A Quick Restaurant Review - Bone Garden Cantina

One of globe hopping pals, good ole Slim, is back in town and since she's only in town for another two weeks before she's off to South America, we decided before things get crazy with the holiday weekend to hookup, sit down eat and catch up. Its been so long since I've had a regular properly cultured dining partner it took me a minute to figure out which way to go. So remembering she's a pescatarian, I picked a Mexican spot that included veggie only and fish tacos, which is how we ended up at the Bone Garden Cantina.   

The BGC is off the beaten path to say the least. It's a little bar on the backside of a little office/loft type development on in an industrial access road in a developing part of town. I circled the parking lot twice looking for it, before finally getting out of the car and venturing on foot into the building the sign called the "Lumberyard." As we say in the country, if it had been a snake it would have bitten me.

The inside is pure kitsch. Think of those restaurants that try to create a homey atmosphere by putting
unrelated vintage stuff on the walls, but think if it all had a single theme and that theme was the
Mexican holiday known as the Day of the Dead. It's dancing skeletons, skulls, devils and a few other things that just washed over my eyes. Even weirder, the longer I sat in there the more the whole thing seemed to come together, as though the designer was counting on you having to immerse yourself to get the feel of it. I had a Mexican Coke and just soaked up the room for a while.

And this was just looking over my shoulder from the bar...

Slim finally arrived and we ordered, her getting the cheese quesadilla and a vegetarian taco called the Flor de Jamaica, that came with flowers. She explained that living in the Bahamas she'd actually played with fish so now she couldn't eat those either. I wished her well with that. I had the a Carne Adobo taco and a Chorizo quesadilla. Now, just so you don't get it confused, this is real Mexican food, not the Americanized versions they serve most places. If that's what you want, the menu gives directions to the nearest Taco Bell and wishes you well. This food is excellent. The sauce had a tang to it, with no sweetness, and neither the taco or the quesadilla looked like any other I'd eaten before in Atlanta. Slim who is originally from California and knows Mexican food from people who don't even speak English was so impressed that she had to get some to-go that could take home for her mother.

My Carne Adobo Taco

Now to catch up. I had only spoken to Slim by phone for the past few years as she'd dipped off to the Middle East to teach. Then last year she moved to the Bahamas where she was possibly looking at a position as a school principal, and where I was looking into vacationing because I wasn't planning on paying for a hotel or food. In any case she cut that short because she is leaving her husband, which was the topic for most of our meal. We briefly discussed some other things: future plans like maybe Peru or China for her, my job search, the book I'm working on, my film project, etc., but we kept coming back to how unhappy she was with her situation. And how long it had been that way. And how happy she was that she was ending it. So the meal had a theme so to speak.

The Bone Garden Cantina is a cool little spot, as we ended up just sitting there at the bar chatting long after the lunch crowd had cleared out. The waitstaff seems attentive without hovering, the food is all priced individually so you can experiment without breaking your wallet, and when you go ask the waitress if you can hang on to your menu because the back is just shy of hilarious. I'll be back, sipping on a Mexican coke and letting the vibe just get me.    

Shoulda just cut it all off

Ramblings Post #95
Despite our best efforts, life is about minutiae. No matter the heights we achieve, we must still bathe, and eat, and shave - in some for or another - and clip our nails, and etc and so on. These things can't be avoided. And since "little things mean a lot", when I came to the realization I'd been neglecting something important, and then it turned on me, I knew it was time to get right with myself...and the guy who cuts my hair.

I'm not a barber snob.

For the past few years, more and more guys I know are forgoing the barbershop and cutting their own hair. Those are to some degree, barber snobs. I, on the other hand, had stuck to the tried and true system however, not because I was too lazy, but rather because I'd tried cutting my own hair before and truly screwed it up so I'd rather trust a professional.

That said, usually any professional (who can take instruction) will do.

Typical barbershop - Black America.

As a kid, a trip to the barber meant our mother dropped us off at, I think it was at least, Professional Barbershop #3. It was in what would now be called a little strip mall, with a dirt parking lot. It was the original "men's hut". They were professional professionals, even now I remember that they were older than college students, who cut hair all day. The shop was big, had old magazines and smelled like what I imagined at the time Africa smelled like. And they had two huge mirrors facing one another, which gave this infinity effect which at the time I thought was sooo cool.

In college, I let my hair get cut just about anywhere. The barber's, a friend's house, my house, by this chick who swore she knew how to cut. On internship in Chicago I drove to the Southside to get my haircut, and on internship in New Jersey going in the barbershop and waiting let them know I wasn't from there. I probably wasn't as self conscious as I should have been, appearance-wise, so it was probably wild and woolly then. Looking back, a little grooming and discipline might have made a world of difference.

Now I've proscribed to the comment plight of the black male (who still has hair), finding a barber who I like. A good barber for a black man is sacred. I've changed barbershops because "my" barber moved, put off cut because he wasn't available and waited when he said he was running late. A good barber, who knows his customers, almost doesn't have to be told, only reminded how you like your hair. And he doesn't cut it so it looks good just for today, he cuts it so your hair grows into the shape you want.

I would have picked one a while ago I think, but at the place to close to my job they never have a lot of customers so I'm wary of riding by one day and finding them gone. But I think it's time to pick one of them - and a suitable back up.

Because yesterday, when I walked into my latest usual spot, where I ended up after my last barber disappeared (long story) and because its close to the job, I let them pick out the guy who would cut my hair. I gave him explicit instructions. How did he do?

- I don't like them to give me a "line" in the front. The hair is headed back fast enough, no need to encourage it. He touched up my line.

- For my head, I need the sides cut closer than the top, it grows faster. Otherwise my head looks like a wedge, like Grady from Sanford and son. He didn't understand "close".

- And because the sides grow faster than the top, I like the sides cut high, closer to a buzz cut than a fade. He started fading it out around the ears.

I paid him...even tipped him, headed home and broke out the clippers.

You shouldn't have to cut your hair after you gotten your hair cut. That and he sprayed some gook on my hair without asking, then told me it was black company and we need to support. Not really digging his flavor. So it looks like it's gonna be the bald guy in the back from now on, or the sister who cut it once and it wasn't too bad.

Barkeep...tell me the baldy is coming back!

Life in the time of Plasma

Personal Rehab Post #3
After my stumble, we get back on the path to "faking it till I make it." Today I joked around with the girl who visits my desk all the damn time ....we'll call her...hmmmm... Swerve... and put the weekend and it's disappointments behind me. The journey of thousand miles. Man I hope I make it.


I was a broke college student. I don't mean the pansy broke that means you're cutting back on food quality, I mean the kind of broke where you're cutting back on food. There were times when dinner cost me $2 or less, as I would stop at the Spur gas station at the bottom of the hill leaving campus and get a bargin basement pint of juice for fifty cents and a dollar's worth of 'tater logs - potato wedges fried in chicken grease (about 6 or 8 depending on how they felt). Occasionally I would spring the extra quarter and get a Little Debbie snack to treat myself.

Thank god my neighbors cable signal bled through the wall so I had a decent number of channels.

But occasionally there would be a need for a boost, a proverbial (and literal) shot in the arm, a few extra dollars. And that, friends and neighbors, is when you would donate plasma.

I don't see plasma donor spots around anymore, so maybe the laws are different in Georgia. I used to like them because in 40 mins to an hour you could have a fast $20 in your pocket and as an added bonus you got free blood screenings. As long as they would let you donate you knew you were good healthwise. It was like being paid to make a doctor visit, so like groovy.

And that $20 to a college student was a fortune. Or it least it was when gas was a $1 a gallon. A few dollars in the tank, a four dollar six pack and two fifty wing special? Sheeit.

The other bonus was that donating plasma made drinking much more effective. I'm not going to lie, I had worked up a pretty high tolerance while matriculating. One night a friend & I polished off a bottle of 151 proof rum with no chaser like we were drinking soda. It was only after we were done did we then decide we probably should have cut it with something. However, after donating plasma...three beers might leave you to the sleep of babies, drunks and well hung men.

But then I sleep that way all the time. *Rimshot*

Combine the sudden low threshold with the beer barn special where they would fill a gallon jug of cold delicious hops and barley water for $3, young and less than discriminating women and cheap food...well let's just say sometimes you donated plasma to get the party started.

Good times, good times.

Barkeep. What you got back there from 1990?

Journey through the Bargain Bin

I've moved into the new house, and after my encounter with the Direct TV installer I'm still waiting to see if I can even get the new fall shows.

(Side story: --- I love Direct TV. Love it. And the little punk who showed up Saturday to install it...at 5pm...on his last call of the day...took one look at my setup and told me it wasn't doable. Then I took him the backyard and he got all snippy about how it wouldn't work. So I told him to set the damn thing up anyway. Then he gets a halfway decent signal, and DOESN'T LOCK IT IN! I'm having somebody else come out...and I'm call Direct TV to get his ass let go if possible. I'm not normally like that, but he fucking my Sunday Ticket!)

In the interim, I've taken to the bane of the modern American economy - Walmart. First I found two that actually close at night to my surprise, but I've taken to wandering the one closest to me looking for a distraction. In the back aisle of the Electronics section, I've stumbled across the bargain bin. The previous bargain bins I've looked in at a Walmart usually have had a mix of direct-to-video and Spanish language films, so I was skeptical, then I found this one. On the surface there were nine copies of Along Came Polly and countless Dickie Roberts: Child Star DVDs. But I was desperate and so I started digging.

There, in the among the forty copies of the Man from Snowy River I found Oscar nominee Sideways. And then Wallace and Gromit! These were good, fairly recent movies in among the compilations of no longer copyright protected cartoons and BMX Madness 2007. I kept digging...the Addams Family movies in a double DVD! Rocky and Bullwinkle! People wandered by, decided that the Ultimate Edition of Jim Carrey: Rubberface wasn't what they were in the mood for and left.

I shudder to think what might be even lower in the bin. Maybe Bond? Maybe Pirates of the Caribbean? It's like I've found a spot where buried treasure is abundant....and they also carry pans, shoes and sheets.

Am I ashamed that I've sold out to the corporate vampire that feeds on our national soul, plucking the dream of family business out of the heart of America and selling it to us at low low prices?

Did I mention there's another bin below this one that hasn't even been touched?

Barkeep, um...president's choice soda in a dirty glass.