Men – Page 16 – Hopeful Romantics

Democracy for 99 Cents

In most cities you can find one or two places that are in their own way models of democratic activity. I am not talking about voting, or democratic activity with a big “D.” Instead I am point to the unique qualities of a certain location where people from all walks of life come together on a regular basis.

Sports stadiums were once the obvious examples. But the venues are so large anymore they really don’t lend themselves to the sense that it is all one crazy melting pot of people from mixed ethnic backgrounds and economic classes. In fact, sports venues over the years have become increasingly exclusive, with the advent of skyboxes. Then a notch or two below the sky boxes, sports fans in pricey seats are given access to eateries and sports clubs forbidden to hoi polloi. All while those in the cheap seats are relegated to the hot dog and beer stands or the fast food franchises.

But in cities like Philadelphia there are the steak sandwich joints in South Philly where people from all walks of life stand around, munching foot long sandwiches as hot cheese burns the roof of your mouth and hot steak grease runs down your arm. Be it a hot summer night or a cold winter day, there is a line. Same thing with Titos in Los Angeles. People from everywhere line up until midnight for cheap tacos. Pink’s in Hollywood, has patient lines of hot dog buyers. Immigrants, movie stars, rock and rollers, regular Joe’s, all waiting through the night for their turn at the hot dogs.

South Philadelphia had Levis’ Hot Dogs where the parking lot was a mix of junkers and Jaguars. Businessmen and professionals sat at communal tables with truck drivers, chomping down on what was one of the better hot dogs in the western world. It was more than food; it was a tradition with water stained posters listing the members of the 20, 30 and 50 year clubs, respectively. Parents took their kids and as the tradition had it pointed out what was the oldest working soda fountain in the USA. There they served Champ Cherry Soda, a drink all to its own.

But that is gone, a victim of someone’s idea of gentrification. Levis’ is not the only victim. There are places of similar tradition around the country that have been lost to the franchised world and overpriced storefront bistros. Chicago has its places. New York. Name the city and there is always someone to list the places. Even if the list gets smaller every year.

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But with the economy as rotten as it is, the parking lot has taken on a whole new visage. Broken down junkers are mixed with the German and Japanese thoroughbred motors so prominent in Southern California. People in funky threads, mix it up with people who are dressed in the latest fashion. Supercuts meets Umbertos of Beverly Hills, and the thing is no one seems to care. A bargain is a bargain.

So there is a perfect cross section of much of the country, well, Southern California in this case, anyway, pushing baskets up the narrow aisles and plucking items from the well stocked shelves. There are men alone, single women, married couples, dates, winos, and of course the proverbial couple who just moved in together and debate in every aisle over what they need for their new arrangement. It’s cute, really, in an obnoxious sort of way.

But the point is, they come from everywhere to visit any one of what seem like thousand stores in the city. With some of the more affluent shoppers you can determine how new they are to the experience by the way they navigate the store. The experience shoppers tend to breeze through, while the novices stop and examine every item. Why not? I mean where else do you have open access to everything from frozen food to colored condoms? Where else can you find the $20 reading glasses you saw a year ago in the department store for 99 Cents? Tools. Eggs. Notebooks. Toothpaste and furniture polish.

So democracy has returned as the mixed income bargain seekers all wait patiently in the cashier’s line for a recent immigrant to check out their items. Twenty things. Twenty bucks. Plus tax, of course. People pay in cash; people pay with credit cards. People are there who have always needed to watch their budget. And people who had really no budget at all.

The whole interaction is surprising orderly. You don’t really experience the usual rancor you find in a great many Southern California parking lots. Perhaps the economic meltdown has everyone in shock and not in the mood to do battle over a parking space. Talk about shock and awe. But the orderly aspect in interesting all to itself. A true democracy may be messy, but there is order. More importantly there is respect for the other individual, even if it is grudging or even obscure respect. The meltdown, like the larger earthquakes and other disasters hasn’t resulted in chaos and a breakdown in order. If anything, order, like water has found its own workable level. For less than a buck.

Bad Economy–Even the Hookers are Hurting

A year ago the world’s hookers were being pinched by their flush clientele. Now the same prostitutes are feeling the pinch. Life is a lot tougher out on the streets and in the bordellos of the world. The economic downturn is hurting the world’s oldest profession.

In Prague, long known for its post-communist bohemian scene and plethora of prostittues, business is bad. There aren’t enough tourists notes a recent article in the International Herald Tribune. Not long ago, because of its low prices and high number of prostitutes, there were sex junkets to Prague, where businessmen could sow their wild oats for a carnal weekend. But prices are up and money is tight. Some still come to cheer themselves up and to forget about the global meltdown. Just not as many as there was a while ago.

In Berlin, known for its bady night life, the sex business is down by 20%. As for the other cities of the world, one has to presume business is off as fewer men are paying to get off. Perhaps sex is on the increase in dating and with partners. But I doubt it. Sex junkets are special. It is the alternative to golf and other escapist weekends that men use to bond. Sex junkets are for distraction. Sex with spouses and partners require more focus.

As for the good ol’ United States, who knows what this economic downturn will mean, sex-wise. As for the changing of administrations, from a conservative to a more liberal government, often that means added sexual congress. But between all the people whose libidos are reduced by anti-depressants and the depressing state of the economy maybe there just isn’t the sex there used to be. It may no longer be a matter matter of “just say no.” Maybe no one wants to bother.
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The article indicates that the lousy economy discourages adultery. No one could afford that expense of the illicit romance, the wining and dining and the ancillary upkeep. When you can’t afford to go to dinner with your spouse or partner, it’s hard to justify spending money for the sole purpose of spreading the seed. Even dating has tapered off, at least on the grand scale and the big splash. You know the illusion of life would be if the two of you got together in a more serious fashion. Now, with cheaper dating habits, you tend to see what you are getting.

Driving through one section of Long Beach, California, one eyes the hookers working the corners in other desperation, the disease it seems practically dripping off of them. Not to pick on Long Beach, or even Sunset Boulevard, where a similar scenario plays out day and night. I am quite sure most cities in this country have its streets where prostitutes ply their trade between heroin benders and sessions at the crack house. One has to think while driving by that in this lousy economy the usual trade for this layer of girls is unemployed or really hurting for money. Times must be really tough.

Crime must be up here and even among the upper class hookers. On the upper level your pockets get rifled, while here the unsuspecting trick may be lured to a remote spot where he is set upon, beaten and robbed. As for what the higher class call girls are doing, that’s hard to say. Most are probably working. Just not as much.

Well it goes to show that when times are tough, times are usually tough everywhere. No one can escape the belt tightening operation. Most are shocked it all came down so fast. Talk about shock and awe. It’s tough to feel libidinous when the world is collapsing all around you. Tough to pay for sex. Tough, even when it’s free.

Chains of Fools Feed on Each Other With Food to Go

Once upon a time you had independent restaurants that sold good food at modest prices. You also had lousy, greasy spoons that sold bad food at modest prices. So, enter the chain restaurant. There was no gamble there. You were treated to mediocre food at modest prices. The video of the rats running all over a KFC /Taco Bell spring to mind as one of those major exceptions.

The wall-to-wall establishment of chain restaurants was kind of the middle of the road between the win-win and lose lose situation. Restaurant chains could saturate the market with advertisements. Branding was incredible. You may not get the greatest of food, but at least it was consistent. You could go into any Denny’s, Chili’s, House of Pancakes, Applebee’s, Olive Garden and get pretty much the same food as any other branch of the chain. The menus were prepared from a central office. Ingredients were the same and hardly varied.

You could go as a couple to any of the restaurant chains. You could get Chinese Food at P.F. Chang’s or even the Panda Express. You could get chicken, burgers, whatever, and you always knew that the food was prepared if not the way you wanted, then certainly the way you expected. No surprises.

So gradually the chain restaurants moved in and the independent restaurants closed down. Some of the independent restaurants, glorified in highway lore and local nostalgia, should have closed. The chain restaurants were a blessing, sort of, as kitchen conditions were regulated to certain standards. Well, sort of. There are more than a few egregious exceptions.

Now while most of the chain restaurants, with the exception of venues like Ruth’s Chris and Houston’s, are not particularly aesthetic in their ambiance, what with same-same, bright colors and far too often screaming kids, they are still a good places to take a date, run in for a quick bite and run to a movie. You may have forgotten what you ate ten minutes after eating it, but at least it won’t rumble in your stomach. That is a major plus in this day and age. And, if you are planning to have sex later that night, you will entertain less fear of the meal attacking you when you least expect it.

The cheapest viagra pills patients who get the gamma knife surgery done have a lot of scope to live further than six months of time. order viagra This is of course just speculation at this point. So, you can get it staying at home cialis 20mg no prescription easily. Men often measure their self-worth by their ability to stay strong, to protect & take care of their loved ones; so when they struggle at job, lose their job fall into drinking habit. low price cialis So now most of the modestly priced independent restaurants are gone. The chains often find themselves with little or not competition. So now they are not only are their advertising campaigns directed toward telling you what superb food they are serving. Superb and in some cases a whole lot of it. Great food. Eat it cheap. And eat more than you are supposed to. You would think by the advertising you were treating yourself to fine dining. No, you are not.

One most wonder if they threshold for fine dining has dropped so low that most chains are serving what constitutes good food. One most wonder if sheer volume of food supersedes actual quality of food. Silly me. There is little to wonder there.

So now I hear commercials where chain restaurants like Chili’s are offering take out food. They are turning their attentions to the lesser food venues, the fast food and drive-thru eateries. You can now get the same meal you ate at your table with belief in its consistence if not its culinary delight, and drag it back home. Forget the movie. You aren’t going out anyway. Not in this tough economy. That is why God created Pay-Per-View.

To hear the commercial they are, subtly speaking, in a heated duel with the types of fast food chains that actually serve crappy takeout with absolutely no expectation. Yes, the mid-prized chain restaurants are now challenging their lesser cousins for a piece of the low budget market share. The battle is on and soon will rage. It’s a bad economy out there and restaurants are hurting. Every buck won over to your side is a buck well earned. Any day I expect to see the brutally honest commercial, “My mediocre food is better than your mediocre food and it only costs a few bucks more.”

This should be an interesting battle for market share. I am sure other mid-level chains will join in. Conversely, the strategy is two fold. They are not only chasing the drive-thru but the diner that used to frequent chic little bistros and storefronts where the food is pricey and avoidable when there is a different paradigm for date night. Forget the candlelight. When you are short on money and worried about your job, run down to the shopping plaza and pick up some food.

It is convenient. As with the drive-thru’s, you can pull up to a Chili’s and just get it to go. Order it over the phone, and they will give you an exact time when to come and pick it up. Nice and hot. In bags that remind you of the dining experience you either worked to avoid or just left behind. Yum.

Lizzie Borden Killed Her Parents Here. Eat Hearty, But Don’t Feed the Ghosts

The house where Lizzie Borden may have killed her family is now a Bed and Breakfast lodge. This sturdy wood frame house in sturdy Fall River, Massachusetts hardly looks like a celebrated murder scene, but then so few really do. That is, until you look at them with the knowing eye. Otherwise would you know the difference? Would the people lodged in creepy, haunted houses really see and feel the ghosts if they didn’t know they were inside a creepy, haunted house?

Maybe. I remember visiting one small town and finding one house particularly, in fact, unmistakeably creepy. Nobody seemed to know anything about what may have happened there, neither my family nor the neighbors. Okay. False hunches. I was just getting ready to leave.

As luck would have it the current owner of the house pulled up in the driveway. Without much prodding her confirmed my suspicions that foul play did indeed occur in that house. A minister of some religious persuasion, deeply in debt, killed his wife for the insurance money. He had pushed her down the stairs. The house over the years was occupied by other people with new and different tragedies, from riches to rags to sagas of drugs and degradation.

But Lizzie Borden was another story. She was the O.J. Simpson of her time, among the dozens of other celebrity killers. Ironically, perhaps, Lizzie was not tried for the murder of her parents in California. Nevertheless, she was still acquitted. She then became part of mythical American macabre. There is a rhyme about her. “Lizzie Borden took an ax and gave her mother forty whacks. And when she saw what she had done, she gave her father 41.”

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As to who actually committed, the murders, as with most of these high profile murder cases, theories abound. It was everyone from the housekeeper to the towns people who didn’t at all like Andrew Borden. Some think Lizzie killed him because financial disputes and property divisions. That would be a motive. It has certainly been one before. Others believe Lizzie, the spinster, may have been a little too constrained and embroiled in family dissension. She may have lashed out to save her sanity and her inheritance.

Today we would find a drug ridden and repressed Lizzie seeking to right the wrongs of an inhospitable environment, an oppressive father and abusive step-mother. Who knows? But today what remains of the story, aside fromthe legend itself, is the bed and breakfast and the ghosts who inhabit it along with the 10,000 people who pass through its doors each year. Ghosts are reported to do what ghosts are best know for. They poke and prod, open and close the draws, turn the lights on and off, move things around. In short, they scare the hell out of most of us. For a population that thinks of Pearl Harbor as ancient history, it is amazing how sex and murder can long endure.

Lizzie Borden died and left $30,000 to the animal shelter. She left another $500 so that the cemetery could tend to her father’s grave in perpetuity. Guilt or true love? It’s hard to say. Maybe a little of both. The thing is, given the times, most people were perplexed and a legend was born. Today, we know the story all too well. The difference a hundred odd years can make.

Costco at Thanksgiving and the Battle for Pumpkin Pie

Everybody wants a slice of the pie. Pumpkin pie, that is. It is tasty and seasonal. Pumpkin pie is well worth fighting for. Just ask some of the customers at Costco.

Mumbai had its terrorists. Wal-Mart has its trampled workers. Costco has its pumpkin pie. While the world recoils at the horrible slaughter in the Indian City, or the poor guy who was run over at 5 A.M. by a brutally zealous Long Island crowd, Costco shoppers kicked off the holiday season by shoving each other out of the way in quest of the great seasonal dessert. I mean, if you can’t find your pumpkin pie at Costco, where else can you find it?

This, of course, to the saner among us is a rhetorical question. Pumpkin pie is everywhere this time of year. Albeit it, is is neither as large a pie as those served up at Costco, nor is it as cost-effective. Costco pumpkin pies are big and relatively inexpensive. When you are watching your bucks, it’s a good place to pick up three or four for the Thanksgiving dinner at a very good price. It’s not worth the risk of getting hurt for it. Not offended, but physically hurt.

There was a battle for the pumpkin pies. For dozens, it was a principle worth fighting for. They needed dessert and they were going to get it no matter who got in their way. Old women, small children, the nerdy, the needy, doesn’t matter. Keep you hands off my pumpkin pie.

You see,the Costco bakery ovens can handle a mere sixty pies an hour. That is going full tilt. This of course is usually more than sufficient. But come the holiday season when the craving comes for pumpkin pie, things are very, very different. When you have hundreds of customers standing around waiting until the next round of pies come out of the oven. And when there aren’t enough to go around, the flimsy veneer slides off the patina of civilization, and the battle is on.

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In this case, I expect some attorney will claim Costco was negligent by using bakery ovens that could only turn out sixty pies an hour. And when the Costco workers, attempting to be fair, tried to limit one pie to every party, this poor excuse sharing the wealth elevated mere negligence to cruelty and deprivation. Human rights were violated.

Human rights? Don’t laugh. Family values were violated. Every family member needs at least a couple, few slices. Piece of the pie! Isn’t that what America is all about? Otherwise, what will do with all that extra whipped cream? Because any fool knows you can’t eat the whipped cream without the pumpkin pie. You can’t have your turkey without the expectation of pumpkin pie. Lack of pumpkin pie could result in serious disillusionment and a grievous sense of loss.

Sharing was not an option. Customers elbowed and shoved each other out of the way. A melee broke out in the bakery section. People weren’t getting their pumpkin pie. And those that did, were only allowed to buy one instead of the four they were planning to have for that special Thanksgiving dinner.

I am not one to mince words about the assault on the quality of life and the decline of manners and etiquette. And certainly there are things to be said for our national obesity and smaller portions of everything would best promote the general well being. A trip through Costco should tell you that. Double wides in every aisle. Double wide shuffling through in somnambulistic stupor. Until you take away their pumpkin pie. Then they come to life.

We have heard candidates and pundits talk about the quality of life and the need to make adjustments. For the sake of our country, they say, we need to sacrifice. We have to learn to do without, and we have to think more about our neighbors. So come election night we hold hands and look to the future. We are promised change. Or not. But what we didn’t get was pumpkin pie.