Golden Nugget Pancake House – my friend Brittany’s favorite restaurant as a child on the south side. She had told me of her preference one day when we took a detour to drive through her old neighborhood, choking up past home and playground battlefields, the pancake house the only bright spot. Like Cosa Nostra, it had instantly become “our thing,” and so now I am saddened to see it this far north in Ravenswood, to find out it is a chain, not a beloved hole in the wall. Under its western-font “Family Restaurant” sign is parked a security car with “G.N.P.H. 24 hour Armed Response” stickered on the side. The frame of the car hangs loose, one rusted metal bar scraping pavement. This white knight would be late to the party, riding a crippled steed.
There is something inherently unthreatening about the pancake police.
Tucked behind the Golden Nugget is an apartment complex built of brand-new bricks (each brick evenly cut, no mortar spilling over) that houses a wooded court. Evergreen framed by blood fall color. Golden Nugget patrons are not welcome – the court is barred off, leaves pricking out into the street, wind pushing branches to clack like prisoner’s hands clanking bars with a mug.
I pass a beauty salon – Millie’s Hair Studio and Spa. The mascot on its sign looks like a mail-order bride, used for cosmetic testing once PETA took their monkeys away, reluctant to smile for the hairy man with the camera. Above the salon the backs of old apartments slouch over like an old man who’s lost his cane. Rickety wooden fire escapes slink down the sides. I’m shocked they weren’t cinders when O’Leary’s cow kicked the lantern.
A hipster in a knit cap zips by in the bike lane, one leg of his tight black jeans rolled up to keep from getting caught in the chain. If my middle school dress code were to be believed, this peculiar style would signify allegiance to a gang. I can just picture him with five of his kind, hanging out on a stoop with open PBRs, blasting Animal Collective and glaring menacingly over their ironic mustaches.
Under a bridge, cement supports descend like steps of greek ruins in miniature. Explain to the kids what ancient wisdom once built this structure. The wisdom of the ancients is everywhere – the graffiti on the blue train sign looks like Arabic in passing, like someone found secret verses of the Koran and tagged the city with them, to be assembled later by enterprising young street urchins.
A street filled with brownstones you could spend a fifties childhood in ends abruptly in a liquor store. The brownstones hide in shame from the store, clothed burqa-style all the way up to their roofs by trees planted in an era when the brownstones could feel safe showing a bit more skin. The liquor store is more brazen. It does not shade itself in trees, does not even bother with a brand name, simply an advertisement for what one may expect once inside: “BUY LOW FOODS & LIQUORS.”
Supermercado Garibaldi. Perhaps owned by an Italian man who feels the neighborhood is “changing” and has adapted his supermarket to suit the needs of the new community. The graffiti on the awning under his sign suggest his Mexican patrons may not care for his condescension.
So many signs here look half-finished or half-unraveled. One particularly unadorned ad reads: “AVAILABLE CALL LARRY” without specifying what’s availably or who’s Larry. It looks as if it has been stamped on the side of the bridge, no fancy font or mascot. Right above it, the side of a building asks if I am “ng for an rtment?”
Getting back on the train, I fear for my life. Climbing up the steps, I notice the base of one of the metal supports holding up the bridge we are about to pass over is more rust than steel. Just my luck, today will be the day this Atlas will need to shrug, and I will be buried in rubble, my head sticking out over the “y” in “larry.”
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