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Cheap Eats

Wiped clean

David Talbot
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Wiped clean

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS You never know where in the world you’re going to be when the time comes to regroup. Or in my case re-re-re-re-re-re-re-regroup. I keep having to have these little sit-downs with myself. Or lie-downs, if I happen to be at home alone or in the woods, where one can assume a fetal position and howl without attracting too much comment. Is it possible she knows what I’m going through?

For example: Greenbrae.

Must stop wondering. But is it a state of mind, or a suburb of San Rafael? Or Larkspur? Or is it Larkspur? Whatever the fuck, a river runs through it, or at least a creek. And there is also the Bon Air Shopping Center.

The best way to forget Angela Kreuz, according to Forgetting Sarah Marshall, is to meet, make, and fall in love with new people. Since Rachel (Mila Kunis) is a fictional character, I decided to focus my attention on men again. Why not? They are reliable and brave, and, if one day Angela Kreuz changes her beautiful mind, I could just tell my future ex-husband, "Oops, I’m a lesbian."

And what could he say? He would just have to sit there and be brave and reliable — while I explained who Angela Kreuz was: some woman who doesn’t respond to my e-mails but does Google herself; someone I’d known many, many years ago who pretended to be a man but wasn’t, but it didn’t matter because I loved her beyond gender, beyond fear, who tore my heart out one New Year’s Day morning in Germany, before coffee. Then wrote to France to tell me, in some of the most poorly worded English I had ever seen in any language, that I was mentally unstable, she’d been afraid to eat with me in the end because she thought I might poison her —

"Wait!" My future ex-husband, having been handpicked by me from all the world’s really top-shelf men for precisely this purpose, would bravely, reliably interrupt me. "Before coffee?"

So, yeah, so that was pretty much "the plan" as I drove my brother’s shitty van to the Bon Air Shopping Center in Greenbrae. To meet a man I’d met online who must, I don’t know, live in Greenbrae or some such something, because why else would you drink your coffee in a shopping center?

Not to mention meeting your future ex-wife there.

But the really depressing thing is — and after this sentence it’s going to be all sunshine not only to the bottom of the page but sideways into next week, I promise — that I find myself willing to overlook all these crap shortcomings (e.g., drinking coffee in shopping centers) to potentially meet the potential doofus-of-my-dreams, because — hey — who knows? Right?

They know. Immediately. She drives … that? Wait, did she just spit getting out of her car? Is that a sunflower seed shell between her teeth? Hay in her hair? And what’s that smell?

My soccer scrapes and bruises don’t show up on photographs. I do let my adoring male public know, before they behold me in actual person, that I am essentially a chicken farmer, but what’s charming in words, and missing from pictures, breaks deals in person. Or in other words: dudes ain’t buyin’ it. Still. And I had to wonder, sitting by myself at the fake fire pit outside on the sidewalk, Bon Air Shopping Center, beautiful Marin County evening, how much longer … Who? … What? … I just had to wonder.

Which you can only do for so long, in my experience, before you need a hamburger. Or better yet a pulled-pork sandwich with fried onions on it. Besides Peet’s, the Bon Air Shopping Center has a goofy surfer restaurant called Wipeout.

Like a good faux cowgirl chicken farmer, I ate at the faux fire, dripping real pork juice and hot sauce all over my favorite jeans, and I swear, just when I started to think, Fuck Angela Kreuz, I’m going to become a man-hating old-school lesbian … my cell phone shook. An accidental poem from a beautiful woman in Hollywood: "I love your punctuation. Your sentence structure turns me on. Especially your use of colons: like this."

WIPEOUT BAR AND GRILL

Mon.–Thurs. and Sun 11 a.m.– 10 p.m.;

Fri.–Sat. 11 a.m.–11 p.m.

302 Bon Air Center, Greenbrae

(415) 461-7400

MC/V

Full bar

Glum and glummer

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Glum and glummer

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS Standing in my funny little yellow kitchen, 10 at night, pressing a package of frozen peas to my swollen jaw and looking glumly at a plate on the table, leftover from dinner three hours earlier. It was a half-ravished pork steak, long gone cold and congealy. Which is one of my two favorite ways to eat pork — the other being warm and nice. The frozen peas?

The frozen peas had to do with a friendly, casual pickup soccer game from which I had just returned and during which — in a friendly, casual way — I had been elbowed in the jaw so hard that my ears clogged and my head hurt. There was a loose lump of something in my chin, which was, in spite of the ice-pack peas, witching ever outward and rapidly turning as purple as a purple Popsicle.

Worst of all though, as I was just finding out the hard way, it hurt like hell to chew. This is like when piano players get their fingers mangled in a mining disaster. Everyone goes: Oh, how tragic! Except some people go: What were piano players doing in the mine?

See? So, similarly, while I have your sympathy (I feel certain) I have also raised the question: What was I doing leaving half a pork steak on my plate in the first place? It’s not like me, I know, I know, to not finish my dinner. Me!

Not to mention: pork!

Well, but I was running late for the stupid soccer game, you see, and so I thought, innocently enough, that I would leave this warm, nice meat on my table and come back in three hours to take care of it, cold and congealy.

Oh, the tragedy! Am I right?

Yes, but I wasn’t alone, either. Misery does love company, and my co-miserable comrade, the Maze, was looking even glummer than me, albeit less clobbered. He showed up at Garfield Park toward the end of the game just to walk me home. Plus he gave me his last two ibuprofens. How romantic, huh?

You wish! He doesn’t like me like that, which wouldn’t normally stop me from going after someone, true, except that he doesn’t like pork, either. And that is the deal breaker.

The Maze’s misery was less physical than my own. Poor cat, he doesn’t play competitive team sports, and so his wounds tend to be less responsive to ibuprofen, or peas. Like a lot of people, he just vaguely sort of hurts. Feels unfulfilled artistically, lonely in general, and doesn’t know what to do. What he needed was someone to talk to, whereas what I needed was a bath. A bath, a good night’s sleep, and some heavy duty makeup or I was going to have to cancel dates.

“Maze,” I said, mustering up all my compassion, empathy, and social skills. “Get the fuck out of here. Go home.” And I held the door open.

Well, but all kidding aside, I doubt he went home feeling any less lonely. While my bath was running, I tried to chew pork again, and couldn’t. And the next morning my jaw felt better but looked even worse.

I had pork and oatmeal for breakfast.

For brunch I went to Chilango, with Sockywonk and her badass hockey playing cross-dresser boyfriend. Me and her talked about heartache and hair, and me and him talked about sports and hair, and heels, and everyone was happy. Plus the duck flautas were fantastic, so …

Duck flautas? This is going to cost a fortune, isn’t it? Nah. It ain’t no taqueria, true, but even though you can get $12 filet mignon tacos at the Castro District’s new(ish) fancy pants Mex joint, you can also get huevos rancheros for $6. Which is right in line with Chavas and other cheapo joints.

The duck flautas were $9.

Tortilla soup, excellent. Guacamole, good. The chips were warm and homemade and the salsas were delicious. But best of all, at 11 a.m. on a weekend morning, there was nobody there but us. Of course, they don’t open until 11 a.m. 

CHILANGO

Daily: 11 a.m.–10 p.m.

235 Church, SF

(415) 552-5700

MC/V

Beer and wine

 

That po’ boy

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
That po’ boy

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS There is something pretty exquisite about being stood up by a date. When I find out what it is, I’ll be sure to let you know. Meanwhile, you’ll just have to take my word for it. Words.

The stander-upper was someone I’d bonked back before I accidentally fell in love with whatsername. We’d had a long coffee date that turned into a long walk in the park that turned into making out for a long time on a park bench, which of course turned into going to the grocery store to buy pork.

And a bottle of wine.

Now, I had a very strict policy back then of never having sex with someone on a first date. I have since added an amendment forbidding me to have more than one date with a person in a single day. Because somewhere between the pork and the wine we determined that since we’d driven separate cars from the grocery store to my house, this dinnery business was technically our second date.

So, yes, sex happened. Then, like a lot of guys who sleep with me once, he became obsessed with two seemingly contradictory thoughts: how to sleep with me again, and how to never ever, under any circumstances, sleep with me again. Thus he would e-mail me every other night: He had to see me immediately or else, as I read it, his hair would catch on fire and his penis would rocket away from his body, through the roof of his house, into outer space, and then back down into the atmosphere where of course it too would be consumed in flames and therefore ruined.

Not wanting that, I would cancel whatever plans were cluttering my calendar and we’d make a date — which he would cancel at the last minute because his mom had a tumor, or his car blew up, or his son or sister (or in many cases both) had been taken aboard an alien spacecraft and needed everyone’s prayers for a while.

I’m a trusting sort, and pretty patient, I think, but after 60 times I told this cat to get lost. Instead, he went into therapy. So I got lost. In Germans and Germany and so forth. Well, around the time things were busting apart for me there, I got another e-mail from him here saying he can’t stop thinking about me, he can’t believe he blew it with me, he’s gotten his shit together finally and wondered if I would give him another chance.

The man is tall. Very tall. So tall that I can wear four-inch heels and still only come up to his chin. For the first time in nine months, I wrote back. I said I was a broken woman, that I was coming home, and that eventually I would have coffee with him. That that was all we would have this time. No pork.

So we did, eventually, have our second first date — just coffee — and then, even more eventually, a very nice and only slightly less platonic dinner date, which ended with a soft, sweet kiss in his car.

It was our third (or in other words, fifth) date when he stood me up. And as I sat there waiting at my for-real favorite restaurant, Just For You, listening to live violin music, I decided that being stood up was pretty exquisite, maybe because it implies just dating, which implies uncertainty — and then when you finally give up and place your order, and the waitressperson as-discreetly-as-possible clears away that other place setting … then you do know. It’s decided, done, or over before it started, and sad, yes — but it’s a delicious sadness, because you still get to eat.

As I drenched my fried oyster po’boy in Crystal hot sauce, which somehow seemed even more romantic than violins, I decided that even if he was in the hospital having heart attacks, I would not give this tall man another “another chance.”

Three days later I finally heard from him. By e-mail. He’d been in the hospital, having heart attacks. Hopes I’ll still see him.

That same day eating with Last Straw’s childerns at Sunflower, Larkstraw, age 10, who aspires to be a writer, asked how long I’d been writing about restaurants, how much I get paid, do I ever write about the same place more than once, and if so, why?

“Any excuse I can find,” I said. Happy 20-Year Anniversary to: 

JUST FOR YOU

Mon.–Fri. 7:30 a.m.– 9 p.m.; Sat.–Sun. 8 a.m. – 3 p.m.

732 22nd St., S.F.

(510) 647-3033

MC/V

Beer and wine

 

Hugs and kisses

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Hugs and kisses

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS We left space for The Attack at our table. She wasn’t dead or anything, just at work. Some people are dead. And some are only faking it. Still others of course are in line at Walgreens, or otherwise alive and well and just generally off doing something. So they can’t have breakfast with you at Rico’s Diner, damn!

My mind is boggled and my knees are buckled and rug-burned, but apparently I have a little prettiness left, according to an old-school pimpishly attired dude in a cape and fedora, downtown Oakland.

"You are beautiful ladies," he said to me and Pod, in passing. "You keep that up now!"

You keep that up now. Keep it up. Keep up the beauty.

Pod has a curling-iron burn on one of her cheeks.

When we saw the guy again he smiled even bigger, pumped his fist instead of tipping the fedora, and said pretty much the same things: "Beautiful" and "you keep that up now." I was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, a few flakes of last night’s mascara, and chicken-fried steak flavored lip gloss.

You keep that up now.

Beauty is hard to define. Like wet soap, life, and a live fish, beauty — once defined — is also hard to hold on to. It requires concentration. Sometimes you need a coach. Sometimes you need a lover, and sometimes your lover sucks, strains, and presses the beauty right out of you and then you need coaches and cheerleaders again to get it back.

Thank you, pimpishly attired fedora-tipping and fist-pumping dude. Thank you Pod. Thank you The Attack. And thank you Rico’s, for supplying the chicken-fried steak flavored lip gloss.

And, oh, so many other kinds of hot sauce. It gave Pod and me the idea to have a "hot sauce tasting" instead of a "wine tasting" party. And this gives me the idea to have a "lip gloss tasting" party after that.

Which reminds me of a rainy day in La Rochelle, a beautiful port town on the west coast of France where, as a recent romantic refugee, I participated materially in this January’s humidity levels.

I was with my chicken farming comrade on her one day off, shopping for All Things Brown, when we saw a tall, cute man standing in a crowded square with a small sign saying, in English, "Free Hugs." And he didn’t seem to be collecting money or selling anything. And he didn’t look like he smelled bad. And I have never been more in need of hugs so I walked right up to him and hugged him. If nothing else, this gave my chicken farmer’s daughter, who is 11, something to giggle about for the rest of this year. Plus I got to learn my first French phrase, Lâchez moi, or "Let go of me."

Now I don’t need hugs anymore. I need kisses, and to learn how to say ne lâchez pas de moi, s’il vous plaît in English.

"Mmm," says the dreamy dreamboat of my dreams, "What’s that hot sauce you’re wearing?"

El Yucateca. Extra extra hot. Which goes very good with chicken-fried steak and gravy, by the way. Not that Rico’s needs the boost. It was one of my favorite chicken frieds that I can remember. And the over-easies were good, and the omelet I had the first time I went there was great.

I love this place. It’s simple, delicious, and cheap. They do standard American breakfast stuff, plus burgers (which I haven’t tried yet), and veggie and vegan things (which I never will). And it feels like you’re eating on a train, I think because the kitchen’s in the middle of the room, and you have to place your order at a counter there. Plus all the windows. Although, I have to admit that the corner of 15th and Franklin streets does tend to stay a little still.

One of the most beautiful things I ever saw: my curling-iron burnt pal Pod — who is a dot artist, after all — carefully dispensing drops of I-forget-which hot sauce around the breakfast sandwich on her plate. I don’t know exactly what she was going for, but it was a Goldsworthy worthy masterpiece.

You keep that up, now, Pod.

RICO’S DINER

Mon.–Sat.: 10 a.m.–2:30 p.m.

400 15th St., Oakl.

(510) 444-8424

Cash only

Beer

Duck me

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Duck me

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS My cowboy hat had mold in it. My chicken farmer coat had mold in it. Even the buttons were fuzzy. My brother doesn’t take baths, he takes showers, and so the outdoor tub was full of insect skeletons, spiders, spider webs, and junk mail. There is a rumor that a guest of his hid some weed in the chicken coop. Not that I’m interested, but I took a look anyway and only saw straw.

I am tempted to get chickens again. There is no buried treasure that chickens will not eventually uncover, and I’ve always kind of wanted stoner chickens. I’ve always wondered what it would be like if they, as a species, were a little more chill and slept longer. Not that it would matter much to me at this point. Ten years of chicken farming has permanently programmed me to snap awake at first-light. In the year or so since I last farmed actual chickens, nothing has changed on this front.

Anyway, I don’t know if I can keep this place. My brother, who had been subletting it, went bust and lit out for Ohio, leaving me, for the moment, his van. Which burns oil, has a badly cracked windshield, no horn or high-beams, electrical problems, and a slow leak in at least one tire. What this all reminds me of, naturally, is every other car I’ve ever had except for that last little one, the new one, which I sold last year when I sold my soul to the devil, and my heart to someone even meaner.

So wheels being wheels, I am able at will to visit my old, now-haunted shack in the woods, at least until the brother comes back.

Should I get chickens?

Can anyone help me pay the rent? Surely I must have me some friends in town who like to sneak away and be haunted for a weekend by the ghost of broken water heaters, all-night face-touching in the dark, and the squawks of long-ago stewed chickens, scratching and pecking from dusk to dawn in search of rumored grass.

The editor of the paper I write for, if not the world, wrote to me while I was still in Europe and said, “If you come back, I will buy you duck soup.”

Technically he said when you come back, but for fun I want to think of this — this duck soup business — as just that: business. Like a contract extension. Or a contract renegotiation. Or a contract.

So correct me if I’m wrong, my lawyerly readers, but I interpret it like this: If I come back (which I did), what’s in it for me is one bowl of my favorite thing to eat in the whole wide world, duck noodle soup, and — as a kind of a signing bonus — an unwritten, nonverbal, body-languageless, and in-no-way-even-hinted commitment to continue to publish this column for as long as I am alive and can make a sentence — whichever comes first.

Well.

That’s a no-brainer, innit? No brain, no heart, no soul, but I’ve still got me my stomach, don’t I? And a healthy appetite and this shit van for a month, and two places to live and at least two bikes …

So I wrote back just as soon as I was in the country, give or take exactly 13 days, and agreed in spirit to the editor of the paper I write for’s proposal. Then I donned my best business skirt and matchingest sneakers, hopped on one of my at-least-two bikes, and pumped it to the Tenderloin to iron out the details.

The details: wide egg noodles, one whole, delicious, fall-apart tender duck leg quarter, and wontons in a wonderfully businesslike broth. Times two. As a show of support and solidarity, Mr. Redmond ordered the same exact thing!

So I told him my story, like I tell all my friends, only instead of making him cry or puke or curse or have to walk around the block a few times to clear his head, he came back with an even better story. And by better I mean worse. Which makes me feel kind of actually, I don’t know, good — knowing that shit happens to everyone, even editors.

It’s no frills, not undiscovered, cheap-even-if-you-have-to-pay-for-it, and by far my new favorite restaurant.

HAI KY MI GIA

Thu.–Tue.: 8 a.m.–6 p.m.

707 Ellis, SF

(415) 771-2577

Cash only

No alcohol

 

Blink

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Blink

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS He was tapping a red-tipped cane, staying close to the buildings, and sometimes bumping into them. We greeted each other in passing. And the second person I saw that morning, walking to BART in the dark, was using a red-tipped cane too, but also holding onto her man’s arm. Her hat was tall and adorned with either fruit, flowers, or both. I took off my glasses and wiped them on my shirt.

The children have been wonderful. Boink, who started reading books to his little sister while I was away, says "I love you" about a million times a day now. One of the first things we did was make gnocchi, and now Popeye the Sailor Baby is old enough to help roll them too.

The Chunks de la Cooter remember all our songs and games, and Chunk II hardly ever lets go of me when I’m there. As if, more than even me, she can’t believe I’m back and ain’t lettin’ go this time.

I feel like I’ve just woken up from a really, really bad dream, rolled over in my sweat-soaked life, and blinked into the also-blinking eyes of my four True Loves, age two, two, three, and four. These four, they give my heart right back to me.

Boink thinks we should open a restaurant together. Inclined to believe him, I picture the boy 14 years from now, standing on a step-stool next to me, lightly dusted in flour from his fuzzy blond head to his pink tennis shoes — only I guess by then he’ll have flour in his beard too.

Maybe in the meantime — his parents and child labor laws willing — I can practice him in my imaginary guerilla Guerrero Street pastry war against Tartine. He can sell lemonade to the liner-uppers across the street while I learn to cook. Or better yet: limeade.

The burritos I have eaten have tended to be from Cancun, of course, with Earl Butter, and of course El Farolito with Dan-Dan the Fireman and Phenomenon. With one exception. That was El Buen Sabor, with Last Straw Sullenger, who is helping me to curtain and depression-proof my new hovel.

And she bought me a burrito for lunch.

Now I was never very fond of Good Taste during my previous stomps through the Mission, I forget why. But Earl Butter told me El Buen Sabor got better, and I trust him, as you know.

As you also know, if you’ve been reading Cheap Eats while I was out there getting my ass kicked, the buttery one just doesn’t venture beyond a two-block radius of his house at lunchtime or dinnertime. Or breakfast time, for that matter.

So what I think he likes about El Buen Sabor is that it’s the closest beans to home for him, and now me. Well, their two table-top squeezy-thingie salsas are excellent — both the red and the green. They both have some seriousness to them, and are good not only on chips and burritos, but back home poured over slightly stale and heavily buttered drop biscuits. I speak from first-hand leftover experience. But personally, I don’t think the place is any better than I think I used to think it was. That is: nothing special.

They do have brown rice and spinach tortillas, as Last Straw proved by asking for, and getting, both. With her vegetarian burrito.

Whereas I got my vegetarian burrito with as much unhealthiness as possible: white rice, refried beans, and carnitas. It was good, but honestly, unless you live one block away and are Earl Butter, or have recently eaten Mexican food in Regensburg, Germany … it’s nothing to write home about.

Let alone a restaurant review.

So now, if you’ll excuse me, I would like to go back outside again, before it gets dark again, and look into one of those stenciled sidewalk gems again, for a while longer.

This one:

I WOULD STEAL THE STARS FOR YOUR and then I can’t quite make out the last word but I believe it to be HAT.

There is more than one way to read this.

EL BUEN SABOR

Daily: 10 a.m.–10:30 p.m.

697 Valencia, SF

(415) 552-8816

D/MC/V

Beer & wine

L.E. Leone’s new book is Big Bend (Sparkle Street Books), a collection of short fiction.

Neighborliness

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Neighborliness

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS My soccer team is good. They win without me by gaudy scores like 18-1. When I’m there we still win, mostly, but with better manners. And sometimes we tie or even lose, but only when I’m there. This makes me feel needed.

After games the guys drink beer out of Dixie cups then go grocery shopping, because they’re married, and the girls, being single, go out for brunch or lunch or breakfast and talk about the guys. We wonder what they said, since they speak Portuguese and we don’t. My assumption has always been that they are yelling at me.

They play hard, but then they seem so nice, with their Dixie cups and shopping lists. Of course I am in love with my city right now, and all the people, grocery stores, and restaurants in it.

Even Tartine, which is the view from my new window, and on weekends especially is loused with line-loving wahoos. I love Tartine because I ate a sandwich from there once, a few years ago, and as I recall it was pretty fucking great. But also I love them because they represent a very special challenge to me, and you all know how I appreciate a good challenge.

So: my long-term goal in my new go-round at 18th and Guerrero streets is to annoy Tartine out of business. Just for fun! And not by saying mean things about them either. Obviously some talented folks are putting out some cool beans over there, to line ’em up like they do. No, I have in mind a more neighborly way to undo them.

First, let me fire up my tiny shitty old studio-size gas oven, then I will have to learn how to make morning buns better than theirs. Check that, then I will have to learn what a morning bun is. Hold on a second.

(Insert sound of idle whistling here)

I’m back. OK, mmm, hold on a second, my fingers are pretty sticky. OK, don’t worry, this is not a review of Tartine. I’m not going to say a word about their morning buns, only that it might take me a long time to put them out of business. But that’s fine, because time is a thing I have. Time, a tiny oven, and the means to make a cup or two of coffee.

My plan, then: to swing my gated window open and play my steel drum so enticingly that everyone standing in Tartine’s line will cross the street to see what gives. Then … I will give. I will offer them morning buns, mugs of coffee, and semi-intelligent conversation, for free of course, and so dazzled will they be by my neighborliness that they will eventually forget all about why they came to the Mission in the first place.

It’s a dream, and a distant and misty one at that, I know.

Meanwhile, for the last couple Sundays while all of Chestnut Street has been lined up outside my Mission District window, I have been on Chestnut Street having brunch, lunch, and breakfast at the wonderful and empty Chestnut Diner.

My new favorite restaurant! It was turned on to me by Alice Shaw the Person, who, having a car, carts us to and from our soccer games, which have been conducted lately in the Marina.

The omelets are great. The hash browns are fine. The décor is fantastic: light-blue-topped chrome stools around a J-shaped counter, with booths on either side.

I just can’t recommend the burgers, because they don’t understand rare there. Listen:

Me: Can I have that rare please?

Waitressperson: Half?

Me: (thinking, half?) Huh? No, Rare.

She: Oh, well.

Me: No, rare.

She: Half?

And so on until I gave up and ordered an omelet. But she looked sad about this, so I explained what rare meant and ordered a bacon burger. That way, when it came overcooked (which of course it did), it would still taste good. Which of course it did. *

CHESTNUT DINER

Daily: 7 a.m.–3 p.m.

1312 Chestnut, SF

(415) 441-1168

MC/V

No alcohol

L.E. Leone’s new book is Big Bend (Sparkle Street Books), a collection of short fiction.

Homecoming

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1
Homecoming

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS Dear Earl Butter,

Thank you for putting real flowers and tiny plastic battery-operated candles in your closet for me. I slept like an angel that snores like a truck driver. Speaking of which, thank you for the chili and cornbread too. It made my homecoming that much sweeter and spicier, in addition to giving me gas. Which I am happy to have, and allowed to have, praise God, now that I’m back in a Free Country.

Plus the Maze of course, being beautiful, was waiting for me at the airport with a huge colorfully hand-painted sign that read, “Welcome home, Dani. We love you.” Signed: “The Bay Area.”

He admits having had help with the wording from at least one person, and with the painting from a couple more, so maybe there is some truth to this. If so, the feeling is very very mutual.

I will never leave the Bay Area ever again, not even to go camping. Just think, while my ex and my ex’s ex-ex are holed up together in their dark, cold, provincial town in southern Germany, clinging to each other’s small corner of obscurity, writing and editing their mediocre novel that is set in San Francisco, I get to live here. And love and be loved, and play and work and eat here.

I can’t speak for working, exactly, but it’s the greatest playing and eating place in the world that I know of. Here.

There, do you know what they eat, Earl? Well, the ex’s ex-ex doesn’t cook, and my ex’s specialty is ramen noodles. That’s what they call cooking. When they go out, it’s for sushi. Really really bad landlocked German sushi. Imagine!

Meanwhile, I have been shucking fresh-picked oysters and scallops on the west coast of France, inventing home-raised cherry chicken-heart stew, eating up Paris and Rome, hobnobbing with extraterrestrials, crunching into crack conch in the Caribbean, and passing the guitar with a couple Haitian boys outside their single-family chicken-coop shack.

And now … now I get to go get a burrito. Whenever. The fuck. I want. Because that’s what San Francisco is. It’s “what kind of beans,” the best of all-things-edible, and raw onions and garlic no matter who you might breathe on afterward. No problem. We live here.

Anyway, I do. You do. And I do again. I can’t think of a more appropriate way to celebrate my 20-year anniversary of moving to San Francisco than moving back to San Francisco.

St. Patrick’s Day 1990 was the day. I still remember my amazement, the air and the sky. Thank you for getting me back in, Earl — albeit on the ground floor, literally, with an option on your upstairs apartment’s closet. But I breathe better in closets than I did in small-town Germany, and I see more sky in one heartbeat here, through my dirty, barred sidewalk window, than I saw all this winter there. The Winter of My Discombobulation.

And now, if you will excuse me, m’dear, I have to go recombobulate.

Peace and pickles,

Your L.E.

Dear Lady of SF,

That is great. We went to Urbun Burger because the Mission has a lot of places to eat. You wanted to walk around because you have returned. I know the area and fear I will never be able to leave, except, perhaps for my parents’ funerals. We went to the Community Thrift where 15 or so years ago, you found that really neat 49ers glass, and that made me jealous because I never, ever found a glass I really liked. Years later, when I read in your column that it had broken, I was happy. Karma, sigh, is on me.

But Urbun Burger. Lotta money, lotta meat. These burgers are 1/2 pounders. It was not $10 for my California Sensation burger, it was $9.50, and naturally I did not pay. There are a couple of burgers over $10, but they come with good fries. Super selection of condiments and a real nice, lively atmosphere. I enjoyed the colors in there. So did you.

And so it ends, my fit of usefulness to the good people of San Francisco. Yours begins anew. Welcome back. I hear it is a very good town.

Earl Butter

URBUN BURGER

Mon.-Thu. 11 a.m.–10 p.m.;

Fri.–Sat. 11 a.m.–3 a.m.; Sun. 11 a.m.–10 p.m.

581 Valencia, SF

(415) 551-2483

MC/V

Beer & Wine

L.E. Leone’s new book is Big Bend (Sparkle Street Books), a collection of short fiction.

 

Cooled and pickled

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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1
Cooled and pickled

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS  

Dear Earl Butter,

I think I know what the essential-oil-wielding hippies meant when they talked to me about personal growth and evolution. For example, I now believe in marriage. State-sanctified, and with as much paperwork as possible. I know it’s still only a 50-50 proposition, but at least it might weed out complete posers and the temporarily sane.

Stormy weather. The sea is choppy. We made it about halfway to the shipwreck then had to turn back, on account of motion sickness. That was a couple days ago and it’s been blowing ever since.

This morning I woke up in a state of disrepair and utter existential itchiness. Sitting on my air mattress, I leaned back against the bare wall, looked around the bare room in the empty guest house I occupy, and listened to the wind. I scratched my many insect bites and various rashes and wondered what I’ve wondered since I got here: how much will it cost me to change my return flight to tomorrow?

Instead of going over to the main house to wake up Jean-Gene and borrow his cell phone, I got out of bed and put my clothes in the refrigerator. I’m not sure how I knew this would help, but it did! Refolding my shirts and skirts, I felt finally soothed by the knowledge that thenceforth when I looked in the fridge I would be deciding what to wear. On the door, where ketchup goes, I put my socks, bras, and panties, and my bikini went nicely into the butter drawer.

When I finally went to get my brother it wasn’t to plan my escape, but to report that all my clothes were in the refrigerator.

“Right on,” he said.

I spent the rest of the morning in an artistic frenzy that was way more healing than arnica. I dragged our blow-up kayak into the dining room, turned its little yellow seats to face each other, set a cooler in the middle, and put a flower in an empty spinach can on top.

My three dildos I hung where wine glasses would go, upside down over the bar, and in lieu of liquor I staged all my lotions and sunscreens, some work gloves of Jean-Gene’s, a dust mask, and rolls of toilet paper and duct tape. Don’t tell Phenomenon, but I prayed all day a prospective buyer would drop in.

Thank you for finding a way to get a message to me here on this Web-forsaken island. The bottle washed up at sunset, and the words in it were just what I needed to hear. Food!

Indeed, since you’ve already given up, and I really ought to, I’m thinking we should probably get married. In church. Joel’s younger than us, right? He can be our kid. Between me and you, I think that boy could use some fucked-up parenting for a change, and I know I’d kill for a crack at eventual grandmotherhood. Think about it. It would make great copy, and anyway we might all be living in the same building.

Dearest Lady, Dearest-Dearest Lady,

Hello, I love Mr. Pickles! First, let me say — how could you not? Second, let me say they are great! And third, I love sandwiches! It’s hard to decide at Mr. Pickles because everything looks and sounds great. Joel got the Tony Soprano, which is salami and ham and mortadella and provolone cheese and Italian dressing ($6.99), and I got the Bear, which is hot roast beef and BBQ sauce and melted cheddar cheese ($6.99), and Joel paid. Imagine, way back when, Joel could have picked a different friend, and they could be enjoying Mr. Pickles on this guy’s yacht instead of Joel having to pay all the time.

— Sigh — nothing can get me out of the funk I just put myself in.

Except Mr. Pickles!

And Mr. Pickles himself stands outside the place like a pickle bandito with a mustache made out of hair. Imagine a pickle like that in the jar! A mustache made of hair! In his holster, mustard and mayo! I once had a goal to have more sandwiches in my life, but you know how things work out. Mr. Pickles makes you want to yell Mr. Pickles a bunch of times. I bet kids love to yell Mr. Pickles. I do too. Mr. Pickles! Mr. Pickles! Try it. Mr. Pickles! Hoorah!

MR. PICKLES SANDWICH SHOP

Mon.–Fri. 9 a.m.– 6 p.m.;

Sat.-Sun. 10 a.m.– 5 p.m.

3380 20th St., No. 103, SF

(415) 826-0143

Cash only

No alcohol

 

Shipwrecked

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1
Shipwrecked

 le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS

Dear Earl Butter,

As you go through life, never underestimate the importance of somewhere to sit. In fact, stand up right now and kiss your chair. Kiss one for me, too — the comfy cat-hair chair that I like — and use your tongue please, Earl. For me. I dream of that chair, and hope to be sitting in it two weeks from today.

Let’s not ever, ever again take furniture for granted, OK? Everyone talks about a roof over your head, clean water, something to eat, honest work, etc. Those things are important, sure, but my message is this: so are chairs.

Probably you are wondering about the process of soul-searching and/or method of meditation that led me to such a discovery. Well, welcome to the less sisterly aspect of my loopy family. I know you know what I’m talking about.

This time: As a favor to and from our brother and your friend Phenomenon, Jean-Gene the Frenchman and me occupy two multimillion dollar houses on North Caicos, which is an undeveloped island in the Caribbean. It’s not only not Ohio, it is also the furthest thing from Germany I could ever imagine — if not geographically, at least in tone. Think: 80 degrees, fluffy white clouds, a continuous breeze, palm trees, the sound of surf, powdery beaches, and swimmably soft blue water. For free!

Can I complain? Well, since I am drawn to impossible challenges, let me try: There’s nowhere to sit. Our spectacular beachfront houses, which Phenomenon helped build and lost more than his shirt on, are of course unsellable, and, for our purposes, unfurnitured. We eat lunch on the beach, which is nice, but breakfast is a stand-up affair, and for dinner we sit on coolers and eat off of luggage.

My brothers are, like me, undiluted (and therefore deluded) optimists. As such, we are susceptible to posers, and prayer. We are here to work. Well, anyway, Jean-Gene is always hammering, sawing, landscaping, and just generally trying to nicen up for the banks that will likely soon own these doomed homes. I’m washing windows, sweeping, mopping, and pruning. But let’s face it, most of the meaningful work I’ve been doing is on my tan. Not only because I hope to attract some emergency rebound loving upon my untriumphant return to San Fran. It also happens that the only place I can breathe is the beach.

A couple miles out there, where the reefer is, where the waves break, where the water gets deep and darker blue, is a very visible and highly metaphorish, to me, shipwreck. At night we sing Belafonte songs to it. I brought my steel drum.

By day, I can’t stop looking. I dream. I think I probably might be pretty beautiful. I know my steel drum is. The front half of the ship juts proudly out of the water, and then, after a gap, there’s the back half, cracked and tilted, a complete mess.

Like a crosswired siren, drawn fatally to shipwrecks, I am tempted to swim it. But Jean-Gene, always the peach, has an inflatable kayak. I’ve never been in a kayak, canoe, or raft that didn’t spill, but I can swim forever. I can float. I’m strong, right?

Same time, I know that I’m also in many respects myself a shipwreck. For example: this longing to be explored.

Dear Lady,

That is great. Me and Joel, we went to the NYBuffalo Wings, in which Joel got the BBQ steak sandwich ($6.49) and Earl got himself the chili cheese hot link ($4.98). Joel said, “This is hitting the spot” and later described the sandwich as very tasty. And with lettuce that really helped it along, Joel did say, crispy, and very fresh. Earl will say that when you get a chili dog, it’s one thing, but when it’s a chili hot link dog, and there’s cheese (sauce, I think), it is not out of line to expect a lot of flavor.

But Earl was left out in the bland cold a little bit. If your chili and your link don’t cut it, you can hit up a meal like this in all sorts of ways, condiments for example, like raw onions, relishes, jalapeños … there are literally a million of them, but none were offered. Also, Joel paid because Earl is broke.

NYBUFFALO WINGS

Mon-Thurs., 10 a.m.–11:30 p.m.;

Fri-Sat., 10:00 a.m.–2:30 a.m.;

Sun., 10 a.m.– 11:30 p.m.

665 Valencia, SF

(415) 863-7755

AE/MC/V

No alcohol

L.E. Leone’s new book is Big Bend (Sparkle Street Books), a collection of short fiction.

 

War and pensi

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
War and pensi

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS Dear Earl Butter,

I’m not mad at you for writing to me about German food. Nothing, not even the shit that I am in, can change the way I feel about sausage. In fact, I ate at Schmidt’s before I left, for practice, and ordered the same thing you did, and felt similarly, which is to say: happy.

Those were the days!

These are something else. I changed my return ticket to leave from Rome so as not to have to set foot on German soil, or even fly through German air space, ever again. Of course, it’s not their air or soil, per se, that I object to. I have no problem with German things, or even the things that German people do.

It’s the people themselves I hate — although, technically, I suppose, I don’t hate all of them. Or even most of them. I hate less than 10 German people. I hate two. Well, really, one.

But Earl, I have enough hatred for that one German person to probably qualify as a racist, or at any rate go to war. In Paris — did I tell you? — I stayed a half a block away from the Palais de l’Élysée. Baked Nicolas Sarkozy some cookies, just to let him know I was in the ‘hood, in case if he ever needed to borrow anything.

“I love your butter,” I said. I said if the Germans ever invaded his country again, not to bother with the White House — contact me directly. I would defend his cows with the passion and recklessness of a heart-broked chicken farmer from hell, which equals about 40,000 troops.

In Rome my cousin Stefano said, over homemade carbonara, “Non pensi, mia cugina. Non pensi. Ti voglio bene. No go into depression. You get strong, like me. Very important, no depression. No pensi.”

I’ll tell you a secret, Earl: Pensi means “think,” but I accidentally typed “penis” that last time, which made me laugh. Out loud. On the airplane. I’m on an airplane, trying not to penis. Cousin Stefano spent two months in a mental hospital after his wife cheated on him.

His mom, my Zia Carmella, is in the hospital dying. I stood by her bedside and watched her move her lips. Sometimes she was trying to eat, and sometimes she was trying to talk. My Italian’s not great. Her voice is almost gone. Her body too.

Italy’s a little warmer than France, and a lot warmer, in both senses of the word, than Germany. The people here actually want to talk to you, even if your Italian’s not so good. They are open-hearted, expressive, humorfully passionate people, and eaters, and they don’t care if you use your hands. An elegant, classy waitress in a nice restaurant laughed at me for eating the way they taught me to in Germany.

I hate to hate, Earl, but I have to at least try. I loved so much, it would be the end of me not to something. I would blow away. A German psychologist whose ex-ex never in eight years said “I love you” mistakes my passion for mental instability. I’ll take it.

“Ti voglio bene.”

My mentally unstable cousin, who met me twice, can say it. With tears in her eyes, my aunt, who can’t of course remember me, moves her lips.

Dearest Daniest,

That is great. I went to Pakwan in the Mission on 16th Street, between Valencia and Guerrero with Joel and Chris, who is your brother, and Mike, who is your cousin-in-law. Joel was getting used to being 42 that very day. And Mike, well, you know Mike, he lives in a house in Glen Park.

We enjoyed the saag gosht ($7.99), which is the delicious, spicy lamb with the spinach, the saag daal ($5.50), which is the lentils and spinach, the saag paneer ($6.99), which is the cheese balls and the spinach, the chicken tikka masala ($6.99), which is Joel’s favorite, and the fish curry ($6.99) which is the special, and very, very spicy. And by that I mean great. Plus the naan, Daani, the naan. We also enjoyed each other, very much.

yers,

Earl Butter

PAKWAN

Mon.-Sun., 11:30 a.m.–11 p.m.

3180 16th St, SF

(415) 255-2440

Cash only

BYOB

 

Souls and stars

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Souls and stars

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS Dear Earl Butter,

I have accidentally fallen into the hands of hippies. They come from Pleiades, which is not a planet but a star cluster. How cool is that?

I used to love to be able to say, "I come from San Francisco." Suddenly it seems boring. Still, I bet we have better Mexican food than they do on Pleiades. Or in the Pleiades. (Not sure how to say this. I’ll have to ask.)

Other important points to remember are the number seven, some thing (or place or person or pizza joint) called "the Source," and that the universe is pure love. Like every other believer in reincarnation I have met, these ones claim to be "old souls."

I asked what I always ask: if time doesn’t really exist, as they also claim, how can one soul be any older than another?

They look at me like I’m a very young soul — which I would rather be, between me and you, because your face isn’t wrinkly yet and you sleep better. But technically I haven’t figured out yet about soul, meaning I don’t believe I exactly have one.

As for the universe being pure love … all I can say is I miss the smell of chicken shit and the feel of cold, dead, free-range chicken hearts in my small white hands. Not to mention the livers, and the taste of liver. And the fresh scallops we cut still pulsing from their shells and fried in butter with garlic. I miss these things, and love.

It was hard to be in Paris, too, without a heart. My brother-in-law’s brother and his girlfriend were immediate sympaticos, but they had to go to work, and so I wandered the streets and museums in almost utter amazement and disbelief — mostly that I was alone, but also the architecture and art.

I should have never left Paris, like I should have never left the chicken farm before that. But here I am in the South of France, which reminds me of Northern California, except substitute olive trees for vineyards. Jean Gene the Frenchman, who met me here, is traveling with a German disaster of his own. She’s more depressed than I am, in spite of being an old soul from the Pleiades, and her German accent is not good for me.

Back at the car after a day of hiking and sitting on cliffs high over the Mediterranean Sea, she offered me her hand and said, "Let’s make a pact. We each give it six more months, and then kill ourselves."

I just looked at her like she was from some other planet, or star cluster. "I only have one life," I said, finally. "For me, suicide is not an option."

She seemed surprised. Nevertheless, she’s a very good driver. Today we went to visit an obscure half-ruined chapel in the mountains called Notre Dame de Oeufs, or Our Lady of Eggs. No lie. People light candles and leave eggs there. The hippies said some prayers. I looked at the eggs.

Dearest Dani,

That is great. I should stop saying so much great stuff about Joel, but here is one thing. He will eat lunch with you if you are in a pinch. We went to Schmidt’s. It is right near Joel’s office. It is a little pricey for me for lunch, but I enjoyed myself nevertheless. We had lunch for $10 each.

We each got the grilled sausage. Joel got the kielbasa, which I am familiar with from my childhood and from Timmy Binko. And I got the smoked wild boar.

Modest size plates with a good-sized sausage, delicious potato salad, and sauerkraut, sweet and hot mustards, absolutely great! We both picked the wrong day to go, because neither of us could have a beer, but they’ve got a beer list longer than the menu. We were both dying to have one. Plenty of other stuff on the menu, and chalkboards of specials. This place is dark and elegant, but simple. And what I enjoyed most was that it was quiet. If there was music playing, I didn’t hear any, and I found this very refreshing.

SCHMIDT’S

Daily: 11 a.m.–3 p.m., 5:30 p.m.–11 p.m.

2400 Folsom, SF

(415) 401-0200

Beer and wine

Cash only

It just so happens

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0
It just so happens

CHEAP EATS Dear Earl Butter,

Like a cat always lands on its feet, your chicken farmer lands on a chicken farm. Weirdo the Cat would be proud of me, according to the Mountain.

Hard to believe, but life sometimes does that to you. Just when you need them, voilà: chickens. I had no idea! I just had to get somewhere friendly, and by sheer chance on the same day the anvil fell on my head I got a mass e-mail from Fabienne Gagagaga, telling my whole family, among other things, to keep in touch.

I last saw Fabienne 10 years ago, at my dad’s wedding. She was working at that time in marketing. A couple days after my anviling, when I still hadn’t regained my shape and it looked like I wasn’t going to, I decided it would be best for me to have my nervous breakdowns in another language — one I didn’t know at all, give or take voilà. And so I did, I kept in touch.

Fabienne’s reply was almost immediate, full of warmth, and just dripping with butter, but didn’t mention chickens. I arrived in the dark, by train, and very much in need of food, sleep, and kindness.

There was a lamb stew waiting for me. The lamb was from her farm. That night while I slept for the first time all year, two baby lambs were born. I watched the sunrise over some sailboat masts, then went with her to help Fabienne buy about 100 new chicks.

Over the next few days I helped fork, shovel, and broom out two chicken coops, I helped feed the chickens, closed the chicken doors at night, helped haul and stack sacks of feed, handled livers, and cleaned, cut, and cooked up 80 chicken hearts into a cherry beer stew with carrots and onions.

There aren’t a lot of lady farmers in France, and riding around on tractors and pickup trucks with this ‘un made me about as proud as I’ve ever been. Here was somebody doing for real what I make a living, in a way, pretending to do.

The Chicken Farmer, farming chickens. Not just four or five but hundreds. Imagine! It was as if John Wayne or Clint Eastwood ever actually found themselves roping steer, or something.

We even went to the dump once. Everyone loved us there!

I ate fresh scallops, many many oysters, and butter butter butter — the best butter ever, with some pretty good bread under it sometimes.

In Farmer Fabienne’s sisterly keeping, I not only found food, sleep, and kindness, but meaningful work. And Earl, in case you ever need to know this, there is no better balm for a broken heart than scraping chicken shit and cooking chicken hearts. The cherry beer was an accident, but a good one.

Dear Nice Lady,

That is great. The best thing about Java Supreme is that if you know when to go, you can get to talk to Joel almost every day of the week. He’s not always there, and those days are always hard. But most days he is. Me too. For the last 18 years, I have spent my mornings, almost all of them, at Java Supreme. It is also one of the few holdouts to the old Mission values that are no longer on Mission Street. Old Mission values are this: you can afford to eat.

I get a double espresso every morning, and it is $1.75. And when I make coffee at home, guess where I bought it?

Today I went back for lunch, too. I had the Italian roasted eggplant sandwich with pesto, roasted red peppers, mozzarella, and tomatoes, $3.95, with salad, $5.50, because the salads are great. I love this particular sandwich.

Someone suggested I get it with turkey instead of eggplant, and for years I did that. Ed makes it for you without blinking an eye. It is Ed’s place. He tries to keep things simple. I heard him say that on the phone, once.

Recently, in a cream cheese banishment program (not something I can recommend) me and Joel have been enjoying the Java No. 2, which is a bagel with avocado, tomato, sprouts and red onion. But neither of us gets the red onion. We didn’t plan it. It just so happens.

JAVA SUPREME

Daily: 6:30 a.m.–7:00 p.m.

703 Guerrero, SF

(415) 206-1832

No alcohol

Cash only

White out

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0
White out

CHEAP EATS Dear Earl Butter,

Not you, but people say, “You will be stronger.” I wonder how, when I am in a million pieces. Of course I know I will come together, but what if the forearm is on top of the elbow and the upper arm below? What if my fingers are in the wrong order? How can this make me stronger?

I thought I would ask you, because don’t you have some experience with cubism?

Right now I’m on a train crossing the border between Germany and France, sitting backward. I’d puke, but I’m too tired, and completely empty. I haven’t slept in days. I haven’t eaten. Last night I looked at a bowl of onion soup, which was a start.

If I still weigh anything by the time I get to La Rochelle, then survival is almost guaranteed, since the French are certain to feed me.

It was beautiful. When word got out that a sister was down in Europe, this net of unexpected kindness opened up under me. Christ, I love my extended family. I mean, don’t get me wrong: I hate life, but you gotta love the people in it, don’t you? Some of them. Thanks to my brother Jean-Gene the Frenchman and Andi Lu Who, my French sister, my road-to-recovery stretches from roughly Bordeaux to Rome. I knew I had cugini over here, and old best friends of brothers, their exes and exes’ sisters, in-laws of in-laws and such … What I didn’t know is that they would circle up with their arms stretched out and interlocked to catch a farmerly kook they’d met only once, or twice. And years ago.

I need this. I need friendly, familiar faces and hours and hours of ping-pong. Can you believe that I have been through what I’ve been through without the consolation of so much as one bowl of duck soup?

Ah, but the grass is greener in France. The countryside is beautiful. Germany was beautiful too, from the train, but it was a black-and-white kind of beauty. All branches and snow. I wish I could white out what happened to me there.

Well, I take comfort in the fact that I lasted a couple weeks longer in Germany than my mom did in St. Paul, where she moved recently to more easily stalk her own great love, Garrison Keillor.

But she got off easy. I’m pretty sure Garrison Keillor never kissed my mom’s ring finger after making love to her, for example. I don’t think he called her his wife about a million times, or soul mate, or the love of his life. In fact, I’m not sure he knew she existed.

Wait, that’s right — he signed a book for her.

If only I’d gotten an autograph and left it at that. It’s dizzying, like death or sitting backward on the train. If I can stay vertical, Earl, I will eventually fly from Italy to Ohio to the Caribbean, to help wash windows and paint a hurricane-damaged house my other brother built there. Then I should be warm enough to come crawling back and curl up in your closet. Start cleaning.

Dear Dani,

That is great. There is nothing I look forward to more than a lunch date with Joel. At Valencia Pizza and Pasta, here are some of the things I have eaten with him: lemon chicken sandwich ($6.25), chicken-bacon-red pesto sandwich ($6.95). I’ve seen Joel eat breakfast there with corned beef hash and also a roasted chicken plate that was so big it almost stopped him cold. Today he got the pollani picata, which, I think means chicken breast with lemon and capers. What a beautifully full plate!

I got the meatloaf sandwich. A meatloaf sandwich of ridiculous pomposity ($6.25). Honestly, for a moment, I thought they had put the slices in sideways just to thwart me. There was no way to include the lettuce, tomatoes and pickles. You just have to treat them as sides. It was so juicy. I tricked Joel into looking out the window before I attempted a bite. I did not want him to see my jaw unhinge. Listen, this really is my new favorite restaurant. We walked out, as we always do, full, and happy, and friends. — E.B.

VALENCIA PIZZA AND PASTA

Mon.–Fri. 11 a.m.–3 p.m., 5–9:30 p.m.;

Sat. 9 a.m.–3 p.m., 5–9:30 p.m.; Sun. 9 a.m.–3 p.m.

801 Valencia, SF

(415) 642-1882

Beer & Wine

AE/MC/V

L.E. Leone’s latest book is Big Bend (Sparkle Street Books), a collection of short fiction.

Swimming

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0
Swimming

CHEAP EATS The ice that I am on is thin. It’s so thin it might not even be ice. I could be Jesus, skating on pure belief, or a dream. Certainly, things are surreal here.

On my gloves and knees, I press my lips to the thin line between world and world and kiss fish. I can only imagine what they, and the Germans, are thinking. Even the ducks have stopped speaking to me. I suppose I could take that as a compliment. They no longer see me as news?

Yesterday went I out the snow into, because it seemed beautiful, and the Thing To Do while one’s love of one’s life is with their ex, talking it over. Right? You walk in the snow, in the failing light, and feel real sorry for yourself. Who wouldn’t? And you cry and curse in as many languages as possible, under your breath. Or just a little bit over it.

In a dark, cold, hard, way, and especially in the snow, this town is almost beautiful.

*

It’s been decided, as if I didn’t already know. I never had a chance. Ah, thus the headaches of summer, and the anxiety of fall, whereas now I feel smashed flat but finally sane. I’m so proud of my body! It’s like it knew what my big dumb brain and nutty, naïve heart could not: That I would never have a chance.

I am an unfolded newspaper. I am a sticker off of a piece of fruit, the pool of blood, a rug, the grooves that our love-making made in the bedroom hardwood. I can form thoughts and poetry, sure, but can’t pull my pancaked self up, without help, from this griddle or pond.

On the plus side, my brother mailed me a spatula! He did. It’s true.

*

Help me here: the person who breaks up with the person just one month after bringing the person to the cold dark hard place where she doesn’t know a soul, or speak the language … that person, the breaker-upper, goes, right? Has to go.

Nein!

“What, are you kicking me out?” the psychologist said, in shock and disbelief.

Um … “Can’t you go stay with your ex?” I said. She didn’t want to. “Well then,” I said. “Can I?”

To her credit, and mine, she laughed. But she said that I couldn’t.

*

One of Romea’s lesbian friends, who has been with men too, says that being in a relationship with a man is like swimming in a swimming pool, whereas being with a woman is like swimming in the sea.

I usually prefer to save my reductionism for sauces and such, but this has been slow-simmering for some time, so let’s call it sauce.

I’m thinking: kids, water wings, beach balls, and, if you’re lucky, a slide vs. sharks, sleeper waves, undertow, endlessness … I can see arguments for both sides.

Being with a trans woman, though, ain’t like swimming anywhere; it’s like walking on water. You. Just. Have. To. Believe. And Romea, ultimately, sadly, tragically, for me, didn’t.

But wait, but isn’t it supposed to be hard to be sad while playing a ukulele? Or is that just an expression I just made up that isn’t even true? It reminds me of the last place we ate there, a very mirrory Vietnamese joint in downtown Oakland with a collection of miniature stringed instruments all along one wall. The food was not at all memorable, but the mirrors … I remember thinking I would probably never again be able to see my love from so many different angles while sitting so still and eating noodles.

Why didn’t I see this one? The goer-backer-to-the-exer side, oy.

I did manage to get my money back for the German course I won’t need to finish, and am off to the train station. I will write you next week from France, where I have sisters. And that is exactly what I need right now. A spatula, and sisters.

PHUONG NAM

Mon.–Sat.: 11 a.m.–9 p.m.

1615 Clay, Oakl.

(510) 663-9811

Beer & Wine

AE/MC/V

L.E. Leone’s new book is Big Bend (Sparkle Street Books), a collection of short fiction.

A walk with L.A.

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A walk with L.A.

CHEAP EATS For a while there I was running the airport shuttle and it was like the old days when I drove a van. One day I picked up my North Carolina sister L.A. and her husband, and the next, for example, I was dropping off Crawdad’s whole family. This was at an ungodly hour, like 6 a.m.

Knowing that L.A., an early bird to begin with, would be lagging some serious jet, I called her cell phone. They were sleeping at my nephew’s flat, their son’s flat, South of Market. It was 6:15, Saturday.

“Come on by,” L.A. said, not the faintest trace of sleep in her voice. So I did. I came by and picked her up, and we left the boys a-snoring and drove around and about and up and down and across, just generally drawing a big X over 2009 in San Francisco, and wondering about breakfast.

The thing about this particular sister is that she doesn’t seem to necessarily need to be always exactly eating. In other ways, though, we are a lot alike. For example, we have the same mom and dad. For another, our hair and noses are somewhat sorta similar.

L.A. is my favorite kind of vegetarian: the kind who eats bacon. But you have to talk her into it. All in all, she would rather go for a walk. I personally need some coffee at least, if not a full-on breakfast, before I can move about in any kind of consistently vertical fashion. My sister not only doesn’t need coffee, she doesn’t drink it. In short, I didn’t know what to do with her.

So I pointed us toward Glen Park, where we would walk, but drove real slow, hoping hard that a restaurant would open before we got there. Or a coffee house.

I wasn’t thinking about donuts …

And then there they were. There it was, on 24th Street between Hampshire and York, and miraculously the clock struck 7 a.m.. I had forgotten all about Dynamo. Alice Shaw the Person told me about it months or maybe years ago. And here it was, the home of bacon maple apple donuts, flipping on the lights, so to speak, exactly as we were driving almost aimlessly by.

I pulled over abruptly into one of 7,000 available parking spots, and then backed up into another one.

“Bacon donuts,” I explained.

“What?” said my vegetarianish caffeine-free sister. Did I mention she doesn’t eat sugar?

“Coffee,” I said. “Do you want to wait in the car?”

She didn’t. We went up to the sidewalk window and I ordered a coffee and a donut. A bacon donut, of course. Know how much it costs?

Three dollars. That’s just for the donut. With coffee, it was something like $5, which is more than most full-on meals cost where my sister lives.

She ordered a cup of hot water.

There’s one row of tables inside the place, and the tables have flowers on them. It’s a donut shop. There are flowers on the tables. My sister, who is older than me by three years, sat with her back to the wall, watching the bakers work the dough across the counter. They were young and cheerful and listening to good music.

I could almost actually see every single thing in my big sister’s brain shifting, resettling, jiggling into whole new places. It seemed like a good time to ask: “Do you want a bite?”

She didn’t say no, or yes. She sat there, her mouth a little bit open. Sugar gives her yeast infections. She had already told me this.

I sunk my teeth into my $3 bacon-grease-sautéed apple donut, glazed with maple and stuck with crumbled bacon. It’s not a big breakfast. It was already half-gone, but I love my sister, so I held the remaining half-donut to her, and she took it. And she took a bite.

And you could see that she was in immediate heaven, her eyebrows joining her hairline, and her hand reaching for her purse.

“Let’s get another one,” she said.

And we did. And Glen Park was beautiful. *

DYNAMO DONUTS

Tue. –Sat., 7 a.m.–5 p.m.; Sun., 9 a.m.–4 p.m.

2760 24th St., SF

(415) 920-1978

No alcohol

Cash only

L.E. Leone’s new book is Big Bend (Sparkle Street Books), a collection of short fiction.

Comfort and joy

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Comfort and joy

CHEAP EATS The guy who runs the ukulele shop suggests I pray before going to Ikea. It works every time for him. He got those big shelves that way, the ones with all the chord-books on them. And the nice wood table. He says he prayed for those things. Then he went to Ikea. And not only did he find them, he found them in the discount aisle!

Merry Christmas.

The god I don’t believe in, turns out, is a loving god. A caring god. A thrifty god, a sexy and strong god, who impresses virgins and moves not only mountains but furniture. Slightly dinged furniture, to boot! With a retail record like that, surely there can be no other god.

Check him out.

I don’t know that I’ll ever muster up the courage to go to Ikea, let alone the piety to pray beforehand, but I sure do like the guy at the ukulele shop. He accidentally insulted my uke, but also bought me an espresso on purpose. I go talk to him as often as possible.

Then there are Romea’s parents, who played ping pong with us, showed us Super 8 footage of my lover as a cute little tomboy, plied us with osso buco for lunch and sausages for dinner, changed my mind about mustard, and sent us on our merry way with a tin of homemade Christmas cookies flaky and delicate enough to make a believer out of Richard Dawkins Himself.

I tell you, if His mom had made those little heart-shaped ones with pointy green pistachio bits stuck into the white icing like tiny Christmas trees poking through the snow, well, He would not today be nearly as famous as He is. They pack a punchy, tangy sort of sweetness that makes me see stars, snowflakes, and angels, these ones, but — alas — there are only two left.

Hold on. Make that one.

Oh, did I mention the head massage? With all due respect to all my ex-ma-and-pa-in-laws, whom I still love like my own parents, I have never felt more immediately welcomed, warmed, and accepted — as was — than I felt with Romea’s folks. And think about it: my previous in-laws only ever had to deal with my weirdness. These ones faced my weirdness and my queerness, and responded with kisses, massages, and sausages, declaring me immediately simpatich.

Happy Hanukkah. And I mean that. I’m not generally Jewish — just at Christmastime. But this year, you know, I kind of mean my Merry Christmases too. And not only because Romea is the biggest Scrooge I’ve ever stomped with.

It’s those cookies. Those insane, divine, little crunches of pure comfort and joy, comfort and joy. And of course the ukulele shop. And Romea’s new coat and shoes, and my new used bike, which with its tight light generator and loose bell makes me sound like a cross between an ambulance and the ice cream truck. Which pretty much sums up what I am, probably.

But did I tell you about my new favorite Thai restaurant? It’s Ruen Pair, on San Pablo in Albany — a friendly little restaurant with friendly little waitressperson people and really really mean-ass cooks. I mean that in the most positive way.

Among lovers of the hot and the spicy, Ruen Pair is no secret. Sweet Baby Jesus is it spicy! Even if you get it medium, it’s almost too hot to handle. It’s just on the edge, which is where I like to eat, if not live.

I ate there once, and had it once to go, so I can vouch for a lot of dishes: the duck salad, green curry, pad prik king … And not only do they have my favorite of favorites, duck noodle soup, which is awesome, they have tom yum noodle soup, which is awesome, and a brilliant idea, because tom yum is so good but never really enough of what it is, as an appetizer.

Whereas with noodles, pork, ground pork, and pork balls …

You get the picture, yes? Everything I had here was great, and spicier than you think it’s going to be. You can leave your hot sauce at home. Where it belongs. For the holidays. Happy.

RUEN PAIR

Daily, 11 a.m.–10 p.m.

1045 San Pablo Ave., Albany

(510) 528-2375

Beer & wine

AE/D/MC/V

L.E. Leone’s new book is Big Bend (Sparkle Street Books), a collection of short fiction.

Passage

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Passage

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS Weirdo the Cat, in an act of life-defying cantankerousness, has died. She got wind of my own impending crossing and timed her tumor accordingly, missing by only one day. No, not missing. While it would have been more operatic of her to die in my arms while I was tearfully kissing her goodbye, she let me get to the airport, on the plane, over the continent, over the ocean, up to the terminal, past customs, into the arms of my lover, onto the train, into the taxi, up two flights of stairs with three heavy suitcases, in and out of the bathtub, under the covers and over the rainbow. Then, while the kids were just settling to sleep in the next room, California … then did Weirdo the Cat breathe her last little stinky breath.

That way it would be clear to anyone with a brain bigger than a walnut that I had killed her. Poetically speaking. Ah, but Weirdo the Cat was ever the furry little poet. Only a little bit bitterer. She blamed me (me!) for not drawing her immortal, like other famous felines, with whom she was obsessed — especially Sylvester. I argued that I was a journalist, not a cartoonist, and she produced an eight-pound sledgehammer from behind her back and chased me around the room with it.

It’s true that she mellowed some in her elderly years, just like Grandma Rubino. In the end, she even actually seemed to kind of almost like children, and while they were away would curl up on the floor in their room and purr. I speak here of Weirdo the Cat, not Grandma Rubino.

Anyway, although any lap but mine or Crawdad’s was always strictly out of the question, by the time she had head-butted her last table leg she had socially matured to the point of sometimes actually sniffing strangers before biting them. I speak here of Grandma Rubino, not Weirdo the Cat.

Those three of my readers who have had the pleasure of knowing both these colorful cranks in their more corporal days will understand the confusion. One cursed in Italian, the other in hairballs and half-digested cat food. Other than that they were pretty much the same animal, may they rest in peace.

And in fact may we all get a little bit of sleep tonight. Jet lag — why didn’t I think of it earlier? I write three-act plays and astounding symphonies in my sleep, and then when I’m awake I walk around bumping into things, drooling, and forgetting my hat and purse everywhere. People tell me in Bavarian German that I’ll get over it after a week or so, and I don’t have the heart, or the vocabulary, to explain that, no, this is the way I’ve been since 1992.

There are other advantages to being where I am. For example, I find myself very literally surrounded by sausage, churches, and Christmas. I’ll let you guess which of those represents my idea of heaven.

Hint: some people like mustard on it. I prefer sauerkraut, to my Romea’s dismay, as I also tend to wear her coats and leave my napkins in her coat pockets.

The Stone Age Catholic churches, while pretty to look at, are pure hell on Sunday mornings when they call their faithful to breakfast with gigantic Iron Age dinner bells. It’s enough of a racket to weird out the dead, and to levitate the merely sleeping — in my case before I had quite finished my opus in F-Minor. Romea had to scrape me off the ceiling with a vacuum cleaner attachment.

Christmas itself, I predict, will be more likely to reclaim me here than Catholicism. For starters, it lets you sleep. Then too they celebrate it outdoors, in crowded open-air Christmas markets, featuring not only rampant commercialism but sausage stands! With bockwursts and bratwursts and meter-long sausages.

Whereas church offers warmth. But hey, I can get that at home. Do you know how long a meter is?

While you’re looking it up, lemme tell you where even you can find great bock- and bratwursts and even kielbasa and Italian hot sausages for real cheap: Longs Drugs. Yep, I became addicted when I lived in Rockridge. Trust me …

TOP DOG INSIDE LONG’S DRUGS

(and four other East Bay locations)

Mon.-Sat., 10 a.m.–9 p.m.; Sun., 11 a.m.–8 p.m.

5100 Broadway, Oakl.

(510) 601-1187

No alcohol

Cash only

L.E. Leone’s new book is Big Bend (Sparkle Street Books), a collection of short fiction.

The unbearable lightness of being

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The unbearable lightness of being

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS It’s weird for me, of all people, to be having an existential crisis. Yet …

You know, there have been times in the past few weeks when I almost completely didn’t know if I existed or not. It ain’t fun. Not no picnic, no … nonexistence. I’m here to tell you.

And it’s weird because in the past I have taken particular pride in my capacity for existing. That’s why my calypso name was always Lord Exister or Sister Exister or just Exister. And my songs celebrated mostly existential themes, such as butter.

Now I can only write about tofu and spelt flour, and when that happens it’s time to hang up your steel drum. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m taking mine to Germany because it’s quite possible the Germans won’t understand a word of it, no matter which language I choose to use to express my out-of-key self in.

I’m just saying. Or, as the late great Townes Van Zandt put it, "Maybe she just has to sing for the sake of the song."

One of my favorite people to talk to is Mod the Pod, or Mod Pod, as we call her for short. We were driving in her pickup truck on the most beautiful country road in Sonoma County, on one of the most beautiful December evenings in California history. The sun was setting. The moon was rising. And I was sweating the big stuff. You know: death.

Mod Pod is by trade a therapist. "Mmm-hmm," she said. "Mmm-hmm."

I should also mention that we were eating donuts, so it was not completely off-the-wall of me to change the subject from my depressing preoccupation with the abyss to donuts. It might have been a little abrupt, though, come to think of it. Like this:

"I don’t think it’s my self self that I am overly attached to so much as my point of view, or myself as a point-of-view character. That’s what I can’t quite fathom letting go of. My point of view."

"Mmm-hmm. Mmm-hmm."

"You know what I mean?"

"Mmm-hmm." She was driving, looking straight ahead out the windshield. The road was hilly and winding, and Mod Pod is a pretty good driver.

"Pod," I said, "have you ever had a donut that wasn’t good?"

She glanced at me and then looked straight ahead again. The empty bag was on the seat between us. "Let me think about that," she said. "That’s a really good question."

And she thought about it, and — having nothing but time — so did I.

We decided, in the end, that neither of us, and not even the Attack (who joined our conversation in Oakland and would later pay for dinner) had ever had an exactly bad donut. The closest we could come to "bad" was stale. I think it was the Pod — although it could have been anyone — had once bitten into a too-many-days-old donut. Not good. I think it was jelly, with powdered sugar.

The important thing is that life goes on, with or without you or your point of view. And then there it is, like a bright light and classical music: the hugest plate of food ever, with melted cheese in two different colors oozing into brown beans and white rice, chile rellenos and a fried fish taco, table full of delicious salsas, only some of which came out of Mod Pod’s purse … beer, sangria … and … you have zero appetite.

What the fuck?

Maybe it was the donuts. I tasted everything, and everything was great, but I couldn’t quite exactly dig into it, much less put it away. Well, and Mexican food was my idea. Juan’s was theirs. Excellent family-style atmosphere; in fact, they were putting up the Christmas tree while we were eating. I get the sense that this is a go-to East Bay place, although … nobody was there. And I’d never been.

Oooh, I hate saying sentences like that, even when it’s by accident.

JUAN’S PLACE

Mon.–Fri., 11 a.m.–10 p.m.;

Sat.–Sun., 2–10 p.m.

941 Carleton, Berk.

(510) 845-6904

Beer & wine

AE,D,MC,V

Of the earth

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Of the earth

Boink likes sushi. Specifically he goes for the California roll. Only without avocado. Or seaweed. Or, come to think of it, rice. Boink likes crab.
There’s a sushi joint between their house and the preschool he goes to, and we walk past it and Boink wants sushi. I remember the first time I was surprised, because though we cook everything in the world together, I have rarely seen him eat anything that wasn’t peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with the crust cut off.
“Sushi, Boink?” I said. “You like sushi?”
“Me too,” said his little sister, Popeye the Sailor Baby. “I like sushi.”
Their mom had packed us snacks. “Me three,” I said.
When I was in grade school there was a substitute teacher name of Carmen Pomponio who shaped my life more than any of my teacher teachers, give or take Sister Esther. Carmen Pomponio had black greasy hair, a beard, dark, deep eyes, and a funny way of talking. He spoke in a languid, sibilanced drawl that was not Southern so much as careless, and I suppose I’m in love with him still.
The teacher teachers used to give him elaborate instructions about which chapter in which book to read, etc. They gave him assignments to give to us. They were sick, but still they were thinking about our intellectual advancement.
Carmen Pomponio always looked like he was thinking about something else, and whether we were in the second grade or the sixth, we all knew what it was: Mark Twain. We could see the little paperback bulge in his tweed coat pocket, and knew he wanted to read to us as badly as we wanted to be read to.
From a distance of 2,000 miles and 40 years, it’s impossible to say who was playing whom. But he would go through the motions — the teacher said this, the teacher said that — reading off of a little piece of paper, a sweat starting on his forehead, his fat lips a-tremble, setting us up, against his better judgment, for our actual lesson. And once he had mapped out in substitute-teacher detail what we were all supposed to do, according to our home-sick teacher, he would look up from his notes, a kind of calm spreading over his face like pizza sauce, and say, “Or I could read you some Twain.”
The first time we might not have known what Twain was, especially the way he said it: “Twaayyyn.” But what kid wouldn’t opt for Twain over Teacher? And after he’d read some Twain once, no class in its right collective mind would let him finish outlining his assignments. Sometimes we didn’t let him start. As soon as you saw Carmen Pomponio in your classroom you would beg in chorus, and in his jangly accent, “Read some Twaayyyn! Read some Twaayyyn!”
As far as I can recall, he always did, doing the characters in different voices and everything. Jim. Huck. Tom. Even Miss Watson. And our little brains churned into butter. How anyone in that school could possibly not grow up to be a writer is beyond me.
Carmen Pomponio had his priorities straight. Some things are a little more important than learning, or even playing. The two I’m thinking of, Mark Twain and sushi, are way more important. Both of them, I would argue, are “of the earth.”
At Kobe-Ya, a dive sushi-to-go joint without a lot of raw fish on the menu, Boink and Popeye stand on the bench seats and dissect California rolls with fingers, chopsticks, forks, and … yeah, mainly fingers. Boink breaks the sushi open like shellfish, picks out the crab, and Popeye kind of cleans up after him, also like shellfish. I use the word “cleans” poetically. Most of the rice winds up on the floor, in the cracks on the bottom of their sneaks, and in my hair.
Me, I’m eating noodles, chicken udon, which is $5.50 for a pretty big bowl, and good. Plus it’s fun for the kids, or at least these ones, who get a kick out of playing with steam.
If you have not yet taken a toddler out for sushi, I recommend it. Just leave a big tip because rice is pretty sticky. You know.
KOBE-YA
Daily, 11 a.m.–8 p.m.
2300 Encinal, Alameda
(510) 337-1966
Beer & sake
MC/V

Recklessly defensive

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Recklessly defensive

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS I like to live like I like to love: with my back to the wall, my skirt hiked up, and my hair a mess. Come to think of it, I like to play ping-pong and soccer that way too, but rarely wear skirts to games.

In case they never see me again, my soccerish pals Alice Shaw the Person and Elbie wanted to buy me brunch after our 3-3 tie last Sunday. It was the first game of the new season, but I’m going to miss the second and third, as well as the fourth through tenth, and quite possibly all of next season, come to think of it, and the next after that. And … hey, you never know.

When I went to Berlin last summer, there were isolated pockets of concern that I wouldn’t come back. This time it’s an all-out rumor. Everyone in the world, myself included, seems to think my return ticket might maybe be just for show. My friends who have actually met my Romeo, Romea, are convinced of it.

We make a damn good couple.

And I haven’t been helping matters by quitting my nanny gigs, subletting my shack, and giving away half my things. I’m even selling my car, Alice Shaw the Car, to Alice Shaw the Person’s little sister, which seems to make a certain sense, but certainly not financial sense. Funny, everything I have ever done that was by-the-books sound, advisable, or fiscally responsible has blown up in my face.

On the other hand, my soccer team won two championships in a row, and yes I am still thank you in love. But it’s a tricky proposition, living insanely without going insane. It’s like playing like I play: recklessly defensive. Sometimes you overcommit and slip and then your back-to-the-wall is skidding across the grass while the other team scores.

I wish I could take my soccer team to Germany with me, because they tend to pick me up, so to speak. But they’re all Brazilian and would struggle with the language. And the weather. And the style of play.

Anyway, I’m unaccustomed to winning, and a little disappointed because all we get for it is a T-shirt and a team photo. Otherwise, it’s almost the same as losing: you shake the other team’s hands and say the exact same thing they say, "Good game, good game," and then you go get beers or pancakes or something, or both. I don’t know, maybe there are other differences.

The real problem is that our league plays on Sundays, in the morning, so where are you going to get fed and watered afterward without having to wait in line?

Sports bars! It took me many years to figure this out, and then … I didn’t figure it out. Someone else did. I think it was Elbie’s guy who suggested the Fiddler’s Green after last game, and after this one I was hurrying down Haight Street to get in line at the Pork Store when I noticed Martin Mack’s, other side of the street, a block or so away. And it was empty, even though there was football and soccer and more football on TV. It was a sea of empty tables in there, and, yes, they serve brunch.

So I called Alice Shaw the Person’s cell phone and said, "Forget it. Forget the Pork Store."

And that was how I came to discover boiled bacon and cabbage. It was on the specials board, along with Guinness and beef stew, and I forget what else. Me and Elbie ordered those two things, and Alice got the Irish breakfast, and it was all a lot of too-much food for all of us, even though we’d just run around like we did.

Ten bucks apiece.

My dish came with unannounced but not unwelcome potatoes, mashed. The bacon scared me at first, not because it was Irish bacon, or boiled, but because it was smothered in this parsley-specked creamy white sauce that screamed mayonnaise. The waitressperson told me two or three times, no mayo, before I would taste it. And then I tasted it and it was awesome. If there was mayonnaise in it, I now love mayonnaise.

Stranger things have happened.

MARTIN MACK’S

Mon.–Sun., 10 a.m.–2 a.m.

1568 Haight, SF

(415) 864-0124

Full bar

AE/D/MC/V

L.E. Leone’s new book is Big Bend (Sparkle Street Books), a collection of short fiction.

Granted

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Granted

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS Some things in life just smell way better than they taste, Kentucky Fried Chicken being an obvious example. There are two kids named Boink and Popeye the Sailor Baby who will one day wonder why their nanny used to take them to Jackson Park all the time. Alameda has a lot of nice playgrounds featuring state-of-the-art sliding boards and other nice touches, such as other children. What Jackson Park has, besides abandoned shopping carts, riff-raff, and a bus stop, is Kentucky Fried Chicken.

I’ve never been inside, but I’m glad it’s there. And the kids … well, even without all the bright-colored plastic, they find plenty to do. They scrape the bark off of piss-soaked trees with little sticks and look for unusual bugs — while their grownup stands nearby, nose to the Colonel, and dreams.

If there’s one thing I will take from my two years as a nanny — besides neck and shoulder issues, some permanent hearing loss, and an addiction to migraine medicines, I mean — well, wisdomwise, I have learned a lot. But the one lesson that really stands out is this: that, though you show a kid a waterfall, wildlife, redwood trees, and sunset, they will be infinitely more fascinated by leaf blowers.

Mind you, this is not to even mention their fascination of fascinations: the garbage truck. You can take my word for it, because nannies know more kids than most parents do. It’s as true as math: the sweeter the adorable little angel, the more obsessed with garbage trucks they will be. And no amount of exposure to Yosemite will help.

Who knows? Maybe it’s innately wise to take natural wonders for granted. When you are one yourself.

Of course, the reverse is also true: some things in life taste way better than they smell. (Fish sauce. I rest my case.)

The point I want to make about bacon fries is that they smell way better than they taste, and they taste (are you ready for this?) … absolutely insanely wonderfully delicious. Go figure! Who would have guessed that french fries, already one of the best things in life, could be improved on by the best thing in life? And here’s where I wish I had actually invented my dream punctuation, the sarcastic mark, instead of just talking about it for 25 years.

Of course … bacon fries!!!

Where to get them is Broken Record, the great bar with the even greater backroom kitchen, way out in the Excelsior District. I’m pretty sure that people have been telling me about Broken Record for a long time. "Broken Record," they said. "Broken Record … Broken Record … Broken Record," they said and said and said. If only I could think of a way to describe what this sounded like.

Nor am I proud to admit that I didn’t listen. Then: the bar, or the restaurant part of the bar changed hands, or chefs, word was, and alas I had missed the boat. The assumption being that the new people would ruin a good thing, and I, being more than a believer — being an all-out act of entropy, found this reasonable to assume.

But change is change. A good thing can go bad, or vice versa, or a good thing can change into an entirely different good thing. Hold on a second, my estrogen patch is coming loose. Or — I was saying — you can just leave the judgment out of it and say that things change.

All I know is I was playing late-night soccer one night out at Crocker, and afterward some folks were getting a beer, and invited me along, and I said no thank you and they said, "bacon fries."

And just like that a new favorite restaurant was born. All I want to do now is play late-night soccer at Crocker. And I haven’t even tried their burgers yet! Supposedly they trim off all the beef fat and grind it themselves, replacing the beef fat with bacon fat.

Why would anyone ever eat a burger anywhere else, not to mention fries? I can think of reasons. Well, geography, for one. But why would anyone live anywhere but here?

I comfort myself with thoughts of sausages. And the knowledge that technically, I did invent the sarcastic mark. I know exactly what it looks like, and have drawn it many times on cocktail napkins, as well as regular napkins.

Broken Record

Mon.–Sat., 6 p.m.–11 p.m.;

Sun., 6 p.m.–10 p.m.

1166 Geneva, SF

(415) 424-6743

Full bar

Cash only

L.E. Leone’s new book is Big Bend (Sparkle Street Books), a collection of short fiction.

The problem of happiness

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The problem of happiness

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS Sometimes it just takes one word, and this week’s one is shoehorn. There. I’m done. And you barely even got your pants down, or your skirt up. Skype is an amazing thing, as is technology in general. As are words.

Yesterday morning, outside a coffeehouse in Guerneville …

Today, inside a coffeehouse in Oakland …

One night I put my laptop on the pillow next to me and slept while she went about her business.

It’s weird (or maybe not) that many of the men who mistreated, malpracticed, or underwhelmed me last year are trying to reconnect right now. Proving once again that straight guys just love a lesbian. Had I thought of this, I would have faked it.

Can I tell you how much pleasure I get from not doing anything at all? Well, I do read their e-mails. After months and months of silence, they suddenly can’t stop thinking about me, they’re sorry they blew it, blah blah blah. And I don’t write back, not even to say, Thank you for blowing it. I met someone a lot better than you.

And a lot better for me. Last month in Joshua Tree she taught me how to be more ladylike. Instead of saying, "I gotta go pee," I can now say, in German, Ich muss mich frischmachen, or roughly, "I have to freshen up" … which is really fun to say before going behind a cactus and squatting over some dirt, then wiping your hands on your jeans.

In New Jersey last week I returned the favor. I taught her how to put gas in a car. She’s never owned a car in her life, but loves to be the driver, and loves to do all the more classically manlier things, like getting the gas. So I showed her how. While the pump was pumping we stood straddling the hose (not really) and kissed real slow and long (really). I forgot where I was.

When the kiss was over, I looked away and accidentally into the wide eyes of a man filling his pickup truck next pump over. His mouth was a little bit open — more from pain, I think, than disbelief. I smiled. He didn’t. His hands were in his pockets.

It’s fun outside of the Bay Area, but good to be back too. This morning I had breakfast at Sconehenge with my friend Hickymajig, and we had a contest to see who was nervouser. She won. But I did not go down without a tremor. And a twitch. And a lightheaded feeling in my legs. And a fluttery stomach, cold sweat, shaky hands, and other more serious symptoms, like I only ate half of my huevos rancheros ($7.50).

The second half is on the floor in my car, fantasizing about lunch. For a restaurant called Sconehenge, Sconehenge has very few things called scones on the menu. But they do have them, and they’re supposed to be great.

But we both ate Mexican breakfasts. Very good. Very very very good. And cheap! And big! My huevos had a huge pile of salsa on top, and a ton of melted cheese. Warm flour tortillas that I slathered with butter, rolled up, and poked into my egg yolks. The rice and beans were delicious. Nevertheless, if Hickymajig reads this it will be from a hospital bed, so I would like her to know that the entire Bay Area, including me, is thinking about her and wishing her well, on buses, in bathrooms, and wherever else Cheap Eats is read. Behind a cactus …

My thing is partly a problem of happiness, which is a good problem to have. My armchair therapists tell me I deserve to be happy, get over it. And I’m trying, I swear. I breathe, I read, I write, I laugh. But my body continues to act as if it’s about to get run over by a minivan.

Maybe I drink too much coffee. And that’s another good thing about Sconehenge. Their coffee sucks. You can only drink one cup, if you’re lucky.

I told you this column was over after the first sentence. So if you made it this far, don’t blame me. It’s nighttime already where my heart is. And here I haven’t even gone to work yet! Kids need me. Their moms, more so. Oy.

Or, take my word for it: schuhlöffel.

SCONEHENGE BAKERY & CAFE

Mon.–Sat., 7:30 a.m.–3 p.m.;

Sun., 8 a.m.–2:30 p.m.

2787 Shattuck, Berk.

(510) 845-5168

No alcohol

MC/V

L.E. Leone’s new book is Big Bend (Sparkle Street Books), a collection of short fiction.

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