Marty Barrett: The Flight of the Mavervorl

--5.15.2008--

The War on the Poor from four fronts

Yesterday I needed to get to the Corman Federal Building in Van Nuys, the San Fernando Valley counterpart to the federal centers in Los Angeles proper. I decided to take public transportation because gas prices make it almost convenient.

I bought an MTA day pass for five bucks, which would cover the bus to the subway station, the subway to the articulated busway, and the articulated bus to Van Nuys, and back. I loaded my bike to the front of the bus, locked my bike at the train station, and arrived in Van Nuys unfettered 90 minutes from when I left home.

In my five years attempting to squeeze value and enjoyment out of riding subways in L.A. (which includes the articulated bus, or Orange Line, for purposes of fares), I have had my ticket checked maybe three times.

When one descends into the subway in L.A. one buys a ticket, which must be shown to any MTA employee on demand. There are no turnstiles or gates, but if a rider is caught without a ticket he may be fined $250.

That said, the honor system can't be working too well, as the MTA announced it will be adding high-tech turnstiles soon, and the occasional MTA officer assigned to ticket detail must feel abashed doing a job that might better be assigned to a basket (I feel the same way about toll booth operators).

Anyway, the complex in which the Corman Federal Building stands also houses the Van Nuys Division of Los Angeles Superior Court as well as the offices of probation officers and a radiating web of bail bond companies. So I was riding on the Orange Line with a bunch of ex-cons going to see their parole officers and families going to see their relatives on trial.

The bus was met at Van Nuys Station by four uniformed police who checked everyone's ticket (I just flashed mine, but there was no way for the officer to really see it. He didn't follow me) and apprehended at least five people and let one family go with a warning.

That the cops were out in force at the Courthouse but where one might not be seen for months elsewhere on the route seemed unbalanced, but I guess if there's a quota to fill of scofflaws who will be stuck with $250 fines because they can't afford five bucks, it's a smarter move to go where the poor people are.

Filled with rightewous indignation at the end of the day and carrying no currency but my day pass in my pocket, I made the long journey back to Hollywood where my bike was, and pulled a book from my pocket, waiting for the bus that would take me home.

As you know, I am a vagrant magnet. In 2009 I will have my own entry indicating this in the Periodic Table of the Elements. In a crowd of people I will be the person a vagrant asks for money, and they never believe me when I say I don't have any change.

As I was reading my book in the group of four people, I heard a strange honking coming toward me and knew, without looking up, that it was the voice of someone coming to ask me for money. I figured the guy deserved at least the courtesy of my looking up, plus I wanted to see the type of person who honked, so I looked up.

"Honk honk honk," said a guy holding a ragged piece of paper reading I AM A DEAF MUTE.

He was signing something to me, so I made the American Sign Language signs for NO and MONEY. He then pointed to ".50" on the other side of his paper, and I signed NO MONEY again.

Then he started signing fast and furious. I wasn't even sure it was real ASL. He was pointing up, as if to God, and at that point I said the word "No." He kept honking at me and gesturing, the gist of which was, "You have to give me something." Finally I signed STOP and said, "Go away." I wish I knew the ASL for GOD DOESN'T EXIST.

(Having watched Evan Almighty recently, I am more sure than ever.)

A friend of mine used to manage a Starbucks and I recounted something that recently happened to me at a Starbucks near the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, where the Oscars are awarded.

We had the following e-mail conversation:

Dear Michelle,

I know this part of your life is behind you, but I am curious about the Starbucks policy on vagrants.

The other day I was at a Starbucks at the corner of Highland and Franklin, just north of Hollywood/Highland, and a homeless guy came in and started terrorizing the place.

I was in a suit and tie and had my computer bag and a camera, and he saw me before I saw him, so there was no time to put on my Fuck You face, which I certainly would have, because he was drunk.

I admit that my willingness to give people money goes way down when they're drunk, unless they're hookers.

So he comes to my table and the first I saw of him was him kneeling down next to me.

"Bro I beg you bro I just need a cup of coffee bro you're a handsome guy bro - ..."

And I just didn't like him, so I said, "I'm not giving you any money."

He said, "I didn't ask you for money Bro I said I wanted a cup of coffee."

I hadn't though of this tactic before. What I should have said, of course, was Get Away from Me, because that's what I meant. So instead I said, "You can have some of my coffee."

He goes and gets a cup from somewhere, comes back, and pours like a third of my coffee cup into his before I look up again and said, "I said you can have SOME of mine."

Then he heads off to bother other patrons, then he goes outside to harass people coming in, then he leaves. Meanwhile, I'm staring at his coffee mug, thinking, "Whose coffee is this now?"

Then he comes back and starts telling this girl to my right that I'm rich and I wouldn't give him any money.

So very nicely I turn and say, "Shut the fuck up, you fucking piece of shit, and drink the fucking coffee I gave you."

Then he gets up and says (and I don't know what this means), "You're all Shit Ass," and he leaves.

From beginning to end, this journey took about 40 minutes, during which time the employees knew the guy was there and, I got the impression, were familiar with him already.

I am very conflicted about whom I give money, and decide on a case by case basis, and as I said am prejudiced against people who appear under the influence, but I'm wondering what the Starbucks policy is about people who create disruptions, because that guy had the run of the place.

She wrote me back immediately:

ok - so Starbucks policy. simple answer? there isn't one. they don't have any official policy on how to handle vagrants because in Starbucks Corporate La La Land vagrants don't exist. they have this pristine image of creating a neighborhood environment wherever they plink down a store and that is really what they want you to build: a neighborhood feeling where all are welcome. you know, you walk into a store and your friendly barista Joe starts making your favorite beverage, asking you how the kids are and what you thought of the game last night - the whole transaction taking place in under 3 minutes, the alloted amount of time that you are given to service a customer from start to finish. ideally - it is a great vision. realistically - it is total bullshit.

in my experience working for starbucks - especially starbucks in a heavily populated area like LA - you deal with things that the every day corporate suit couldn't even imagine. and because of that, and the pressure they put on you to MAKE IT WORK, you start creating your own policies regarding vagrants, thieves, drunks and assholes. and MY policy in MY stores was ZERO TOLERANCE. period. i became a cunt. seriously. i was the "heavy" that - whenever someone came in and behaved like the situation you described - would immediately jump over the counter while yelling to my assistant to call the cops, and i would tell them to get out. get out NOW. and if they didn't i would very politely start pushing them out the door. one time, i had a vagrant who was such a nuissance and insisted on getting in my customers face that several of us pushed him out the door and locked it until the police arrived and he went away. i HATED the whole scene - and by the end of my Starbucks career, after bullying and pushing around countless vagrants and drunks; after being yelled at, pushed, shoved, threatened, had stuff thrown at me and even being SPIT on, i had had enough. getting no support to behave this way took its toll on me and i just became a miserable person. and essentially that was why i left. there was nothing 'happy' about my job at all and i just wanted OUT.

it would be my recommmendation to you to let corporate headquarters know of the experience you had in that location. i do know the store you are talking about - and it is plagued with homeless in that area - but someone should have done SOMETHING. my guess is that the partners in that store were either pussies or just didn't care. and either choice is unacceptable, imho. if you call or write Starbucks and let them know, at the very least you will get a free beverage or two out of it. at the most someone will get a talking to - and they really should get a talking to for not having done ANYTHING.

i am so damn glad to be out of that world. it just was a horrible experience to have to deal with that wild card factor on a daily basis. and no matter how many people i told in the upper eschalon, there really was nothing to be done. we actually had a meeting with the SM police dept once to discuss how to handle vagrants and it was determined that we were not allowed to do anything like ask them to leave or call the cops because "they had rights too" and we were infringing upon them by treating them any differently than any other customer. that even though they might be shitting all over our restroom floors or screaming at another customer that they are all 'shit ass' it was wrong to treat them in a manner that could be deemed PREJUDICE. when i heard that, i thought Fuck you all - i'm gonna do what i want and sue the company for hiring me if you don't like it. i mean, honestly: until we actually handle the homeless situation at large, it will continue to interupt the lives of those of us who are working for a living. but my personal credo? NEVER give money. never ever ever. it's like feeding a stray cat - they will keep returning because they know that there are suckers like you who will take care of them, enabling them to live another day on the streets and drink themselves to oblivion.

Finally, a little while ago I was approached by a vagrant near my office on Wilshire Blvd.

"Mumble mumble mumble," he said.

"I'm sorry?" I said, leaning my head down.

"Spare some change," he declared.

"I don't have any change on me," I said. I rarely have actual cash on me unless it's a bunch of quarters for the bus I'm waiting for.

"Oh, so you're sorry?" he said, turning away from me.

"I said 'I'm sorry' because I didn't hear you," I said.

"Oh well," he said, "I'm sorry."

There is no through line here other than, I think, that the police have no reservations about the prejudices we share.

See also: Ear mites; Magical thinking

Labels: commerce, culture, food, los angeles, money, transportation, travel

--4.23.2008--

High noon at the Claim Jumper

Claim Jumper is one of those restaurants to which people say you should go with an empty stomach and big appetite.

"Go with an empty stomach and big appetite!" they say.

Because the Northridge Claim Jumper is perched at the epicenter of the 1994 Los Angeles earthquake, I chose to go there recently when my stomach was empty, my appetite was big, and my Richter scale needed recalibrating.

"I will have the crab cakes and the Whiskey Chicken," I told the waitress. If I could have had Jagermeister Chicken or just Jagermeister, I would have.

"Do you think you can eat all that?" she asked.

"I'll take a doggie bag if I can't," I said. I'm not proud.

It wasn't until recently that I became aware that taking a doggie bag is viewed as uncool. Not that I thought it was cool, particularly, but that someone who chooses not to throw food away would be thought of as uncool made me think I wasn't subscribing to the right magazines.

It was at a sushi restaurant in Canoga Park and I'd eaten most everything on my plate. But now I felt bloated and mean.

"Can I get a To Go bag?" I asked.

"No," I was told, "you have to eat that here."

"But I paid for it (actually I hadn't). Are you saying you're going to throw it away?"

"If you don't eat it."

"At least tell me that you'll eat it or you'll take it home," I said. "Because it's stupid to just leave this food here and not be able to take it from the building."

"We don't do doggie bags," I was told.

"Whoa," I said. That smarts.

When I worked at Pizza Hut as a teen, we would eat our mistakes. I will not say I ever made a deliberate mistake so that I could eat a pizza with the wrong topping on it, because I have evidence that my former manager reads this site. All I'm saying is that the food was not wasted.

At the sushi restaurant, I sat back down and finished my meal in spite.

People talk about animal fear. When I eat a steak, I enjoy trying to detect fear.

"Not enough fear on this one," I will say at a steakhouse. "Send it back and scare the shit out of it."

But I wonder if one's own spite changes the taste of food?

Back at the Claim Jumper, my crab cakes and Whiskey Chicken had arrived. I had a couple of margaritas and a glass of water. As I ate I was aware that I would easily finish this meal and still be hungry.

"You're really tearing through that," the waitress said. "You must have been hungry."

Maybe the experience at the sushi place a mile away had released a chemical into my hypothalamus that turned off my awareness of my own satiation in restaurants. In any case, my waitress was beginning to make me feel like I was a miracle of science, because I finished my meal and she said, "You got through it!"

I was sad that I wasn't going to be able to eat this at work.

There are food riots going on in the Southern Hemisphere. Today I found this excellent pictorial article detailing the weekly meals and food expenditures for several households around the world. I was envious of this North Carolina family's ability (left) to get pizza delivered twice a week. They must be tycoons.

See also: What we eat around the world

Labels: food, los angeles

--4.11.2008--

Diet advice from Keith Richards

If you were to enter a conversation late on the line "...he should be dead," chances are you would assume the topic was Keith Richards.

That is why I listen when he tells me what food I should avoid; because what scares Keith Richards scares me.

The miracle of pharmacology Rolling Stones guitarist said in an interview with GQ that he will not eat cheese. He said this while guzzling a 16-oz. Solo cup filled with Ketel One at 4 in the afternoon. Therefore, I will stop eating cheese.

"Cheese is very wrong," he said. "Fermented milk is not the ideal choice for everyday eating."

He also said the story about the daily blood transfusions is an untrue rumor. But he was pretty clear about the cheese.

See also: The GQ&A: Keith Richards

Labels: food, magazines, pop

--12.27.2007--

Hard luck turducken

The turducken was one of the greatest successes I have ever experienced, despite a rocky start in which FedEx failed to deliver it overnight from Louisiana and I had to go to their facility in downtown L.A. and wait, literally in a cage, while others berated employees about not receiving Canadian medications in time for Christmas.

The birds comprised a Fowly Trinity of Yuletide Tastiness, though I was surprised to see that the 12-lb. hy-bird was supposed to feed 44 people in servings of 5.5 ounces. I seem to recall that people with stomach staples can only accommodate about five ounces of material in their newly svelte guts, so perhaps a lot of people on the bayou have had that surgery.

Labels: food, holiday

--12.20.2007--

The turducken cannot hear the turduckener

For Christmas we are eating a turducken, a Cajun dish in which a duck is shoved into a chicken which is shoved into a turkey. Beaks and bones have been removed (though a beak would have come in handy during the shoving).

In between the discrete fowlic elements is slathered a cornbread stuffing. Eating a turducken is like slicing through three-layered Neopolitan ice cream, except with birds.

Because our friend Eric is joining us, and because Eric actually raises falcons, we were hoping to surprise him by adding his falcon to the mix. The integrity of the meter would be maintained if the resulting dish was a turdalcken, and the configuration would be duck -> falcon -> chicken -> turkey. If we can get it together in time, we might be able to surprise Eric with this new tradition.

"This tastes like -- Oh My God!" he will say. "It's my Charlemagne!"

If we had more time, we might have been able to prepare a turdalckenelope, turdalckenelopiraffe, or even a turdalckenelopiraffephant, but Christmas shouldn't be about complexity.

See also: The Second Coming

Labels: food, holiday, poetry

--12.08.2007--

Bladder control

Breakfast (the most important meal) comes with something like 20 gallons of Coca Cola at Jack in the Box. No wonder I wet my bed and suffer from childhood obesity. I initially used the soccer ball to provide a comparison, but then i ate that, too.

Labels: consumer, food

Closed Encounters

Encounters, the restaurant at LAX that recently dislodged a half-ton chunk of stucco near some diners, is being renovated. I like it better this way, though; there seems to be so many more ways to get in and out of the building, and today's sophisticated menus are all about variety.

Labels: food, los angeles

--11.27.2007--

Predictable drinker, perennial favorite

Once I directed a pub crawl version of Sean O'Casey's "The Plough And the Stars" in Boston. Plays performed in bars are an Irish tradition, and the scene from O'Casey's play about the 1916 Easter Rising was even more appropriate because it took place in a bar while the uprising commenced outside.

Anyway, I cast an elderly gentleman for the role of Peter, an ineffectual loudmouth and "lemon-whiskered oul' swine". He was about 70. I don't know why he wanted to schlep all around the city doing plays in bars for not much money, but it might have had something to do with the fact that there were four or five 22-year-old women in the cast playing spirited agitators, bar wenches, and prostitutes. He must have thought, "Good odds."

One night as reheasal was breaking up he tried to get the young ladies to go home with him. They politely declined, and he said:

"I have alcohol."

...and they politely declined again. I filed the exchange away. Did he think that alcohol would tip the scales?

The other night I had my annual Los Angeles birthday dinner at the Irish bar Tom Bergin's in Los Angeles. One by one, my friends came bearing gifts of alcohol, particularly Jagermeister. I got three bottles of Jager, which is my biggest birthday haul of the substance to date.

"I thought, 'I could be original or I could get you something you'd use'," one friend said. Indeed, we killed two of the bottles right there at the table as the long-suffering waitstaff rejoiced that it would be a year before they saw me again. (We tipped the living shit out of them.)

I also had Jagermeister at my 20th birthday on Martha's Vineyard. A lot of it. I threw up most of it. But I was poorer then and I was drinking it without any food. The other night we were able to drink it with dinner, and I didn't have a hangover the next day. In this world the poor are even denied vices.

Here is my friend Gabriela with the evening's take, which included a bottle of wine in a Chinese suit. I consider myself lucky because I think my friends and family would have shown up even if there had been no alcohol.

(I could be wrong about this - I'm no longer a 22-year-old woman.)

See also: Full. Metal. Jagermeister

Labels: alcohol, boston, food, los angeles, martha'svineyard, performance, personal history

--6.22.2007--

Your heart attack, with cole slaw

The Pantry is one of the oldest restaurants in Los Angeles, located up the street from where the Lakers and Clippers lose. It is owned by former L.A. Mayor Richard Riordan, who is also responsible for many of the bike paths in the city.

I go here every year around this time for three days in a row, because I like to protest Erotica L.A. at the nearby convention center. This year I'll be holding the sign that says "You're Lucky I'm Not God."

Here is the chicken-fried steak platter. It comes with peas, mashed potatoes, your doom, and a stack of bread with an equally high stack of butter pats. Cole slaw is extra, and usually I just finish that in the ambulance.

See also: Pantry Cafe

Labels: food, los angeles

--2.12.2007--

Vurping Koreatown

One of my favorite restaurants in Los Angeles is Cassell's on Sixth Street in Koreatown. It has the best potato salad I have ever eaten.

Today I had a burger, fried zucchini, potato salad, and a cherry Coke there with a dear childhood friend and returned to my office, then drank some water.

"Big lunch," I said to myself, when I burped and threw up in my mouth.

I remained calm and kept my mouth shut. I got the restroom key. I walked on down the hall. I spat out the vurp contents. I came back to the office and reflected.

"I still like their potato salad," I thought.

Labels: food, los angeles