe by now.  But you know, I never like to get those pre-packaged sacks they sell.  They always sell you too much and you can’t really tell what you’re getting.”

His friends nodded as I voiced my agreement: “Oh that’s so true.  I would have gotten half this load of lychees if I’d had that option.  And same for water chestnuts, too.  You can’t tell what you’re getting and you usually get too much.”

My compadres offered a chorus of agreement and the guy who bought the bad lychees commiserated more expressively: “Oh yes, those sealed sacks of water chestnuts are the worst, half of them have always gone bad and half of what’s left goes bad before you can get to them.”

“Oh, that’s not a problem for me,” I replied breezily, “no matter how many good ones I get, I finish them all.  They’re just so delicious, I can’t stop eating them.” We all shared a polite but hearty laugh.  “I need to duck in here,” I told them as we got to the next store I had to visit, “have a good one.” “You, too,” they corporately replied, “enjoy your lychees!” Ten minutes or so later I saw them all again, crossing my path as I headed back home; we shared a convivial grin and nod and went on along our respective paths. 

When I got back home I was still tickled by these interactions with the older Chinese lychee eaters.  I dropped my straining shopping bags on the counter and my own lychee sack tumbled out, fragrance pouring through the red mesh.  I cut the sack open, plucked out a likely candidate, sliced though its knurled hide and deep enough to free the pit.  Clear nectar ran over my fingers and down to my elbows, as I inhaled the scent and then popped the dripping fruit into my mouth.

I was instantly overwhelmed by almost unbearable sweetness, so irresistible that I found myself licking the dividends off my fingers, wrists and forearms.  I immediately shucked and munched another, and another, and another.  After half a dozen or so I slowed down to see if they liked me as much as I liked them but luckily it turns out that they did.  No upset stomach, no allergic irritation, no anaphylactic shock.  Just pure sweet lychee goodness.  So I scarfed a few more and then dumped the rest in a nice display-type bowl to enjoy at my leisure. 

Over the next several days I ate a lot of lychee, each one equally delectable and succulent.  Once I’d had them for nearly a week, however, I began to notice little white flecks on them.  Seems I’d let them sit out too long and they’d gone and molded up on me.  Reluctantly I threw them away.  However, lingering still is the quadruple sweetness of their sugary perfume, their abundant juice, their delightful flesh, and the fortuitous conversation they inspired.  Best five bucks I’ve spent in months.

MORAL: When the fruit is ripe, take it and enjoy it.  If you let it get away you will never know what you’ve missed. 

Monday, August 13, 2007

Multifarious Surplussage: Good Humor Edition

Sometimes change is for the better, though it’s almost always disruptive, and I like a good disruption as well as the next guy.  You just take’em as they come.  For our part, we had a mellow weekend featuring a great trip to the zoo (where Z got to drive electric kiddy cars around a short track as part of a toy company promo, and did a lot of touching at the children’s zoo), as well as a bike ride.  No, let’s make that more momentous – BIKE RIDE!  It’s been so freaking long since I’ve put in quality saddle time, but this short jaunt really felt very comfortable.  The bike moved easily under me, the brakes felt smooth and safe, and I actually felt strong both during and after the ride.  Okay, yes, it was just across the freaking bridge and back, but did you see those overstuffed tourists from Oroville who were wheezing along on rented tandems?  I KICKED THEIR BUTTS.  Yay for me. 

so, instead of dumping out a whole heavyhanded, overwritten essay on some damn thing or other (and I’m ready to turn a corner, the next one is all happy and stuff), here’s three random pad-stuffer items that have been improving my life lately:

ITEM: A gift for Z from the landlady: Haw flakes!!  They’re packed with hand-flaked haw, like you remember from mama’s apronstrings!  Mama’s haw, repackaged for our delectation, and since Z ain’t eating his share, I’m takin’ up the slack!  It’s Haw City, baby, and I’m the mayor and chief of police!  Hawsome!

ITEM: A recent discovery: about the same time I realized that the fake eggs don’t make for very fluffy pancakes, my pancake batter suddenly became about half again more productive.  Even when I tried a test batch with real eggs the phenomenon revealed itself: batter that used to make eight super-heavy pancakes, is now making 12 much lighter ones.  Whatever happened, I like it this way.  Anything that enhances pancakes, enhances life. 

ITEM (MULTI): A few months ago I rode muni with an energetic Russian dude who got me into a conversation about great cities around the world (most of which he’d claimed to have lived in for some time, and I believed him, he was so tanned and wiry that he looked like person jerky).  He went on for a while about Dubai, which I’ve been paying some more attention to myself what with their incredible building spree and the world’s tallest building still under construction there and all the crazy stuff they’re doing with the island building and the petrocash and all.  The Russian guy was talking about how they’re the Las Vegas of the Mid-East – you can drink, carouse, whatever you like.  The Saudis and Omanis and those dudes go to Dubai to let it all hang out.  What happens in Dubai, I suggested, stays in Dubai.  He nodded enthusiastically.  It made me wonder about how we could get some of that good Dubai vibe in our overly-constrained lives of western wanna-be decadence, and I thought the following three options might bring things to the next level without undue feelings of disruption or loss of masculinity:

Ways to Get More Dubai Into Our Ordinary Lives:
* Listen to the music of The Dubai Brothers
* Shop at Best DuBai
* Dubai-Curiosity

Enjoy monday! Back with the plums and lychees soon!

Thursday, August 09, 2007

Parke and Go

Installment the last: Dang, the Place Sure Is Changing:

My neighborhood is undergoing a fair share of revitalization. Dusty old stores have been rediscovered, new shiny ones have opened or expanded to general acclaim, and quirky little taverns and cafes are now crowded with hipsters both authentic and faux.  What was originally a collection of cemeteries amid the dunes, and has been a drowsy outlying ‘burb since I moved here, is now becoming the place to be - or at least, a place to be. The Richmond: SF’s Williamsburg.  Or something.

I’ve enjoyed watching this transformation over the past 15 or so years, but of course it has come at a price - a price I can now see is being paid at the corner of Stanyan and Geary.  The Park Walker has apparently left the building.

Geary is one of the main drags in town, rolling greyly from the FD to the pacific. It was plotted early and got its name in about 1850.  Stanyan is an important cross-town route, running north from the interior greenbelt of Mt Sutro through Cole Valley, up past where Haight turns into Golden Gate Park, and all the way to the big elegant spreads near CPMC.  It’s not really a commercial artery, though, and its terminus at Geary has been a fairly low key affair since before the graveyards thereabouts got dug up.  All that remains of the erstwhile serenity that prevailed back when the area was mostly boneyards is the extravagant beaux arts dome of the Columbarium lofting with green peacefulness high up behind a boring stripmall featuring a Kinkos and a Pier One.

It’s there, though, back behind the streets, and I’m always surprised to re-realize how few people know that it even exists. It’s really only easily visible form the driveway out of the BevMo parking lot.  It’s quite impressive from that vantage, as you pull from a buried car-hole along a steep driveway up to Stanyan; it looms before you, blocking the setting sun.... Anyway, until the BevMo moved in and made that particular view accessible to the public at large, I bet barely anybody even looked up to see the Columbarium’s exuberant supermortality.  They all just saw the Pier One, the Futon Shop, the weird windowless Chinese steakhouse and the Coronet Theater (of blessed memory) - and of course, across the street, the old Park Walker liquor store. 

The Park Walker went back to the main development surge in my neighborhood, back in the heart of the mid-century. It was a corner shop, a liquor store in the California mold - a few aisles, a bare sufficiency of groceries, and full options on snacks and beverages.  It’s the prototype of the 7-11, but with a lot more booze and no slurpees.  Sometimes, though, an Icee machine, rotating anachronistically behind a counter.  Those always made me vaguely sad for some reason.  But I’m not sure that’s the point I’m trying to make here.

I didn’t frequent the Park Walker - I had similar options nearer to home - but had I found myself one day out at Geary and Stanyan with a sudden urge for a Squirt and some Funyuns, I’d have gone right in there.  It was dark and minimal inside; the corner facade was sparsely decorated by panels above the windows that, nonetheless, by their throwback typography and overall authenticity, managed to evoke an era very clearly in my mind.  Not really near any important park, or parkway, I found its name inexplicable.  I liked to add an “e” to the first word and think of it as the dude who started it some fifty years ago: Parke Walker, he would have called himself. 

Ol’ Parke kept his liquor store going through the space age, the detente era, the Whipping Now of Inflation and right up to the millennium and the BevMo which it brought.

Okay, so I shop BevMo, okay?  It’s nothing I’m proud of but they’ve treated me right more often than not.  They’re not “my liquor store,” either - that honor’s reserved for a traditional specialist near my home.  But I do shop at BevMo.  They get more of my business than, say, Parke Walker ever did.

You’ve noticed by now, because you are a clever reader, that I keep referring to ol’ Parke Walker in the past tense. Honestly I didn’t even realize he was gone, but it sure looks like we’ve lost him now.  Some months ago I realized that the accordion gates guarding the windows there were closed, and never being re-opened.  I had been fooled for a time by the florescent beer signs glowing sleeplessly in the windows and the cumbersome one-letter-per-page windowsign advertising “FRESH SANDWICHES” so proudly, and so hollowly.... In fact, there were no fresh sandwiches; there was nothing fresh at the Park Walker whatsoever.  When I took the time to look, I noticed that its signs and windows were dusty and dull; the beer posters and flickering display lamps had taken on a ghastly, undead quality, and those runcible gates that shuttered tightly over the glass door’s “welcome” sign hadn’t been touched in months. 

I found myself near the ol’ Park Walker corner liquor store a few weeks ago and saw a shop frozen in time, as if someone had just left one night and never come back.  Shelves were stocked, time-puckered mail had piled up tall and wide, and months-old newspapers peeled and blistered in the undisturbed dust of a store suddenly abandoned.  The threshold is black now with sandy street dirt; there’s no sign on the door like the forlorn “WE ARE CLOSED FOREVER.” out at the veggie sandwich place, but the message is pretty damn clear nonetheless. 

I wondered about all that as I peered in at the long-locked door, in at the shelves and their lonely contents in the murky shadows.  I peered in, thinking about that, for a good ten or fifteen seconds.  Then I crossed the street and dropped some cash at BevMo. I guess I really have no right to complain.

It feels good to get that off my chest, and now we can move on to more cheerful matters. For example, while some places have closed, there’s a new master baker from Ireland who’s opened shop near my boy’s favorite playground, and I’ve already turned several people on to their luscious scones.  We’ve got killer authentic cheesesteaks right near my office, and they’re talking about building a 1200 foot tower downtown and a 100,000 foot art museum in the presidio.  Positive progress is being made.  I also finished a cool book last night, Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, and I feel energized.  The boy is keeping us up late, though, and waking up a lot, so it’s tough to find time to type these suckers up.  Today and tomorrow I’m at a conference, so I won’t even be able to do any lunch blogging.  Oh the humanity.  Meantime, have a great day, or whatever you’re having.  Let’s see how that works out for ya.

Monday, August 06, 2007

In Other News…. Look Elsewhere!

today, as respite from the maudlin crap I’ve been spewing, I’ve posted some photos on the photopage, going back to the trip in July to the Russian River.  You’ll need to check the monthly archives to see them all, I think - I don’t know how to get more than three or four on a page.  It is because I am a simpleton, and cannot function independently.  All hail simpleton! 

Friday, August 03, 2007

Heaven Forfend

While down in LA I ate well.  That’s not to say that all I ate was good for me, but I sure as hell enjoyed it.  I got to a fine deli much beloved of my youth, and to a hip very Californian place that has taken root where a favored old diner used to stand, very near where I grew up.  I even got to a Tommy’s Burgers - a truly iconic burgery that I’ve missed mightily.  They’ve built a shiny new stand not far from my old synagogue and I prevailed on dad to take me there; I got a double cheebogie with fries and a drink and a cool t-shirt as well.  But that tasty, tasty burger, and my memories of the old local diner that is now no more, reminds me, as I sit here too late on a schoolnite, that I have another story to tell about how, Damn, The Place Sure Is Changing ...

I’ve mentioned a certain local burgery a few times on this site but I’ve rather given its neighbor short shrift.  For the longest time it was Einer’s Diner, a tacky and neglected sandwich shop with a handpainted marquee sign and a goofy crossword-style graphic painted on the big front window in mustard yellow.  It was, like the adjacent burger place, intimately proportioned, but it also had a cool little counter outside the front window that could have been a way to provide service directly to the sidewalk.  Could have been.  I never saw it in use. 

So, Einer’s was run by a succession of under-achieving delimeisters, and the place seemed bound for failure.  When it finally inevitably, ended its run a few years back, in its stead came a much more interesting resource: viet sandwiches and high-end pastries.  I’m a big fan of the viet sammich, and the little tortes and cheesecakes and petites-fours these guys sold were amazing - enrobed in chocolate, festooned with ganache, dense and rich and beautiful… the savory coursework was pretty good too, crunchy and spicy and meaty, if significantly less highfalutin’.  It was a cool little shop.  I was sorry to see them close, but after only a year or two, they did.  It seemed that was just the way that things there went. 

Then came their replacement, which did nothing to assuage my disappointment at the loss of my favorite sammich and cake dispensary: an undwerwhelming joint with a low-budget adhesive-letter sign stuck letter-by-letter to the front window that read “HEALTHY HEAVEN - Asian Veggie Sandwiches.” A couple of washed-out 8 x 10s of some desolate-looking sandwiches leaned against the inside of the glass and two identical golden good-luck cats grinned vacantly out therefrom over the sidewalk counter with forepaws raised in a salute to prosperity.  The menuboard was, again, comprised of hand-placed adhesive letters, and was larded with misleadingly euphemistic names for sandwiches full of tofu or gluten, like “turkey” and “pork.” The cooler was stocked with soda and the naked walls seemed to close in on the ever-empty little tables. 

After a time, Healthy Heaven began to keep less and less regular hours.  Signs, handwritten with a black marker on white notepaper, were taped to the inside of the fenestrated door, referencing vacations and delayed return dates.  As I walked past I’d notice a jar of mustard left out for weeks on end, joined after a while by a mostly-empty jar of mayo.  There were increasingly abundant flies lying on their backs and sides against the inside of the front window.  The shop was so neglected that it became an object of sport for me.  I snickered at the abandoned condiments and dusty countertops and especially at the hand-lettered sign that finally appeared taped up on the inside of the glass of the front door, black felt marker on a half-sheet of plain white typing paper: WE ARE // CLOSED // TODAY. 

That little sign’s been stuck to the inside of the Healthy Heaven door for several months now, and the joke’s sort of worn off.  Somebody snuck in and cleaned up the mustard, mayo and flies, but other than that the place has been in a state of suspended decay, with only a pile of junk mail growing under the dropslot as evidence of time’s inexorable march.  Each time I’ve gone past that shop for months now it’s been closed “TODAY.” It just wasn’t funny any more.  It was starting to get a little sad, actually.

That corner was turned, from putatively funny to officially not, sometime last week.  A new sign was stuck to the door - this time, on the outside, so no entry into the shop’s pristine vacancy needed be perpetrated.  The new sign is written with the same black marker, in the same blocky print, as the original WE ARE // CLOSED // TODAY., but overcovers and supplants the word TODAY. with the word “FOREVER.” FOREVER., with a terminal period at the end - full stop, if you will.  The coffin has been irrevocably closed.  Someone came by and put a permanent, definitive end to what had been a lingering shadow existence.  Healthy Heaven is no more.

I can’t say I’ll miss going there, since I never did.  However, now that they’re gone, there’s too tragic a fatalism in their hand-scrawled valedictory.  I understand that they’re not going to open again, that those two good luck cats are nothing but ironic commentary on a commercial failure like all too many others in this age, in this town, in this location.  But that “FOREVER.” tag is really getting me down.  At least “TODAY.” held out hope.  “FOREVER.” may be more accurate, but it’s rather more so than I really need it to be.