Local Hero's Venue to Close?

The rumor mill has brought to me an unconfirmed report that the Local Hero’s gallery/venue/burrito stand is closing down.

Although there is art on the walls, I don’t think a building can be considered a gallery if when the wrecking ball comes the artists have no interest in coming by to reclaim their work.

Local Hero's Halloween Appearance

It should be noted the the Local Hero did make an appearance the restaurant on Halloween of this year, at precisely the time trick-or-treating began.  This was undoubtedly a ploy to avoid giving out candy to children, stingy bastard he is.

Local Hero Forced to Wait Like Commoner

The origin of this latest development takes place roughly about a week ago.  The Local Hero and his dining companion, the French woman with the gigantic nose, sat at the bar, shared a small bottle of Perrier, ate thirty dollars worth of sushi, and talked the chef's ear off (being sure to promote an Important Local Event that was upcoming at his venue).  When the meal was done, The Local Hero showed his gratitude for the artfully crafted meal and the chef's company by dropping a single dollar bill into the chef's tip jar (let's not even entertain the notion that The Local Hero left gratuity for the server).  The Local Hero is under the mistaken impression that he is a friend of the sushi chef.  Perhaps he thinks that this is the reason that proper gratuity need not be left (though tips are for servers, not chefs, and the local hero does not know personally any of the servers).

Who could possibly imagine that the Local Hero's piggish behavior could ever come back to haunt him?  After countless months of walking past the sign asking him to please wait to be seated, of leaving terrible tips, of forcing employees to look at his dopey face, an opportunity for revenge was revealed--and the server was quick to take it.  Is the Local Hero completely oblivious to the bad feelings he brings with his every visit?  Is he unaware of the enemies he has created, waiting in the shadows for the opportunity to strike?  Apparently so.

The Local Hero, being a Local Hero, is not accustomed to waiting.  He and his dining partner habitually help themselves to a place at the bar, no matter who may be politely waiting in line to be seated before them.  The only time they are ever in a position in which they’ll have to wait is if the bar is either full or dirty.  On this particular occasion, a swell of unexpected business had filled every table in my dining room--the six unoccupied seats were covered with dirty dishes.  The server, the unhappy soul saddled with every possible duty that can exist on a restaurant’s floor, was planning on clearing the mess at the bar as soon as he had dealt with every other possible thing that had to be dealt with.

On the way to the bar, the Local Hero and company walked past the counter, fully expecting their places at the bar--those directly in front of the sushi chef--to be set and waiting to be blessed by their locally heroic bottoms.  “There’s a wait,” the server said.  “You’ll have to sign in on the sheet.”

The Local Hero stopped, taking a full four seconds to process this information.  He peered at the server over his granny glasses as if to say don’t you know who I am but the server had already walked away to attend to the countless duties that awaited (but not without looking at the clock to ensure that a minimum of thirty minutes would pass before the Local Hero could even hope to get a seat at the bar).  Somehow, the server’s absolute lowest priority had gotten even lower.

The Local Hero and the large-nosed woman waited on the couch outside the dining room with a dejected air about them.  They did not talk to each other.  Perhaps they were silently mouthing prayers from their creepy cultish religion in order to pass the time, having long ago in their relationship exhausted all possibilities for interesting conversation (I imagine that this exhaustion occurred during their first date, somewhere in the neighborhood of the nineteen-minute mark--and that’s considering the bovine rate with which the Local Hero’s words are issued from his dopey mouth).

The server, in his countless trips from the dining room to the kitchen to unload armload after armload of dirty dishes, was met each time by the silent stares of the Local Hero and his companion.  He could feel their impatient eyes upon him, yet he refused to acknowledge their presence with even a cursory glance.

This game was played countless times over the next thirty minutes.  The server, like a hero of myth, gained power every time the Local Hero and his companion cast imploring looks.  The Local Hero was losing by degrees, a tiny rent had appeared in the paper bag of his ego.  Maybe I’m just another person, he may have thought, no better or worse than anybody else.  Look at me, waiting for a seat in a restaurant like a commoner.  If thoughts of this nature did indeed fire in his sputtering brain, I’d like to congratulate him for being at least somewhat on track.  I’d like, however, to point out one flaw in his thinking--the Local Hero is far worse than other people

The wait for his sushi and the company of his beloved chef became more than The Local Hero could bear.  He was forced to seize what little bit of power he could.  The Local Hero arose from the couch, marched past the counter and to the still-cluttered bar, and said the following to the chef (who neither acknowledged him nor met his eye):

“We waited for a half hour.  We were going to eat here, but . . . “

And with that he shuffled out of the restaurant.  I shudder to think how long it may have taken the Local Hero to craft such a parting shot--I dare say it must have taken the bulk of his time spent on the couch.  On behalf of myself and the workers inside me, I would like to say that we will consider ourselves zinged.  We dropped the ball, and because of it we have missed out on the pleasure of the Local Hero’s company and the insulting tips--amounts better suited to, say, a cup of coffee--he continues to drop into the tip jar.  (And, yes, again we bear witness to another fool deluded enough to think that his absence is a form of punishment.)

Let me close with this.  If you are a creep who leaves bad tips and never returns to a certain restaurant, so be it.  You are a creep, and I guess in your reptile brain you’re winning in you’re own creepy little way.  If, however, you are a creep who continually returns to the same restaurant and leaves shitty tip after shitty tip, it is going to come back and bite you on the ass.  Think of it this way, repeat offenders; you are not only tipping for the service you have just received--you are also tipping for the service you will receive on your next visit.  Ever wonder why a server seems to go out of the way to treat you like garbage yet gets along swimmingly with everyone else in the room?  It might be time to do a little old-fashioned soul-searching.

The Local Hero

Perhaps I am putting my neck on the line by taking shots at someone as beloved as The Local Hero, but his behavior has been less than exemplary. The Local Hero runs a local venue for art and music, which, to many of the citizens of our fair city, would make his actions above reproach. On its wall hang the work of any number of area artists--a great number of works with little space between them, the weight of which I imagine must be incredibly tiresome for the building. It makes me wonder exactly how stringent are his requirements for allowing an artist to show work in the gallery:

A bedraggled ARTIST walks into the gallery. Under his arm he carries a loose collection of newspapers.

Artist: I was, uh, wondering if I could like hang some of--

Local Hero: Absolutely!

Artist: They're, like, some doodles of my toe I did on this newspaper. I didn't have anything to draw with, so I had to use a cigar butt. Then I kind of spilled coffee over it and ruined it, but--

Local Hero: What are you waiting for? Hang them!

Artist: Don't you even want to look at them?

Local Hero: Who am I to evaluate art?

Artist: Well, you kind of run a gallery, don't you?

Touring bands also play there and I think, if you happen to be there at the right time, you might also be able to get a tattoo or a burrito.

The Local Hero dresses in such a fashion that asserts his uniqueness: pork-pie hat, granny glasses, dashiki, cargo shorts, hiking boots, and wool socks. From the waist down, he's a sort of rugged outdoorsman, from the waist up, well, some sort of fucking weirdo. At any moment you might expect him to offer you a cup of Kool-Aid or ask if you're interested on hitching a ride on a passing comet.

The Local Hero invariably starts things off on a bad foot by walking right past the sign reading "Please Wait To Be Seated" and helping himself to a place at the bar. He is apparently oblivious to the possibility that, since I am a small restaurant that cannot accommodate a large number of people at once (but I am secure in my size, people feel that the space inside me is intimate,) there may be other people already waiting politely to be seated by the server. Buildings and restaurant workers alike do appreciate when people can display a modicum of courtesy when arriving as a guest in a restaurant. Perhaps the Local Hero feels that he is above such displays of social nicety and, as an artist, or as at least someone who supports the, er, arts, is more comfortable being in touch with his primal urges for food and the eight ounce bottle of Perrier he splits with his dining partner.

At his side is a woman of indeterminate origin--her accent is difficult to distinguish due to the spiteful hiss with which she shapes her every utterance (though all signs point to French--read as hairy pits). The two are rumored to be involved in a religious movement which aims to unite all of mankind by inundating it with children's drawings of differently-colored people holding hands across a little crayon-scribbled planet earth. Apparently this religion also espouses the practice of leaving a flat tip of three dollars in the chef's tip jar while leaving nothing for the server, even when tipping on a tab that inevitably falls in the thirty to sixty dollar range.

The Local Hero has a man crush on the sushi chef (this is not uncommon--many disaffected people gravitate toward sushi chefs). Since the chef is all but shackled behind the bar, the Local Hero makes of him an unwitting audience as he pores over every inane detail of the latest event held at his venue. The subtext of these one-sided conversations is undoubtedly, look at the ease with which I interact with people from different cultures. Can't you see that the hairy pits of my common-law wife do not bother me in the slightest? The relative ease with which I have risen to the rank of Local Hero is certainly no fluke.

The Local hero is a creature of habit to a disgusting extent. The people who have the misfortune of working at a certain time on a certain day of the week must bear the trial of his presence week after week. Like clockwork he appears again and again. If science could somehow combine Old Faithful with a herpes outbreak, mankind would be able to experience a phenomenon similar to the appearance of the Local Hero in my doorway.

The Local Hero gets zero out of a possible five openings. Unless the openings in question are hobo's assholes, in which case I give him five.