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.