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 Issue #1 - Fall 2007 --- |
What Do You Do ... With a Drunken Vegan?
by Bob Oswald
OK, I don't want to step into the whole is-Seattle-the-anti-New York debate, but a friend from The City (you know which city) makes a salient point: considering Seattle's vague street rep as a crunchy-green-postcounterculture alternative to traditional urban living, it is very difficult to scrape up some sustenance in this city if you are a) vegan and b) a drunk. This is not such an unlikely combination as it first seems, either. Seriously, I know a lot of vegans, and those who aren't the ultra-health-Nazi type tend to hit the sauce harder than Lindsay Lohan plowing an SUV headlong into a tanker of mustard. Assuaging our guilt over the gelatin that may have been in that after-dinner mint at In The Bowl? Drowning our sorrow and shame over inhaling the fumes as we walk by Dick's? My point: science tells us that the moments between stumbling out of the Mecca and passing out on the lawn outside your $1500/month, 400 square foot studio are the most important for replacing key vegan nutrients lost during a night of hard drinking. More important than breakfast, even; more important, perhaps, than eating five breakfasts in a row. Is there a restaurant in this fair city that serves up non-animal fare in those crucial post-closing-time hours? Ask any number of vegans, even fat ones, and you'll get a blank stare-but I know you people are eating somewhere, and man cannot live on Fat Tire and Belgian Frites alone. Is there some secret Hillside Quickies I don't know about? Are they frying up Mighty Os in that after-hours so-called speakeasy that everyone and their brother is so freaking proud of having gotten into? Taco Bell periodically switches out to lard-free beans, but I've long held a prejudice against eating on the same street corner where I go to buy drugs. And so what if Jai Thai is open until 1? Not good enough; I've barely gotten two pitchers in me by then. Plus, I don't eat anyplace with hearts on the outside of the building. Hearts are for girls. Contrast NYC. There's always some hot vegan spot open, and it always sucks, and the price of a plate could build a hundred schools in Africa, and it's full of people whose psychological makeup consists entirely of equal parts vanity (because they live in New York) and a vague existential unease that other people will not realize that they live in New York. Listen, New York is a parody of itself. Seattle is, at the very least, a parody of someplace else. We can do better, because we are better. My vision: all-night, all-vegan cafe, rude waitresses with piercings, a corner booth permanently occupied by ten goth high school kids who only order coffee and build little towers out of the tiny soymilk creamer containers. Grilled soy cheese, sloppy Joes, large sandwiches made of unidentifiable vegetable based substances. Put it on Cap Hill, tear it down and rebuild it somewhere else every two years to make room for new condos. Make that money. Easy. And P.S.: Seattle is the anti-New York. ---
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