May 2006 Archives

Anyone who has spent a lazy morning or afternoon at H&H has probably encountered Ebola. No, not talking about the highly communicable and deadly virus of central Africa, but the black and white dog that cruises up and down Oak street, shaking down the businesses for treats. Ebola belongs to Charlie, owner of Counter Media next door. She's at least nine years old, and more partial to men than women, unless there are treats involved in which case she's gender-blind. I recall Charlie once saying that she's part rat terrier, but in my mind, Ebola is barely a dog. Sure, she loves snacks, and she will sit, lie down, even play dead for a slice of ham or turkey. But she's more like a 7-year old kid--big enough to walk to the store all by herself. Smart enough to wait in her spot, not walk behind the counter and risk getting kicked out. Cunning enough to turn on the charm while withholding affection until her snack is dispensed. But while this regimen is testament her superior intelligence over other dogs that would never have the self control to stay behind the counter, it lacks any spontaneity. In our first couple of years in business, my old partner Keith and I would enjoy getting her riled up and watching her bark and dance in circles. But our relationship has--I don't want to say it's dwindled, it's just become very routine:

8:30 am: Scratch at door, prance into Half & Half, demand ham, sit if required, eat reward, go back to bookstore.

Repeat at 11am and 3pm

I'm not saying I don't like Ebola, I do. I love her. She's a good girl. She is the ultimate regular--our pattern does not change. And if there is a sadness, it is precisely that there is no change. Neither one of us evolves beyond our same roles, day after day. After day. I guess this is why we also have human relationships.

First, create an atmosphere of chaos: consume either too much coffee, or don't have any, as will contribute to your least effective performance. Then, make sure you schedule deliveries of produce, dairy, cheese and meats from 3 different distributers to arrive within the same half-hour window of a friday morning. Make sure you've ordered 6 cases of Lurisia Sparkling water, in 500ml and 1 liter sizes. San Pellegrino or any other expensive, imported water can be substituted, so long as it's in glass bottles. Stack these, along with a case of #10 can of italian plum tomatoes on top of a unstable box containing 4 gallons of pickle slices. These pickles should have been put away two days ago, but they're an essential component to the cleaning process. After you have made your row of boxes about 5 ft high, start making a good-morning sandwich. When an unsuspecting customer leaves the restroom, the current of air created by the door will be enough for the pickle box to buckle underneath the weight of the fragile inventory, sending about $75 worth (wholesale) of imported sparkling water plunging to the floor. The impact of the fall will be enough to shatter 90% of the contents of the boxes stacked highest from the floor. This will create a puddle of imported sparkling water about 6 feet in diameter, roughly half the size of our cafe. The noise of the fall will also alarm customers, some of whom may never return, but it's a small price to pay for sparkling floors. Once you've swept most of the broken glass, you should have several microscopic shards imbedded in your skin--you'll continue to find them throughout the day. Get out the mop and bucket and generally distribute the water around, then thank fucking God it wasn't 3 cases of anything containing sugar, just expensive water, and admire your shiny clean floor.

Scene: Half & Half, approx 11:30 am. ROBIN and JEFF are working, recovering from lunch prep and getting ready for an imminent rush. No one else is in the cafe. Jeff looks out the window and sees DENNIS walking up the street.

JEFF: Here he comes!
DENNIS walks in, wearing a short-sleeved button down with a tropical bird pattern. He is clean-shaven and he's had a hair cut. He looks healthy and renewed. ROBIN hasn't seen him since he's returned to Portland from an extended sojurn in Roseburg with his family. She wipes down the work table and turns to meet him at the counter

ROBIN: Dennis, I thought we finally got rid of you.

DENNIS: (laughs) I thought you'd go out of business by now.

R: I told you to call if you're going to be gone for a long time. That's rude.

D: I know, I know. I thought about it, but...

Some people come in and order sandwiches, DENNIS gets his coffee and reads the paper, ROBIN makes sandwiches, JEFF fiddles with espresso machine. When no one's at the counter, DENNIS returns. He looks at JEFF, then back to ROBIN

D: So, I guess he hasn't dumped you yet.

R: Why, Dennis, would you like to cut-in?

D: No! (laughs) Did you lose weight?

R: I don't think so, probably not

D: Yeah, it doesn't look like it.

Well, that didn't take long. One day after yesterday's post, Dennis has returned to Portland. I got the phone call this afternoon. The dutiful son was back in Roseburg. This week I am giving him some self-addressed stamped postcards and plenty of shit for his lack of courtesy. Very excited to see him tomorrow, I hope he notices my new hair-cut.

Mike is showing me how to "float pictures" so I thought this would be a good moment to introduce Louise and our old beer cozie design, to be re-issued sometime in the future.

One of our favorite customers is missing. He periodically disappears for a while, a couple of weeks at a time, but usually by the time we really get worried he shows up again. His name is Dennis and if you've spent much time at Half & Half you've probably seen him sitting at the counter, quietly reading the New York Times and drinking a gigantic coffee. He's in his 40's, rotund and balding but incredibly hairy every where else. Usually he wears pants and a t-shirt--my favorite t-shirt is royal purple and says "trouble" in iron-on letters. He always keeps to himself and doesn't talk much unless there's no one else around. Then, he'll say things like, "Why is it so dead in here, did you scare everyone off with your cooking?" to which i'll reply, "No, Dennis, everyone could smell you coming up the street and cleared out of here!" I'll never forget one morning he delivered the zinger of all zingers. I get up at 5 in the morning, so I try to overlook the fact that I usually look like shit when I work. Dennis came in, I switched out the coffee airpots and used the usual joke, "Here Dennis, this is leftover from yesterday!" He gave me the once over and simply said, "nice hair." It was such a burn; deadpan and undeniable. I tried to come back with, "at least my hair is on my head, not on my back." But whatever, I got served.

When Dennis is around Portland, he spends at least an hour or two a day here, reading the paper and magazines. His mom lives in Roseburg, which is where he usually goes when he disappears. Lately he'd been talking about going to get a degree in art history in Venice, Italy, but I don't think he has the resources. When he's around, he's just a regular fixture that you will barely notice him. When he leaves town, it sometimes takes me a week to pick up on his absence. But then it's a gaping hole; there's a stool he should be planted at, there's an zinger suspended in midair. I worry that I'll never see him again, and he'll just be a memory of an old customer. I told him to call us if he was going to leave town for extended periods, so we didn't have to worry. He phoned over Christmas when he was gone for 3 weeks. For his birthday I gave him a gift certificate to Powell's so he could buy his own Sunday Times instead of complaining that we're too cheap to get it. Now he's been gone for more than a month, and we haven't heard anything from him. Dennis, come back to us!

Our very first comment to our very first post made a haunting request, "Bring back the Frazier!" I was stumped. We name all our sandwiches at the Half & Half, and we've made many, many kinds of sandwiches in our 5 1/2 years ofexistence, but what was so special about this "Frazier?" Of course the name gave the identity of the commentator away, but that didn't help me remember the sandwich. Did it have strawberries in it? Fortunately my old friend "Dan F" popped his head in on Tuesday and moaned "Bring back the Frazier!" "I forget what's in the Frazier!" I said. I saw the wave of shock and disappointment on his face when I revealed that I forgot the sandwich that was his namesake, and it did shame me. But he recovered and called out "Banana and mayonnaise" as closed the screen door and went on his way.

Of Course, The Frazier! We begin with white bread. In this case, Grand Central Como, but if I could use any bread in the world, it might be Pepperidge Farm Farmhouse buttermilk white for its delicate crumb. The bread receives a think spread of mayo, Best Foods or Hellman's, if you're east of the Rockies, as it's the only mayonnaise I will ever use. Next, the banana, about three quarters of one, ripe, and cut on a bias about a half inch thick. Bring the two sides together, and slice diagonally. Unless you're truly mayonnaise-phobic, I suggest you try it just once. Myself, I am not a huge fan, but I do appreciate it's virtue of creamy-upon-creamy without being particularly sweet. More on mayonnaise and its huge affect on my life in the future.

I do feel bad that I forgot about the Frazier, but come on, Dan, it's been quite a while since you've ordered one. If you're going to have a secret off-the-menu sandwich, and if you're esteemed enough to have it named after you, you gotta represent. If you want your own sandwich, it has to be easy to make, with ingredients already present, and it has to be created for you by someone at Half & Half. Once we've agreed that the sandwich is to both of our liking, we will name it together. Then,YOU have to introduce the sandwich to the rest of the staff, in order for it to achieve permanence. The Jelly, and The Super Omega, two successful examples of "personal sandwiches" will be discussed in the near future. In the meantime, I encourage everyone to come in and order a Frazier. Bring back the Frazier! You might need to explain the key ingredients to whoever is working, don't let them toast the bread, and be very gracious.

Until little over an hour ago, it didn't look so good. I have been battling with our credit card company for more than 2 weeks, first trying to get a replacement for our terminal who's enter key slowly stripped away, leaving us to dismantle the machine and blindly stab at the circuitry in order to process a transaction. A new machine that was supposed to arrive on May 4 didn't show up until the 11th, and with me out of town until then the old one let us continue our little game of "operation." After being home from work approximately one hour, I got the call from Brian that the old machine had finally bit the dust. Went back downtown, thought twice about putting 40 minutes in the meter---how long could this possibly take?

How very wrong I was. First, I hooked up the new machine and after being on the phone with tech support for 20 minutes, realized that not only was the machine not doing its download, it had no line active and the telephone was dead. The Meltdown had begun.

First, I had to assess that the fact that Jacque had flooded the whole kitchen had nothing to do with the phone line/credit card line being dead. Then, had to put more money in the meter. Called Qwest, agreed to give them a bunch of money if they would come out by sometime...tomorrow. Getting back on the phone with tech support at Cardservice International, learned I had the jack in the wrong port. Ha Ha! Wasn't it funny when I was frantically running around the shop, swearing and putting the fear in Jacque and Brian, when it was all about the wrong jack? Ah, good times. Cancelled emergency repair with Qwest. Downloaded again. Put more money in the meter, as the downloads take a good long while. Made myself an iced green tea, as I hadn't had coffee since wednesday and the headaches we're just starting to go away. Download Complete. Numbers scroll, then stop. system error. What? Call tech support again. Ask what's going on and get put on hold. Put more money in the meter. 20 minutes later I am still on hold so I call back. Get someone else who explains in the least simple terms that our "system" was set up to go to 2 different "centers"--which isn't really possible--we'll have to put a work order in and best case scenario the problem will be fixed tuesday, worst case wednesday. As far as I'm concerned these are both worse case scenarios as we're now doing roughly a 1/3 of our business in credit card sales. No amount of please or managerial requests or threatening language will get this expedited any sooner, because "system repairs" is the only department in this giant web of ports and call centers and terminals that actually takes a weekend.

I am on the phone with Customer Care and Tech Support, Sunday and Monday, being assured that this repair is high priority, will be expedited as soon as possible, I have been tagged. In the meantime we beg for cash or checks and extend credit to our regulars, and apologize a lot.

So now it's Tuesday, "best case scenario" day and I'm ready to have this problem solved or exact my revenge on Tech Support. I call, stay on hold, I dowload. It works. It seems to work. I think it works, until we process a card and the statement reads "no way Jose" or "Cannot process" or something--back on the phone with TECH SUPPORT I am told by a brand new voice that I was not set up properly and they'll have to do a "system repair" another 24-48 hours. At this point it is also lunch so I am yelling at someone on my cell-phone, making tuna melts and wrapping turkey sandwiches and giving the "I'm so sorry!" pout to all customers handing Jeff their debit cards. I request a manager--and I'm on hold so long I am about to give up when a the voice of a no-nonsense woman gets on the line. She doesn't give me time to tell her of all the tresspasses put upon me in the last 4 days, she walks me through a brand new download, and then another, different download (downloads, in this case, consist of you scrolling through commands and typing codes into the machine, and I think I could now probably do it in my sleep.) Download Complete. Reboot. Softpay. Credit or Debit? Sign here please.

Sigh. Well, this little rant just saved about 15 people from having to hear this in order to get an americano and good morning sandwich. At least you the reader can click an arrow and be on your way.

Hello, and welcome to the brand new Half & Half blog, in which we will attempt to create a true Half & Half "experience" in cyberspace. "What the hell is Half & Half, some kind of gender-bender-liberal agenda freakshow?" is routinely asked by the unwitting passerby. And we are most of those things, but primarily we are small and humble cafe in downtown Portland, OR USA serving mouth-watering sandwiches, pie, and deviled eggs among other delicacies. And we're friendly, attractive, extremely funny and entertaining and you'll just love us. We swear to God.

Writing to you today is Robin, founder and matriarch, and chief blogger. It's taken me the better part of the week to write this introduction. Call it posting-fright. It's just an intimitating prospect, one better left to do later on in the day until it's the next day, and so on until it's not done. So in an effort to get onto other things, here it is.

The last three weeks at Half & Half have been plagued with Credit Card Machine Problems. Don't get me started on these so called "merchant services" companies, I'll save that for another post but suffice it to say that as of this moment our credit card machine is down, probably until Tuesday or Wednesday. Cash and checks are always our preffered means, but at this moment essential.

In other, happier news, monday is supposed to be 88 degrees and we are selling homemade ice-cream sandwiches. They are based on these cookies my mother used to make in the 80's-You could eat 7 or 8 without even noticing. Thin, buttery chocolate wafers, a little bit crisp, a little bit chewy, smooshed between vanilla or coffee ice cream. uh, yum.
Other feature items this week include: Cherry-rhubarb pie, peach pie, potato salad, a nicoise-style sandwich with excellent line-caught spanish tuna, and a turkey sandwich with bosc pears and aged gouda.

Also, new (old) Half & Half shirts are in production, and more beer cozies are slated next. Adios!