lowquality.net

Kim and I walked around a bit tonight and observed how unbe­liev­ably tacky the rich ass­holes in this sup­posed cultural-center of Nor­folk are. We wouldn’t live any­where else, but I am get­ting a lit­tle tired of being stared at every time I walk past Amalfi. Shit.. I get stared at when I walk past the Tap­house! I don’t know whats going on, I mean, I am def­i­nitely not the most inter­est­ing look­ing per­son in Ghent. You fuck­ing ass­holes don’t even acknowl­edge the half-dozen home­less peo­ple that are always milling around 21st & Col­ley, so I am hon­ored that you find me and Kim so inter­est­ing to look at.

Well, I have noticed some­thing about the female pop­u­la­tion of Ghent: between the ages of 15 and 19 the girls in Ghent are the most attrac­tive they will ever be, then it seems like there is some secret rit­ual that, upon grad­u­at­ing Maury High School, you have to chug 8 gal­lons of melted but­ter before you can go to col­lege. They hit the wall early and hard around here. Oddly enough, after they bal­loon up through their 30’s and 40’s they seem to go back to waifish by the time they hit 60. You can see them out­side of the Naro some­times. The old ladies in Ghent look like a bridge club of Crypt Keep­ers that raided Lit­tle Richard’s wardrobe. Really, do you NEED a $600 pur­ple rhine­stone hat that you will wear to the Har­ri­son Opera House once while you pre­tend to appre­ci­ate opera?

And once again, what’s up with the antique shops and old-fart bou­tiques no one can afford that close before 5PM? I’ve said it before, but if you were really a “small busi­ness owner” you’d be open after 5PM so nor­mal peo­ple could shop at your store. You’d want and appre­ci­ate our patron­age. Own­ing a busi­ness is not an exclu­sive club. What good is a florist that I can’t even stop in after work? Who goes there? I’ve lived in Ghent for three months and I have had to buy flow­ers at Farm Fresh because none of you fancy fuck­ers were open. Remem­ber that when you whine about “big busi­ness” tak­ing over the mom and pop stores.

And I can’t go any fur­ther on this topic unless I bring atten­tion to the ele­phant in the room, or should I say, the ATM sit­ting in the mid­dle of Elliott’s Fair­grounds. That has to be the tack­i­est and most des­per­ate cry for help I have ever seen. I under­stand you have to pay a fee to accept credit cards. We all know that. We know that it’s harder on the lit­tle guys like you than it is on Star­bucks across the street. We also know that cof­fee doesn’t really cost 2 bucks to make, so, maybe, if you’re gonna keep the ATM, you should ditch “Dona­tions for the use of our pub­lic com­puter” bas­ket and stop act­ing like Elliott’s is a fuck­ing non­profit in need of my spare change. I love your cof­fee, I love your ser­vice, I love the gen­eral indie vibe of the estab­lish­ment and I go there as often as I can even though I try to drink cof­fee at home, but, if you need more money, maybe you should try sell­ing some food that is not 3 days old and vegan. I like turkey sand­wiches, please make me one. Also, I would like to use my credit card to buy a pre­pay card, which, I wasn’t aware existed because the sign is tucked away in the back cor­ner of the counter. You have to do bet­ter, folks.

Any­way, from what we could see, the week­end cli­max of Norfolk’s Restau­rant Week con­sisted of fat, drunk ass­holes in ugly shorts and over­tanned, bleach-blonde blowz­ers yelling and fart­ing as they stum­bled down 21st street mum­bling about how much bet­ter Cora’s was than the Peru­vian place (Impe­rio Inca) that is there now is. I know a lot of peo­ple liked Cora’s but Cora’s reminded me of the lame excuse for soul food I had when I was liv­ing in Boston. Soul Food restau­rants do not have wine lists and they most cer­tainly do not have a veg­e­tar­ian or vegan menus. You know what a vegan meal is in a soul food restau­rant is? A fried fish sand­wich.* You can pick the ham hock out of the greens if you want, but they still taste like bacon, baby.

I love how all of the hippest of the hip restau­rants are try­ing to hus­tle for Restau­rant Week and there’s still more peo­ple packed into Red Dog Tav­ern and San Anto­nio Sam’s than there are at the Boot or The Green Onion.

Pearls before swine.

(There is a new Turk­ish place that just opened and has awe­some late night hours. We’re look­ing for­ward to that.)

_{*That’s Kim’s line, not mine. Kim and I also stopped in the Star­bucks on 21st and some woman ordered a frozen Banana choco­late chip mochachino. I mum­bled my usual “Damn, what did poor old cof­fee ever do to her?” line and Kim’s response was “I dunno but it looks like cof­fee just got fucked in the ass!” How can I not love her?}