By Molly Rosbach
Spring 2009 Kaplan Award Winner
Beth’s Café on Aurora Avenue in Seattle is not your typical neighborhood diner. If you’re looking for a friendly welcome or an inviting atmosphere, chances are, you’ll be disappointed. Beth’s employees pride themselves on intimidating unwitting customers, escorting them to their seats with a scowl and often a derisive snort at their resultant uncertainty.
If, however, you can get past the surly attitude and roadside dinginess that define the café, its rough-around-the-edges charm may start to grow on you.
And if that doesn’t work, they do have excellent bacon.
***
Beth’s feels lived-in. Seat cushions are torn and sunken, and customer-created drawings cover every available surface, giving the place a unique form of wallpaper. Some are simple, advertising who’s been here recently – “New Yorkers Love Beth’s,” with a Statue of Liberty, and “Italians Love Beth’s!” on an orange-and-green flag. Some are truly artistic, their creators using just broken crayons to render elaborate images. But the great majority display the quirky sense of humor embodied by the café. My favorite is of an angry-looking Batman with a villain suspended from the ceiling in the background. “He didn’t tip,” Batman explains.
By tradition, the walls are cleared at the first of every year, and a new batch of customers gets to try their hand at decoration. The café’s practice of putting drawings on the wall started when certain customers – often homeless people – couldn’t pay for their meal. The manager let them leave a picture instead of cash, and the tradition has since evolved.
At first glance, I wouldn’t expect to find such generosity here. Most of the staff likes to shout obscenities at each other across the room and don’t seem to mind what the customers hear. Fortunately, Megan-the-waitress isn’t like that.
“I don’t have any crazy stories,” she tells me. “I’ve only worked here a month. But if you go sit at the counter and harass that guy, I bet he’ll tell you something. He might give you a lot of shit, but that’s what he does.”
I’m good at harassing.
“Can I talk to you while you work?” I ask That Guy, hoping I don’t sound like a little girl. The solidly-built man behind the counter is wearing a bright yellow T-shirt and a baseball cap that says “It’s Rick James, Bitch!” and is steadily employed in scraping the charred grease off the hot griddle. His hands know the work they’re expected to do.
To his grunted response, I ask my first question. His name is Ashley Hinton, and it’s on the tip of my tongue to repeat that. Ashley? Really? I want to know how many people he’s beaten up for making fun of that name. But not yet; he doesn’t know me from Adam. And maybe not ever – I don’t want to get beaten up.
His name is Ashley and he’s worked at Beth’s for a year and a half. The thing is, he doesn’t really have a good idea as to why.
“That was accidental,” he says from behind the counter, still scraping. “My girlfriend used to cook here for four or five years, then one day they were short – I walked in and they grabbed me. And now they just don’t let you go. ‘Two to three weeks, tops,’ it was supposed to be, and now they just don’t want to let me go.”
Ashley has what can only be described as a guffaw – the heartiest laugh I’ve heard in a while (although he’d probably be pissed to hear me say so). And I got to hear it often as I talked to him, watching him clean the grill. His favorite part of the job? “When I get off at 10!” he says, laughing again.
He only works the 2 p.m. to 10 p.m. shift, and wouldn’t even think of coming in for graveyard. “Oh, noooo…no, no, no, we wouldn’t do that,” he says. “It’s a different crowd, different type of people. In the daytime, it’s calmer; in the afternoon, it’s a little calmer, but in the evenings, it’s crazy. Just off-the-wall fuckin’ crazy. I don’t even come in here if I’m not working.”
Crazy as they may be, he maintains that he doesn’t hate any of the café’s diners.
“I don’t hate anyone who’s a customer who comes in here,” he says. “Sometimes they order shit I don’t want to cook, but I don’t have that hatred. ‘Cause I know I can go home from here, beat up a guy and call it a good day!”
I’m fairly confident he’s just joking.
“There’s a lot of people here I don’t like,” he continues, “but we have to make them food.”
“Are you a spy?” the manager suddenly interrupts, leveling me with his sardonic gaze. “Were you sent here by another restaurant?”
I smile and shake my head, trying to finish up with Ashley, but not wanting the manager to run off before I get his story. Eventually I turn and approach him, unsure of how best to do so. Again, I’m a little girl. “Do you have time…Can I talk to you…?”
“Here,” he says, slapping the bar stool right next to him. “Sit right here.” Well, okay, then. Uncertainty, I told myself sternly, you’re out.
The manager is heavyset with crooked teeth and baggy clothes. He’s got a tongue piercing and a quick retort for every comment. Start with an easy one, I think.
“What’s your name?” I ask, pencil poised at the ready.
“Oh, no. No. That’s not how we do it,” he replies, shaking his head. He peers over my shoulder, wanting to ascertain that what I’ve written so far is legit. His tone is hard for me to pin down. I think they’re warming up to me, getting more comfortable the longer I talk to them, but I could be completely wrong. I don’t know if the affection-beneath-the-gruffness is something that’s actually there, or just something I want to be there, to add character to the crude.
The manager has worked at Beth’s on and off since 2002, and like Ashley, doesn’t quite know how that happened.
“I needed a job, and they said I could wash dishes and they’d pay me,” he said. “But then I left this place behind me two or three years ago, and they weren’t pleased with who they had working here, and they said, Please come back!”
Whether it comes from more experience or simply the responsibilities of management, he’s a lot less forgiving in his assessment of the café than the cook is.
“I deal with coworkers that should’ve stayed in school” – insert guffaw from Ashley – “and customers who need to find someplace else to go,” he says in summation.
Ashley interrupts him. “Why not work somewhere where you can say what you want, do what you want, be who you are?” he offers.
The manager brings him back down. “Yeah, except for earlier when you were yelling ‘pussy-licker’ and those two ladies at 1 were really offended,” he reminds him. “I really wish you wouldn’t say things like that.”
Somehow, I’m not surprised at all. He would say something like that. I picture two little old ladies, jaws dropping in shock, and try not to laugh out loud.
The two continue in their sarcastic banter, and let Megan-the-waitress and a bus boy each join in with a line or two The bus boy informs me that these two frequently get into fights – disagreements, really – with each other and the customers. Customers more often, he clarifies.
“I’m a lover, not a fighter, man!” Ashley protests. “I don’t got that hatred.”
The manager starts listing complaints – “and she’s over here doing some project for a high school paper – ”
“Hey!” I’m indignant but delighted; I’m no longer the outsider. “College!”
The manager fairly chortles. “Got you!” he gloats. Maybe he only smiles when he’s making fun of someone.
“9 o’clock!” Ashley calls out. I’m reminded that I can’t stay here all night. I go back to my booth – and the friend I abandoned – collect my box of behemoth pancakes and go up to pay. Struggling to figure out how much I should tip them for putting up with my questions, I stand there for quite a while.
“Hey, Molly, having some trouble figuring out that bill?” the manager calls out helpfully.
“That’s why she’s doing newspaper instead of math,” Ashley says, guffawing once more.
“You’re making kids who stay in school look bad!” the manager continues, laughing as I turn to make a face at him. I bet he was somebody’s little brother once.
“Hey, will you bring me a copy of this when you’re done?” he asks as I head out the door.
So first I’m a spy, representing some rival restaurant trying to steal a secret recipe, and now he wants a copy?
Of course I will.