So I get jazzed, I mean just excited, one hundred percent in the mood to jack off but then I’m doing this thing now called getting to work on time so I had to put charming the trouser snake on the back burner.
And I get to work, I’m just fucking ebullient, I’m all “Happy International Falafel Day, Diane!” and Diane laughs at me and I’m all “Happy International Falafel Day, Barb!” and Barb engages me because Barb thinks I’m
The only caveat to this place?
It’s in Dinkytown.
We’ve been over how I fare in Dinkytown, and I wasn’t excited to go back but I am not afraid of Dinkytown and I will beat its ass.
Lunchtime rolls around, I strip my uniform shirt off, strap my helmet on, and ride up to The Land of Milk and Roofies, Dinkytown LLC.
It’s a decent ride, really is a nice day out. Warm, not hot, clear sky. And this season, the Hitler Youth Brought to You by Clearisil - Like Clear Skin? Use Clearisil - and McDonald’s - Bada Ba Ba Ba! I’m Shoving It - are favoring flipflops and ball caps without team insignia on them and generally just looking like they were raised to just say no to tobacco and they make cringey faces at the sight of pre-cum. Becca is there, so is Jeremy and Spencer - Spencer’s a girl, by the way, this is Dinkytown. And before you get to wondering, Spencer is totally a cis chick but she advocates for trans rights even though she says “tranny” after her fifth Smirnoff Ice. She’s nineteen and she’s from South Dakota, this is her first time in a multicultural community, I don’t want to say forgive her but, guys, somebody has to pull her aside and tell her irony died in November 2016, you can’t be an advocate and use the slur, Spencer, OK? It’s, like, not even a gray area.
Also, we need to tell Spencer that guys like Bevin, who talk some shit about polyamory, really just want a pass to bang lots of chicks who aren’t her, even after he moves in.
God, I hate Dinkytown.
I get to the place, which is like playing Frogger with all the goddamned delivery trucks backing up and going forward and going back and doing it in the bike lanes. Goddamn, I hate Dinkytown.
I go to lock up my bike and a homeless guy asks me for change - no, this totally happened, this marks the tonal shift of this piece - and I apologize and tell him I don’t carry cash and he says he just needs something to eat. I ask him if he wants some falafel. He says he likes fried chicken and I tell him I’m going to the falafel place, would he like some falafel and he says yeah and I tell him I’ll get him a sandwich and I’ll be right back.
Now, my whole adult life, I aint ever given money to the homeless, really because I just never had it to give. Now? Now I make money, real money, living money. Lately, I’ve been giving out what I can when I can. This homeless guy wants a falafel sandwich? It’s five bucks, what does it hurt me? Get the guy a sandwich.
I walk in and the girl behind the counter looks like she was the result of an eighties music video collapsing in on itself like a nova, sort of how I imagine jellyfish reproducing which, no, I am not looking up, jellyfish scare me enough when they’re just not doing anything at all, I don’t want to see how they reproduce. I don’t want to know if they fuck or divide cellularly, I don’t want to know any of that shit.
I order two falafel sandwiches to go and I sit down.
And I wait.
And I wait a little more.
And I wait long enough that a half dozen people have placed their orders since I have. In that time, I get to thinking:
It’s eighty fucking degrees out. I’m going to get this homeless guy a hot sandwich and just, “Here you go, guy?”
So I walk over to Tawny Kitaen’s stunt double from back when Tawny Kitaen was a biscuit (that’s what we used to call a snack in my day) and I ask her if they have a debit card minimum and she says no and I ask her for two Cokes (and they were Mexican Cokes, too).
Then I go back to waiting.
And waiting.
I watch a timid Asian man ask for a to-go box from an indifferent server, the same server who, within five minutes, would call out my number, eighty eight, and then when I go to get it, wants to see my receipt. So I dig in my pocket and she says, “Or you can just tell me what you got.”
Two falafel sandwiches.
She hands me the bag and the homeless guy is still in his spot. I walk over to him and hand him the foil wrapped sandwich and he thanks me. I pull one of the Cokes out of my bag and ask him if he has a bottle opener (because I’m an idiot, we know that about me). He shakes his head so I use the one on my key ring, open the bottle for him, tell him to have a good day. (Because I’m an idiot. For those of you keeping score at home: I have, in less than a minute, asked a homeless person if they had a bottle opener and then departed by telling them to have a good day. Jesus fuck, I need some sort of sensitivity training.)
I bike off and I stop in a park to enjoy my lunch before getting to the office. I pick the bench with the least bird shit on it - a good indicator that my lunch will be doo-doo free - and unwrap my sandwich.
I bet you’re just dying, after all that build up, to know how it was.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It tasted, uh, like falafel.
It was falafel balls in a pita with lettuce, tomato, cucumber, and tahini. It was, uh…
The falafel was your bog standard falafel, nothing stood out about it. The tomatoes added no flavor, I noticed the cucumber, it would have been nice if there were more cucumbers. The pita tasted like the flatbread Taco Bell uses in their Chee-Z Gordita XXL Crunch Bastard 750 or whatever the fuck. That was a point of concern.
BUT, two big positives: Lettuce…
Kafe Nasty, tell me you get the reference.
Anyway, the lettuce added some crispness, some crunchiness to this otherwise soft-serve sandwich, which might actually be a negative point when lettuce is what saves your sandwich but I’m trying to not make this a hit piece. I’ve already gone off road with the jokes so far, I may as well try to save this piece.
Not that anybody ever reads this fuckin’ thing anyway.
ENOUGH of that, the other positive to the falafel sandwich is that they put exactly the right amount of tahini on it. That was fun, I guess. Kept the sandwich moist without getting soupy. You know, big garlic and sesame flavor. But that’s just tahini.
Would I tell you to give Wally’s your money? Eh, no, probably not. It’s not bad by any means but the sandwich wasn’t anything to get excited about. And it really was just that one sandwich. I don’t know about the rest of the menu but that one sandwich didn’t compel me to return to check out their other items. I might, I’m not against the idea. Maybe if it was in my neighborhood it would be one of those things where I’d have guests and they’d be hungry and I’d say “Oh, you guys want some Levantine food? I know this great place…” the same way I’d say “Oh, you guys want some banh mis? I know this great place just across the street,” and I’d point them to Pho Hoa, one of those places that isn’t the best but it’s right there so why not?
So, not bad, not exciting, not too many points against it, not too many in its favor either. It was five dollars I don’t regret spending. In fact, I’ll venture that I got my five dollars worth.
And I survived Dinkytown once again.
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