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i-want-the-shovel · 1 year

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Red Bottle Brew Pub vs Rusty Bin Bar

There are two bars in my town I'd like to discuss. One where it's socially acceptable to drink, and one where it's not. First, Red Bottle Brew Pub. Here, you will be greeted at the door by a smiling young hostess dressed in the standard issue company shirt. She is saving money for college right now. Some of the staff are in similar situations to your hostess. Others are idealists working a few nights a week because they want to support the local entrepreneur and quality microbrews. Their wages will be deposited into a savings account that will be used to pay the mortgage or travel the world. Only a few staff are truly working to make ends meet. You sit down at the table and for $3.50 you can enjoy a 16 oz. fine microbrew. Surrounded by all your white, educated friends, you can feast upon local sausages, burgers made from grass fed beef, and all sorts of other health foods. The decor creates a wholesome environment where you can bring your kids or enjoy an after work beer or two with your coworkers before headed home to your white picket fence, golden retriever, and warm bed. Any excessive drinking at the Brew Pub is not seen as a personal fault or moral evil. It is a well deserved way of winding down and having fun after a long day of work. Anything you may do in your inebriated state will be laughed off once the hangover wears off. There are no judgements passed here.

However, head down the street to the Rusty Bin and you'll find a much different environment. It is not the extreme of course, go a little further down the street, almost to the other side of the tracks, and you'll find Flint's, where the true low-lifes and alchies hang out. I've yet to patronize this establishment as it has been deemed truly unacceptable, and even dangerous by my former place of employment. So I'll have to describe it's whiter, slightly classier counterpart, the Rusty Bin.

Here, behind the bar you will see young women with low cut shirts and tight jeans. They flirt with the customers, knowing it will bring in the big tips. They rely on these tips to support their children. The Rusty Bin has a surprising number of beers on tap, but it appears everyone is drinking Coors Light, after all it is cheap. The jukebox plays the same Red Hot Chili Peppers song over and over again. The menu consists of an array of deep fried favorites designed to absorb the alcohol, but leave you thirsty for more. When you come to the Rusty Bin after work, you are blowing your paycheck, not drinking a well deserved beer. Excessive drinking is frowned upon by those who see you leaving the bar. Shouldn't you be spending that money to pay your bills, not blowing it on beer?

Yes, I've just made a lot of gross generalizations. Maybe my perceptions are inaccurate, but let me tell you what I see and feel when I'm spending time in each location. At the brew pub, somehow I see fakery. I see people with invisible walls around them. Forced smiles and behaviors learned since childhood of how to look, what to say, what not to say. Somehow, the Rusty Bin seems to much more real. People laugh, cry, pour out their souls in a way I can't describe. Somehow life's pain is very palpable in the Rusty Bin and no one tries to hide it behind their middle class values.

There's a guy named Joey who I have run into a few times at the Rusty Bin, who also had been staying at the homeless shelter I worked at on and off. The first time I saw him, he was drunk by the time my friend and I arrived. He came to talk to us and offered to buy us a beer. We refused of course, but he proceeded to ask, "what's wrong with letting a homeless guy buy you a beer?" We couldn't say no then. Yes, we knew he had very little money. And because he was drunk, he wouldn't be allowed back into the shelter that night. But he wanted to buy us a beer. He drinks, we drink, so why not sit down and do it together instead of trying to pretend that the other doesn't do it. It seemed okay to drink with him because we were being real to who we were.

The next time I saw Joey at the Rusty Bin was quite the experience. My friends and I had been drinking elsewhere all night and so had he. As soon as we arrived, we started drinking with Joey. Soon he asked us to go out back and smoke. A few minutes later, I was not only drunk, but also high, but the conversation that ensued for that few minutes behind the Rusty Bin was one that I would never give up. Here we were, two middle class, college educated white girls, smoking pot with a homeless guy who stayed at the shelter at which we worked. Suddenly, the conversation became very real. (Or felt so, because of the pot.) We all acknowledged that we drink and smoke. Somehow this was okay for my friend and I, but not for Joey. Joey pointed to the roof next door and told us that was where he would be sleeping. It's where he always stayed when he needed to drink and didn't have any other place to go. When I talked about how that wasn't fair, Joey just shrugged and said, "That's the way it is." My friend and I told Joey that when we work at the shelter we felt like we had to put on airs and pretend that we didn't drink or smoke pot. We do, we just can't talk about it. Joey said he just had to respect those boundaries. It was such a real conversation and I just wish it could have happened sooner.

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i-want-the-shovel · 1 year

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Vegetarianism

I was a vegetarian for four years. I had the idealistic notion that I didn't want my food choices to contribute to world hunger, environmental degradation, or the corporatization of America. I wanted to do what I could to consume only my share of the resources and respect all forms of life as much as possible. The issue became more complicated with the corporatization of organics and the health food industry. The soy veggie burgers I once viewed as a guilt free meat alternative suddenly became another money making product in the ever expanding vegetarian market. The highly processed burger was made with soybeans, which no longer seemed like a health food, but rather a likely genetically modified crop that was quickly becoming one of America's most widespread monocultures. But that's a sidebar. My reasons for eating meat come from a very different place. There is one event that sticks out in my head as a turning point.

At the soup kitchen I worked at, we frequently had volunteers come in to cook meals. One such volunteer was named James. He was a middle aged man of Mexican descent who spoke English well, but with a heavy accent. He was volunteering at the soup kitchen because he was required to do so to maintain eligibility for his food stamps. I hadn't yet decided what to cook for lunch when James arrived, but I had ground pork thawing. I wasn't much in the cooking mood, but it was my lucky day. James loved to cook and was unintimidated to cook for forty, a rare find in a temporary volunteer like James. So James set off to work, appearing very comfortable in the kitchen. He told me he was going to make a pork red chile. It was his daughter's favorite. He was doing this all for his daughter, you know. If it weren't for her, he said, he wouldn't care so much about getting food stamps. In fact, he wouldn't care so much about anything. He'd probably just be off drinking somewhere, not caring if tomorrow came or not. But because of his daughter, he was there, working to get his food stamps. As he browned the meat, he shared with me some of the secrets of Mexican cooking, proud to share with a gringa such as myself. I complimented him throughout the process, as the food looked and smelled delicious.

About half an hour before lunch was to be served, James proudly handed m a bowl of his red chile. I would be the first to sample his masterpiece. I had an awkward moment, similar to many I'd had before. "Actually, I don't eat meat. I'm a vegetarian," I said quietly, looking down. When I looked up at James, his expression was one of confused embarrassment, with a little shame. I myself was ashamed that I had caused that look. He asked me to just try a bite, and again I refused, unsure of how my stomach would react. I felt uncomfortable and awkward and as the day went on, I began to feel more and more ashamed of what I'd done. I don't know when my vegetarianism suddenly became more important than human dignity. I swore it would never happen, but it did. Suddenly, vegetarianism was no longer a noble way of life, but rather a pretentious dietary choice.

I spent the next month or two thinking about that event and other similar events. How many authentic Mexican meals had I missed because of my refusal to eat meat? In theory, food and sharing meals are important to me as a cultural event. My family always ate dinner together and there is something about eating with people that is very special. But for the past year at the soup kitchen, when I was eating with people, I was sitting down with a plate of salad or a canned vegetable. It was never a complete meal. Somehow I felt if I wasn't eating the main dish, I wasn't really eating with people. Often people would comment on the lack of meat on my plate and I would attempt to explain why I was a vegetarian. It was a foreign concept to so many people and if they asked me to explain my reasoning, I often felt snobby trying to explain my concern about consuming too many of the world's resources to someone who had so few resources to start. How lucky I was to even have that concern.

I also began to think about how I love cooking for people. There is nothing like preparing a meal for people and sitting down and eating it with them. Not to be vain, but I love the compliments I get after cooking a good meal. I thought of all the times a soup kitchen guest had cooked an amazing meal and I had turned down a taste. I do not pretend to think my praise of a meal could mean that much to someone, but if eating the meal could instill a bit of pride in someone who was really down and out, wouldn't it be worth it?

The first meat I hate was a barbeque sandwich. Yes, my stomach hurt, but it was worth it. At first, I didn't always like swallowing huge chunks of meat, but gradually it grew on me. It was a slippery slope, and soon I was eating whatever meat I could get my hands on. Whether this is a good thing or not, I do not know. But now I can say I've eaten elk, deer, buffalo, red chile, green chile, and tons of other authentic southwestern cuisine I never would have tried had I remained a vegetarian.

My dietary choices extended beyond meat. I wanted to drink Coke and eat at Sonic. That's what normal people do. Sure, I could keep eating my fruits and veggies, but who doesn't love a good slice of fried bologna now and again?

But when I think about it, I don't want to but that stuff in my body. I don't want all the salt and strange animal parts that come in a piece of bologna. If I'm going to eat an animal, I want to understand exactly how it was an animal, that it lived a good animal life, and that I knew what part I was eating. I don't want to drink high fructose corn syrup and artificial colors in Coke. I don't want to eat a McDonald's cheeseburger, I really don't. But how do I make this all fit together? Can I be in solidarity with a poor American when I refuse to eat the same food as them? It is my position to educate someone about how they should prioritize and maybe give up their cell phone or cable tv so they can buy local, organic produce? Should I tell them how their kids will probably be overweight and diabetic by the time they are twenty because of all the Mountain Dew they are drinking? Should I accept this is the culture of poor America and move on? Am I being judgmental and closeminded, thinking poor people don't value health the way I do? I just don't know.

#vegetarianism #i want the shovel

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