Some day I will go out to get lunch and come back dead or it least in a “critical but stable” condition. That’s because unlike the local lunch-reviewing icon who eats in the safety of Johnson County,I have to forage for food around the war zone a.k.a. Independence Ave. Its unpredictable mix of ethnicities, poverty and crime make every lunch trip an adventure.

I am not sure where I ate today. I can see the place on Google Street View (it’s the white storefront to the left of the barber shop).

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I think it was called “Yasmine Cafe” but I can’t find it in the Yellow Pages, Google and anywhere else. This trip started few days ago when I noticed a sign advertising shish-kebab while driving around looking for Mexican food. Today I came to work with a thought to try some middle-eastern cuisine. I drove to the place and walked in. Small clean room with a few tables and booths and no signs of food, decorated with a TV with some Arabic channel, few paintings and a sign that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah. Three guys hanging out in the dining room, watching TV. By the way, on Arabic TV the ticker at the bottom of the screen is moving in the opposite direction.

I started to feel like Jimmy Carter on his way to talk to Hamas, except that he is not Jewish. I asked one of the guys if there is any way I can get some food to go, so one of them went to the back of the building and retrieved a nice guy who could speak English. I asked about food again to which he smiled and said “Do you want to know the menu?” and proceeded to make up and recite the menu from the top of his head. I recognized some items and ordered shish-kabob, rice and salad, and he also offered to get me some soup just to try. I asked him how much this would cost and after minor hesitation he said that he will give all this food to me for 8 dollars. I watched Arab TV for about ten minutes, they were talking about NYSE, probably enjoying the oil prices. Then a group of men walked through the building and all greeted me with As-Salāmu `Alaykum, I actually knew the reply (wa `Alaykum As-Salām) but decided to limit myself to diplomatic shaking of hands. I got my food, paid and left.

The food was actually pretty good and there was so much that I split it in two decent size lunches. I also got a 16 inch flat bread to go with it. I didn’t really like the eggplant soup, it was to acidic for my taste. The rice had some vegetables in it and even a few raisins and was light and tasty. Kebabs were grilled and meaty. Salad had cucumbers and lettuce, nothing weird. If anything, I expected the food to be a little more spicy, but a co-worker who spent some time in the Middle East confirmed that it was pretty close to authentic.

I am not sure if I’d recommend this place with no menu and all, try it at your own risk. I am still alive so food quality is not substandard. So just like Jimmy Carter, I am not only eating lunch, I am also improving Jewish-Arab relations, one kebab at a time.

I found this 1946 Life Magazine article while searching for vintage Kansas photos (the article features a farmer from Shawnee County, KS and a future post is forthcoming). We frequently hear about the way it used to be, stable middle class of the past, high taxes on the wealthy and many other economic and cultural realities that were lost over the past 60 years. The article briefly touches on several segments of the post-war society, their roles in the economy and their material well-being. The language of the article is strikingly similar to what we see in the media today. Over time, the classes described in the article were redefined or disappeared; rich people are not content with just two Cadillac’s; no one is paying two thirds of their income in taxes; and $12,000 a year does not equate to being successful. There is one notable exception: the teachers are still being screwed. Anyway, the article is short, enjoy.

The redistribution of U.S. Wealth

Published in the Life Magazine December 16, 1946 p91.

I had to double-check the title to make sure that the word “old-timey” doesn’t have any dirty meaning known only to Chimpo. Seems like I am safe for now but you can’t be too sure with him.

Long time ago, before the word “mail” got itself attached to the letter “e”, people wrote letters and exchanged postcards. Even I was in on the pen pal craze writing a couple of letters in broken English to some unfortunate American girl from Minnesota who wasted her parents’ money on a trip to the Soviet Union. Nowadays the post office is dying a slow death surviving only by delivering junk mail and bills. The email is faster, easer, more convenient and free, but one thing that’s being lost is the appreciation of the distances it travels making our world seem smaller and without borders. When an old card or a letter traveled for weeks crossing many countries and continents , it was an event to open a mailbox to find something touched by your friend or a relative and then be every mail person on the way. Email arrives instantly and no one touches it except the government’s supercomputer which makes sure you are not an evildoer. Many Americans grow up to think that the world looks like this. Many studies have been done to show that Americans can’t find other countries and even their own states on the map even if threatened with waterboarding. I always hated geography myself but I can still point out most countries on the map and even the majority of American states, except the little ones in the East, but they don’t count anyway.
Recently I’ve found an interesting website that preserves or, maybe, even resurrects an old hobby of exchanging postcards. Postcrossing.com has 43,693 members in 178 countries who connect through the website to send and receive postcards to each other. After registration you can initially send up to 5 cards to random members and then become eligible to receive up five cards from others. In the first batch my daughter and I mailed cards to Taiwan, Finland, Australia, Netherlands and Germany for a total of 23,344 miles traveled. Some of these arrived in less than 5days. We received messages from all of the recipients thanking us for the cards. Many people post their cards online and one local girl even made a presentation in her club with cards from around the world.
Hopefully, after some time our map of the world will be filled with cards we mailed. So far it looks like this. Again, like many years ago, I run (OK, walk) to the mailbox to see if there is anything there for me, besides bills and pizza coupons. I like the feeling. Try it for yourself.

During my trip to St.Louis I made my annual visit to McDonald’s because my daughter requested McSalad. I was disappointed that inflation continues to devastate McValue “dollar” menu. You used to be able to get medium French fries in a cardboard package, and now it’s downgraded to small fries in a little paper bag.
Very old people would be able to recite McDonald’s original prices:
hamburgers–15 cents; cheeseburgers–19 cents; fries–10 cents; soft drinks–10 cents and 15 cents; coffee–5 cents; and shakes–20 cents.
With higher prices and crappy food there shouldn’t be any reason to go to McDonald’s, while we have plenty of local hamburger joints such as Town Topic, Harold’s and Winstead’s.

Strange but funny. I wish I had a Russian accent like that.

RED MOON from Sirocco Research Labs on Vimeo.