The Ride's On Fire

In the third grade, The first time that we were being taught how to use a library to research and write a biography, I pulled “Muddy Waters" out of our class’ hat of historical figures.

There were no re-pulls and no substitutions and I had no idea who Muddy Waters was and neither did anyone else in my class. We knew who Thomas Edison was, we knew who Elvis Presley was, but what kind of name was Muddy Waters? Was he an activist? I’ll freely admit we had no idea. 

But I learned who he was and I taught my classmates to the extent that an eight-year-old can learn about something and relay that information to others. 

And that was in Waters’ adopted hometown of Chicago.

So when Joe Cocker passed away last week, and a conversation about Cocker and blues and race topped the Google search, I wanted to roll my eyes. It’s a conversation that’s just to easy to hamfist. I see thoughtful, caring friends of mine who are much more trusted-commentators than myself who can talk you through peace in the middle east but can’t discuss modern race relations without lobbing blunt accusations   

Joe Cocker’s most famous music was written by The Lovin’ Spoonful, and The Yardbirds, and The Beatles. I didn’t really feel it was the same as discussing whether or not your favorite version of "Twist and Shout” says anything about your background (For me, I suppose it does, I’m an Isley Brothers guy)

But, having read the article, I commend it to you. Credit matters and context matters as well. This article address both of those issues quite-well.

Putting “Up Where we Belong” on the jukebox this weekend is one thing, having a discussion about contribution and legacy is another.

http://thinkprogress.org/culture/2014/12/24/3606829/why-shouldnt-a-white-guy-sing-the-blues-joe-cocker/

Late in the evening, we found ourselves settling the question of our house affiliations, once and for all, by taking the question straight to the Pottermore Sorting Hat. The hat proved decisive and unwavering-I was Slytherin and that was the end of the discussion.

The decision left me feeling, in a word, uncomfortable. It wasn’t simply having been placed squarely against our group of young heroes or that the hat had uncovered some of my less-desirable tendencies, It was the strongest emotion that I had felt emanating from the Hogwarts Dungeon-prejuduce. No one had to draw a parallel for me between the question of pure-wizardry-blood and pure-racial-blood, I could draw it myself. Slytherin never felt like a welcome place for a nerdy black kid from public school, no matter how much cunning and self-preservation he may have possessed.

Not that I believe JK Rowling specifically intended for Hermione Granger to be a woman of color. I read a white British woman’s characters to be white and British unless otherwise indicated. That is, perhaps, my own prejudice. That said, I appreciate the light she shines on discrimination, hate, and exclusion. Moreover, I appreciate the freedom Ms. Rowling has given for adoption and interpretation of her characters into groups she may not have initially intended them to belong.

~

Theatre has a long history of speaking to the times in which it is being staged and, at times, seeking to provocative the specific times and issues that surround a play’s staging. Romeo and Juliet become two men, Richard III becomes a women.

Perhaps then, the casting of Noma Dumezweni as Hermione Granger in the upcoming Harry Potter and the Cursed Child was not supposed to go quietly unnoticed. Instead, it was designed to spark open and passionate conversation between old friends and new enemies.

It would appear, then, I have not given Ms Rowling and the production staff of her new play enough credit. As Ms Rowling’s books have sought to be of the moment, we have showed her that this new play is already speaking (quite strongly) to our time.

Guy Fieri would love this place. If the food was better, he’d have already been here. Stopping-in for a late breakfast, the staff assumed that I was a regular and could order without a menu. And why not? Sarkis’ narrow counter and few tables were bustling with what appeared to be the entire senior class from nearby Loyola Academy-none of them needed to see a menu.

The best thing that I can say about Sarkis is that it is a quintessential neighborhood institution. Cramped, affordable, and with staff that’s eager to engage. It’s a diner that you want to go to, a community that you want to be a part of. 

The worst thing that I can say is that I’m not from Evanston, Wilmette, or Skokie. Sarkis is not part of my personal history. While I admire the rarity of a place like Sarikis, I didn’t find the food to be memorable. The food was in no way bad, there was simply nothing about the cheese and bread and diced onions that swallowed-up my sandwich that would cause me to recommend their food in a vacuum. Sarkis charm isn’t in the food, however, it’s in the people and the process and the atmosphere.

Every community has it’s own Sarkis or at least I hope they do. By all means, go there and drink it all in. Maybe just stick to a coffee and side of bacon while you’re doing so.

Sarkis Cafe
2632 Gross Point Road 
Evanston, IL 60201

That Google Doodle with Mars drinking a glass of water? 

Adorable.

I’m still a tough-guy, though.

My mother won’t eat gumbo unless it’s prepared by someone she’s related to or someone she’s been long-term friends with.  

Last year, when I asked her how I could take my own gumbo to the next level, she handed me ‘Chef Paul Prudhomme’s Louisiana Kitchen.’

I suppose that there’s one exception to her rule.

Relating truly-poor service is difficult.

Did you bring proper expectations to the situation?

Have you ever waited tables before?

Are you sure that you weren’t being an asshole?

In this case, let me start out by saying that yes-I’ve worked for tips in a variety of service industry positions and I that currently work in customer service.

Not that any of that should matter.

Let me also say that the food at LOKaL was excellent. Which is really a shame because all I’m going to discuss here is how my server’s combative attitude overshadowed the whole experience.

But maybe it’s my fault. I ordered a Bloody Mary that arrived tasting (honestly) terrible. After one sip of that Bloody Mary, I knew it was going to be tough to get through one let alone start another. My bottomless Bloody Mary order wasn’t going to get too far. The first of Kelsea’s bottomless Mimosas, on the other hand, tasted pretty darn good.

Busy Sunday bunch, servers running around, I didn’t want to waste our server’s time explaining that my Bloody Mary was undrinkable. I figured that, given that it was bottomless, they might ask to me finish what I had before ordering something else anyway.

So I finished it. (Have you ever seen the World War II poster with the Marine drowning in icy, deep, salt water?)

Then I asked my server Gosia Pieniazek if I could switch to the $9 Mimosa special because the $10 Bloody Mary wasn’t doing it for me. Looking at the specials board and the menu, I figured that, as long as I was willing to pay the extra dollar, it should to be an easy switch-no problem.

Problem.

The exchange between Gosia and myself should have sounded something like

“I’m sorry that you didn’t enjoy that Bloody Mary but our special on Bloody Marys, while more expensive than the special on our Mimosas, don’t transfer. I’m sorry if that wasn’t clear.”

What I heard instead was something like “I don’t know why you don’t understand that a Mimosa and a Bloody Mary are two different things. Everyone else in the restaurant likes their drink, your drink tastes fine, If you don’t like it, I’ll bring you something else but I hope you don’t expect it for free.”

Fine. The tone of Gosia’s explication had been unnecessarily patronizing but her basic message was an outlining of restaurant policy.

I started to explain that, while I didn’t mean to be difficult, It wasn’t that I had simply gotten tired of drinking Bloody Marys, It was that my Bloody Mary hadn’t been of acceptable quality. It wasn’t simply watery, it wasn’t simply bland, the bartender wasn’t simply skimping on the vodka, it just wasn’t correct-had I ordered just one, I would have sent it back. And further more, as someone who is pretty sheepish is situations like this, I didn’t understand why she was raising her voice with me. I was interrupted with something like “I’m not being combative, you are. You can order whatever else you want, kid, but if you don’t want another Bloody Mary, that’s your problem.”

Awesome.

Well I wasn’t going to spend another $9 to change drink specials-especially with that attitude. That would be throwing away good money after bad. So I said something like “I’d rather have another terrible one of these than pay twice.”

Gosia forced a smile and went to get a second Bloody Mary.

While she was gone, I thought that maybe I had been too harsh. Being a server is hard; making drinks for a Sunday boozebrunch crowd is hard; maybe I just caught a bad batch.

Gosia returned with the second Bloody Mary and I took a sip

Nope. Still…really not right. I wasn’t willing or able to finish a second round.

Which seems like a good place to say that bad food happens. I’ve been served moldy fruit at James Beard award nominated restaurants. I’ve made dinner reservations days in advance only to show up and have to wait two hours. But I’m not going to tell you which restaurants those were because I was very impressed with how those staffs handled those situation.

But what do you do what a restaurant tells you that if you don’t like what they’ve given you, you can fuck-off home?

Well, I didn’t tip-for the first time since I was like 14.

And then Kelsea took it upon herself to write a note on the receipt explaining why I hadn’t tipped.

And then I came here to talk to you.

I know that, every time you don’t tip your waitress, a box of kittens is sent to a shady animal shelter, but I had to ask myself ‘what is the basic function of tipping?’ I’d argue that it can be boiled down to ‘acknowledgement of a basic level of service that’s clear and separate from an actual basic level of service.’ So then what to do when you actually feel slighted? What to do when a restaurant has made it clear that they don’t care for you personally? Are you still required to (and I use this word carefully) reward that behavior? And how can you isolate and address your server’s behavior other than monetarily? If sitting down at a restaurant to order lunch is something other than ordering from a menu and then receiving that food, so to then is the waitstaff hired to preform a service in addition to silently providing the food that you ordered.

As Kelsea and I left LOKaL, we passed a line of people waiting to take our place at the table. It would appear that the restaurant’s attitude that my individual experience didn’t much matter in the greater scheme of things was well-grounded.  But you could throw a football from the front door of Lokal and hit ten other brunch spots with a good review and a liquor license. Hopefully, they have one eye on the food and the other eye on the service.

LOKaL Restaurant & Lounge
1904 W North Ave
(Wicker Park) Chicago, IL 60622