Busboys and Poets

What he said. Honestly, what with the 40 minute wait for a table, you’d think that, bookworm that I am, that I would have found something to read and or buy at the bookstore. Nope, not a prayer.

I had to actively work on not choking on my dry-as-dust Sysco hamburger- medium rare? more like massively charred! but it wasn’t all the hamburger; the conversations going on around me were impossibly wonkish, self-congratulatory, and just plain awful.

The upside? Yes, that really hot girl at the other table was definitely a lesbian. The downside? I already knew I’d never want to hear another word out of her mouth.

Hey, locals! Are you a “progressive radical” who wants to hang out with like-minded activists, buy some books about how The Man keeps everyone down, and show your talents at the poetry open mic? Yeah? Well, fuck you. The idea of hanging out with like-minded activists is exactly opposite to everything that makes cities vibrant and everything that produces new and original thought. If you really believed in your ideas you’d be looking for opinions and people that challenge your assumptions. This is the worst bookstore in town.

How about if you’re looking for good food? If so, stay far away from Busboys and Poets. The menu highlights its vegetarian and vegan fare, and given the supposedly socially conscious atmosphere, you might expect a fine array of fresh, seasonally aware, local food and “fair trade” imports. Or maybe some savory ethnic delights borrowed from the South American and Ethiopean restaurants that are being pushed out of the neighborhood? No, instead you’ll find basically the same insipid entrées available throughout the United States and throughout the year. What makes that possible? The industrial food system, which robs both ecosystems and menus of their diversity in the name of consistency, and both the soil and the food of its nutritrional value in the name of high yield and low price. This menu is boring, it’s bland, it’s not nourishing, and it requires immense amounts of fossil fuels to process and transport these ingredients. Busboys and Poets correctly points out that their prices are moderate, unaware of the staggering irony that they are helping do to food and farms exactly what liberal arch-enemy Wal-Mart does to all goods, and for the same reason: low prices and the ability to avoid thinking about what is locally appropriate for the time and place.

Talk is cheap. This isn’t socially conscious food, and it isn’t tasty food. Don’t eat here.