Taco Hell

I cannot say that the most affluent, cultured, or savvy customers regularly partake in dining experiences at Taco Bell, but there is a singular sort of bizarreness that transcends even your average greyhound terminal at the location on Burnside. Dear god in heaven is there ever!

We occasionally (quarterly) get a Taco Bell yen. The last time we did, we lived decidedly in the burbs. This time, the nearest locale was 21st and Burnside.........I am pretty sure it will be our last visit there. I struggle with how to even describe the patrons that accompanied us in this, one of Dante's levels of hell. There was a gentleman who clearly just left a gym........in 1984. Despite the temps in the low 50s, he could not be bothered to hide any of his not undistinguished beer gut behind the paper thin veneer of a white sleeveless muscle tee and some shorts that embodied the word 'short' and would not have looked appropriate on an Olympic runner, which this gentleman was assuredly not. But he, my dear readers, was not the most distinguishable character in this play. In and amongst the assorted white trash, homeless (or nearly so) and crazies (there was a women who appeared to not be having so much a conversation as an argument with herself. It remains unclear who won the argument for those curious enough to wonder about such things), the was a man so transfixing we could not avert our gazes throughout our brief meal.

This man was dressed in garb familiar with most of your urban street people here.......kind of a hodgepodge of reasonably fashionable attire. He entered the eatery, promptly fished a drinking vessel from the trash and filled it with soda. He then got in line and ordered something (unclear) and then proceeded to spend the next 10 minutes at the counter that held the various condiments and plastic ware and unloaded a litany of refuse and assorted hodgepodgery from his pockets and reloaded them with paper towels and what appeared to be every packet of sauce that they had. This was all done in front of the vacuous stare of the cashier whom, I am fairly certain, sees this kind of behavior far too regularly to note it any longer. As an interesting sidebar to this story, the gentleman in question placed his beverage on a table while he proceeded to restock his every nook and cranny and another young indigent (I am supposing) picked up the drink and drank heartily from it. This continued until the first guy came to claim it back, at which point it was handed over as if nothing at all was strange about this. It was, to someone averse to catching and spreading germs, rather repulsive.

I have to say that I think it was a healthy overall decision to go to Taco Bell this evening.......because I think my urge to go again, ever again, may well have been sated.