(Sweet bird of youth! Roving correspondent/photographer Kristen Tobiason revisits the scenes of our past glories. Today, the Chicken Pie Shop still serves the salt of the earth.)
The Chicken Pie Shop, known for its geriatric-variety comfort food, large portions and low prices. I recall scraping the bottom of my handbag for a couple of bucks in change and receiving an all-inclusive, starch-based feast: a chicken pie smothered in gravy; whipped potatoes; a “vegetable”; a roll with butter; and then, if you really felt like stuffing yourself, dessert (which was some kind of pie).
A chicken dinner today costs $6.50, a leisurely inflation from $2.50 in 1983, and it still accommodates the income of the shop’s retired customer base. Some of the waitresses I spoke with have been there for over 20 years and worked at the location on 5th and Robinson, then across the street from Mayfair (“Gayfair”) market in San Diego’s Hillcrest neighborhood. (That corner has been usurped by a very hungry Starbucks monster and a Rite Aid.)
The Chicken Pie Shop relocated 18 years ago to its current address at 2633 El Cajon Blvd. The waitress I spoke with modeled her 70th anniversary T-shirt with pride. I suspect some of the current customers may remember when the pie shop opened back in 1938. 
Part restaurant/ part museum, I explored the “chicken”-flavored kitsch and memorabilia, which tell many 20th Century stories. (I was informed that people donate the chickens when their loved ones die.)
I have fond recollections of cruising into the 5th Avenue diner, a large gang of us strangely-dressed youngsters making a scene among the elderly folks! These were good times — tho’ I became shy of the chicken pie when my boyfriend Tommy told me he once got one with beaks and eyes!
— Kristen Tobiason
More views of San Diego then and now:
- Then and Now: Off the Record
- Then and Now: Rock Palace
- Then and Now: The Ken Cinema
- Then and Now: Adams Avenue Theater
- Then and Now: Topsy’s
- Then and Now: Greenwich Village West
- Then and Now: Funland
- Then and Now: Studio 517
- Then and Now: La Posta
- Then and Now: Presidio Park
- Then and Now: El Cajon Blvd. Denny’s
A few notes:
1. I’ve been humming “Coming Down Again” from Goats Head Soup:
Slipped my tongue in someone else’s pie,
Tasting better ev’ry time
He turned green and tried to make me cry,
Being hungry it ain’t no crime
Now that the Stones are the target demographic, perhaps this tune could become a theme of the Chicken Pie Shop?
2. The geriatric cast of the clientele intrigues me the same way the elderly attendees at church bingo games intrigue me: Are the old people here a renewable resource? The old people who thronged the CPS in our youth would be 110 years old now … So these must be new old people.
3. I assume there was a Golden Age of weird niche restaurants … Viz. Pea Soup Andersen’s. One of my favorite spots in Milwaukee specialized in spaghetti with chili on it and oyster crackers.
4. While I’m skeptical, I can understand finding beaks in your chicken pie — but how would you identify chicken eyes? I’m practically vegan nowadays, and chicken really makes me shudder, but I can’t imagine how a chicken eye would make it through the pie process recognizably.
I had heard that when the old shop at 5th and Robinson was shut down the complete interior was carefully crated up and shipped to Mexico to be used in a restaurant there. While these feels very urban-legendish to me, it is nice to imagine that somewhere in the interior of Baja is the old Chicken Pie shop complete with murals of chickens being lead to the guillotine.
I keep flashing back to the movie: “Chicken Run”. I am amazed that I used to consume food like this. with relish. must have been a symptom of starving half the time. on purpose. in hindsight, my parents had plenty of money and I was poor and starving by choice! what a poser (shaking head).
There are still some geriatric restaurants in the Hotel Circle area: Albee’s Beef Inn and Kelly’s Steak House. Piano bar and all.
>>I had heard that when the old shop at 5th and Robinson was shut down the complete interior was carefully crated up and shipped to Mexico to be used in a restaurant there.
Jason: That’s a tableau worthy of Weird SD! Can we get some verification of this absolutely bizarre anecdote?
It’s my understanding that the 5th and Robinson location was the second location of the Chicken Pie Shop, the first being downtown.
Paul Howland: Writing in the San Diego Union-Tribune on May 17, 2008, Diane Bell connects the dots (or perhaps the chicken corneas):
“When George Whitehead bought the fledgling restaurant in 1938, it was on Fifth Avenue near B Street downtown with a second location at Fifth and Robinson in Hillcrest. In 1970 the restaurant moved across the street, and the downtown shop closed. In 1990, it relocated to its current site at 2633 El Cajon Blvd. in North Park.”
Nice use of “fledgling”! It does beg the question: If there were already two shops when Mr. Whitehead bought in, where did this institution begin? I think it may have been founded by the same shadowy consortium that built Rock Palace and the Presidio Park Pentagram.
Oh! And Ms. Bell says a pie was 10 cents in 1938, and a full dinner was 35 cents. With beaks.
>>As for the beak & eyes . . . the chicken parts are shreded . and I could se how a face might make it through mostly unscathed . . .
Mike: LOL! “I’ve just seen a face, I can’t forget the time or place … ” The Beatles join the Stones on my personal Chicken Pie Shop playlist.
I remember enduring many chicken pie shop induced comas!
Matt, chili on spaghetti w/oyster crackers is a great dish that everyone should try! There’s an old place in Burbank called Chili John’s which is a descendant of the original Chili John’s in Green Bay where they invented the dish. Ironically, the one in Green Bay is now in a mini mall and has no character at all and mediocre food, while the one in Burbank is still in the original building (perhaps from the 1930s or before) and has atmosphere galore and great food.
I could chat forever about road food, old restaurants, and regional cuisine!
Dean:
… And here I was thinking that it was because the restaurant’s regulars were known to the waitresses as “chili johns”!
(N.b.: When a chili john drops a zoo, it’s time to call the vice squad — or Animal Care & Control.)
I loved the CPS, dig old people also, like I said in a post a couple of days ago, stepping into the CPS was like stepping back in time.
I also loved all those greasy spoons down on broadway, like Tony’s a little west of Funland, Tony’s was also a time machine for me, I guess I was trying to escape the 80’s back then.
Anybody else recall the names of diners on Broadway?
Does anyone recall the old strip joint near the corner of 4th and Broadway, it was called Swank a Go-Go? It had the coolest sign.
Wish I had a time machine.
Steven: The woman crammed into the train seat beside me was visibly startled by my convulsive, silent laughter … I fear she may have thought I was some kind of sick chili john surreptitiously attempting to drop a zoo!*
OK, talk to me about Hillcrest. Around 1985, Hillcrest seemed like the epitome of urban cool on San Diego’s stumpy yardstick. Postmodern camp harmonized nicely with some old-school kitsch, like the Chicken Pie shop. (Hey! Does anyone know why that one Italian place around the corner from City Deli sat unopened for years, but, like, with all the tables set? It was CREEPY.)
Anyway, mid-’80s Hillcrest was snappy and snazzy and gay. But when I blazed through town early this year and peeked at Hillcrest for the first time in maybe a decade, it seemed a little threadbare. Some closed shops, not a lot of foot traffic … Sorta warmed-over.
Am I jaded, or has the tide of history moved on, leaving Hillcrest drying on the sand?
—————-
*Footnote: I just checked Google, and this blog is either the leading or only location where you can find the phrases “drop a zoo,” “dropping a zoo” or “dropped a zoo.” Score another one for the Che lexicon!
>>Matthew asks: Does anyone know why that one Italian place around the corner from City Deli sat unopened for years, but, like, with all the tables set?
Pernicanos. The situation hasn’t changed since you last saw it 20 years ago.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20070325/news_1m25vacant.html
Hillcrest is still hopping and is considerably more congested than we remember it. I’ve noticed the most recent trend of the area is “doggie spas”.
On an unrelated to the CPS tangent , my dad told me about the time he was stationed in San Diego for the first time ( late 40’s maybe ) he said the first time he ever had pizza was at Pernicano’s . Said he fell in love with San Diego on the spot and was impressed at how metropolitan it was , what a big city and all that . . . pretty trippy .
Funny how people loved the old Chicken Pie Shop so much they still refer to the “new location”… even though it’s been in that location for, what, 20 years?
18 years, sorry… still, a lot longer than the entire lifespan of a lot of restaurants.
From that Pernicano’s article: “Pernicano once told a reporter that selling the place would be like ‘selling my body. My body and soul are in there.’ ”
He meant it literally: Jackie Gleason is buried in the wine cellar, and Lawrence Welk’s restless spirit periodically visits the dining room and rearranges the salt shakers.
Apropos Pa Stobbe’s romance with Pernicano’s and the affection many of us feel for old-people restaurants: What other joints were the epitome of San Diego fancy eats in the ’50s and ’60s? Let’s say the Rat Pack came to town and wanted to eat out — where might they have ended up?
BTW, somebody else must remember a very cool retro-chic sushi-and-jazz joint — I’m thinking parkside and about eight blocks south of Hillcrest. It certainly represented an extravagant date night on my youthful budget, but not completely crippling. And the decor was fabulous!
Lets imagine for a moment that Dylan does have his time machine and finds himself in San Diego circa 1957 and he is in the mood for some fine dining. He could do a lot worse than to visit the venerable “Hob Nob Hill” located in Bankers Hill.
P.S. Lucky me, I am eating there today!
Also regarding Hob Nob Hill. Urban legend. When your waitress first approaches your table and you are the first to stand up and yell out, “I am a hob nob nut!” You do NOT get a free dessert, you DO look like an imbecile. (Not that that has ever happened to me)
I found my thrill on Hob Nob Hill: “In May 1944, Harnold and Dorothy Hoersch opened a 14-stool lunch counter named the Juniper Café with a lofty goal – to provide quality food and exceptional services at reasonable prices.
“With hard work and commitment, our goal became a reality and business grew steadily. To accommodate that growth, in 1946, the restaurant was moved to its present location on Juniper and First Avenue and named the Melody Grill. As times and tastes changed, the restaurant was renamed Dorothy’s Oven and finally Hob Nob Hill.”
I’m concerned about the use of the term “stool” on a restaurant site. And I’m really curious about the parade of name changes, which rivals Madonna’s wardrobes and Michael Jackson’s noses for sheer off-kilter variety.
(If you stand up at the chili joint in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and scream, “I’m a chili john!” you get put on a watch list and have to stay 100 yards away from elementary schools.)
When I said ” I wish I had a time machine” I ment I wish I had a cool old greasy spoon were time stood still, here I could eat greasy food, cooked by a guy with greasy hair in a greasy shirt.
A place where time stands still.
But Dylan with a real time machine you could go back to that same greasy spoon on the same day, over and over. Just be careful not to run into yourself or you will explode.
At least old man Pernicano seems to have moved out of the restaurant parking lot. For years, he lived in a trailer there. The last time I went by, the trailer was gone… I thought he’d probably died.
Pernicano haiku:
Eddie Cantor’s stool,
Preserved in Pernicano’s
Weedy parking lot
Pernicanos, Still closed. Still can’t park there.
Steve: Ya know I was just thinking the same thing, about time machines.
I was not at the 1986 Mayfair bum roit, but I do recall you and Skip talking of it. You think the Mayfair people would of had the brains to call the local food bank.
Mayfair Hillcrest brother store to O.B.’s Mayfair Market. One brother being gay and the other brother being a loser, burn out.
Pernicano had those mustache door handles, always thought they suited the neighblorhood, what a cool place.
Hillcrest had a lot of charm then, no guild, no CPS anymore. Still got La Posta, City Deli and The Brassrail.
those door handles have since been stolen . . .
>>Dylan says: Mayfair Hillcrest brother store to O.B.’s Mayfair Market. One brother being gay and the other brother being a loser, burn out.
LOL! 🙂
>>Pernicano had those mustache door handles
Visiting celebrities — from Carmen Miranda to Jimmy Durante to Ethel Merman to Man o’ War — used to hoist themselves onto the handles and pose for photographs that would be mounted on the restaurant’s walls.
“Pernicano’s Moustache Rides” became such a popular attraction, they inspired a line of novelty T-shirts in the 1970s.
Casa di Bafi is Italian for “House of Mustache”…that’s the reason for the door handles. Im assuming the owner had a mustache.
“House of Mustache” would have made a great leather bar!
Soon after college in Grand Rapids, Mich., my wife worked in an ad agency that did work for a few odd industrial clients. One of them was a company that sold a machine for stripping chicken meat off the bone.
The print ad they created featured a half-mutilated chicken carcass with dollar bills stuffed in the crevices.
The slogan beneath the image? “There’s a Lot of Scratch Left in That Chicken!”
Rat pack and other beautiful people of that era actually did visit a place that was a favorite of my family in and around the early 70s…Marco’s on Orange Ave. in Coronado.
It was on a corner in an old bank building with columns…around 5 or 6 blocks up from the Hotel Del Coronado.
Private rooms out back, bar through a seperate door, and the main room done in over-the-top Italian kitsch…murals of venetion gondoliers (sp?) too damned many chianti bottles to count hanging from the ceiling…you get the idea.
They were great. My mom took us there to eat almost every week for a few years, and after an absence of nearly a decade, we went back and the waitresses all recognized us and asked where we’d gone!
Alas…it’s gone now. They had amazing ravioli and my personal fave, anchovy pizza.
No mustache rides that I ever heard of, but private parties in the back room…who knows.
Patrick
This thread is another classic. It’s like a bottomless Christmas stocking. It’s funny how so many of the music related posts will sit, uncommented upon, for days, while anything food related will rack up thirty comments in a matter of hours!
I’ve lived in the Hillcrest area for over thirty years now, and have come to see it as a living, breathing entity that sometimes thrives and at other times endures periods of poor health. I can’t help but be nostalgic for the Hillcrest of the late seventies when it was an odd mix of the conservative elderly, the gay subculture and a small, tolerant group of sixties live and let live types. (The latter group provided at least two vegetarian restaurants--Cornucopia and Kung Food--a basket and macrame shop and one of San Diego’s coolest bohemian coffee houses, Quel Fromage.) Anyway, the Chicken Pie Shop was, for me, in a category of small businesses which made me feel like I was living in an oasis which had somehow escaped the “progess” of the sixties and seventies. On the same street was Hammond’s 5 and 10 Cent Store. Mayfair had that same small town feel. (I think elsewhere I reminisced about how Carl Rusk and I noted that at the center of the blue Van De Kamps bakery sign on the side of Mayfair was a clearly visible swastika.)
I never heard the Mayfair Massacre story, but I am intrigued. How could anyone think that would be a good idea? Sounds like the infamous Who Concert in Cinncinnati.
Mayfair sat vacant for a while, became Sav-on, then Osco (a classic public relations blunder for the company, because “asco” means disgust or repulsion in Spanish) before becoming Rite-Aid, one of the worst run companies in the history of mankind. It’s a mess in there, folks! A couple of years ago, Raquel and I used to run into Rob Halford of Judas Priest in the neighborhood all of the time. Once I helped Raquel work up the nerve to strike up a conversation with him, and we spoke on several occasions after that. It turns out his boyfriend at the time worked at that Rite-Aid, and rumor has it they had more than one public spat in the Rite-Aid parking lot!
BREAKIN’ THE LAW !!!
awesome recollections !
The Blue Door Bookstore--is it still there?
Oh Ray! Cornucopia!! I miss it so much. San Diego has an increase in its vegetarian population (an increase in population in general which rises everyday), but it is my impression that the number of veggie restaurants has declined in the past 20 years. What is your opinion?
Jyoti Bihanga still thrives (when it is open) and there is Sipz up in Clairemont that does phenomenal things with Seitan --
but healthy food is not being prepared in the “Moosewood” hippie kitchens of our youth so much anymore. Corporate enterprise has taken over our tofu and whole grains to create yuppified wallet gouging “health superstores”:
Whole Foods, Henry’s and Trader Joes.
Henry’s, (which used to be Boney’s) is for the most part locally grown, so I will cut them some slack. But Whole Foods capitalizes on the health conscious, those eco-minded, the spiritually inclined. We call them “Whole Paycheck”. They are the Walmart of health food stores, plopping down all over the country and swallowing up the competition. I’m glad that Whole Foods lost their bid to buy out Henry’s, which is where most senior citizens shop -- our beloved Chicken Pie Shop customers who are living on social security income.
I’m ranting and raving now. Sigh. Thank goodness OB People’s Market is still around. And the Krishna temple -- tho’ they charge these days. If you know of any good veggie restaurants let me know! Especially the kid-friendly ones (that subtracts Pokez and Ranchos, which have extensive veggie menu items but take all day to prepare it).
I’ve seen Rob Halford coming out of the 24 hour fitness center in Hillcrest on more than one occasion!
Cornucopia chocolate chip pancakes! they weighed 15 pounds but mmm so good!
Ray Brandes brings up Kung Food. Never ate there but had one of the worst experiances of my life in the parking lot. My friend Skip Delaney was working late at Kung Food. I was picking him up. This would have been about 88.
It was about 10:30 pm, I was sitting in my diesel VW rabbit when I hear a motorcylce hauling ass up the street. Right in front of me is a Chevy type van so I cant quite see it happen. The motorcycle goes skidding across the road so I get out of my car. The guy smacked his face into the driver side rearview mirror. I get out of my car and he was already dead. What a mess. I have never been on two wheels since. Cops said he was drunk.
Stobbe,
By the way, how much for the mustache door handles?
Kristen: The Krishna Temple charges for dinner now? Bummer! I remember when they asked us to stop coming there so much to make room for other guests.
There were two Krishna-run buffet restaurants in SD County back in the ’80s … One around North Park(?) and one in Leucadia. Are they still ladling the ghee at either location?
The North Park Krishna buffet restaurant was called Govinda’s. I ate there 2-3 times a week when I was pregnant with my daughter (back in 1989). When I moved back to SD in 1994 after living in Portland, OR, it was gone. It would have been a block away from where I’m living now. Too bad! Now there is new age wiccan/renaissance fair supply shop there called Lady of the Lake.
Oh man , I used to eat at the Temple in PB a couple times a week as well . We would hang out with the kids when they were allowed to set up their tent at Balboa Park and got to know a few of them personally . Same big group of us would go every sunday night and eat for free .
Kristen same again for me with Govinda’s . That place was amazing . There were a lot of sad faces and tummys when they finally closed the doors .
Also in case you haven’t slowed down to really look in the window of that book shop , they have about 15 / 20 Gnomes in their window . Made my wife stop in her tracks .
Steve , we’ll talk about the moustaches in private . . .
Howdy Mike! we know each other by ex-association -- I met my ex-husband at a party at your house and then ten years later you worked on my ex-boyfriend’s tattoo.
We are well acquainted with those gnomes! It is part of my two year old son and my neighborhood walk adventure -- he likes to run inside the store and pat the gnomes -- and the Buddhas too.
I kept thinking I recognized your picture but couldn’t really place your name , so many people came through that house on 35th street it’s hard to keep everyone in a mental line
. . . sorry about all the ex’s though . I hope they were part of a path that led you to a good place for what it’s worth !
My wife is a major gnome enthusiast , we have to slow down every time we drive past . We might have to arrange a University avenue lunch / gnome / baby play date in the near future !
just noticed your myspace nom de plume . . . fun coincidence , I was ” stobbe wan kenobi ” in an elementary school play we had , just after Star Wars came out . . . children of a generation it would seem .
All the ex’s -- not too many! I’m not Liz Taylor! It’s all good -- a road more rather than less traveled, hmm.
We are the Star Wars generation -- I spent the entire summer of 1977 in line for that movie at the theater down in Mission Valley (rip). This is pretty funny: I performed (age 12) at the Civic Theater with the symphony in a tribute to John Williams and the music to Star Wars. I came out at the end dressed as C3PO.
I still enjoy a rainy day of watching the original trilogy -- forget the newer ones. They stink.
All my ex’s live in Texas,
And Texas is a place I’d dearly love to be.
But all my ex’s live in Texas
And that’s why I hang my hat in Tennessee.
--George Strait
Kristen as C3PO! You were a geek goddess, my dear.
I stood in that same line with you . I remember it going around the theatre several times . 2 & 3 hour wait was the standard time before you got into watch it , one more time .
At last count I had seen it 32 times in that theatre in particular , many more if you add other theatres as well as the many living room viewings till this day . . . untold hours of Star Wars .
RE. the ex’s, I meant that to read ” all the ex’s I had come into contact with ” as it seems that might have been part of the curse that led them to be ex’s to some degree !
probably not . . . hah !
Man Kung Food, I used to go there with my mom in the 70’s, and they had a James Taylor type folkie dude singing in the middle of the place every time, very brown indeed.
O.B. peoples food store used to spend a lot of time there as kid also, used to get alot of my toys(old ice chest and sleeping bags) out of the O.B. free box behind the store, so brown.
Star Wars was my baby sitter in 1977, mom would just drop us off and we would what a couple of showings.
crazy times.
Oyeah my last album has a gnome of the cover, no shit……Kristen, Mike I will send you guys cd’s, gnome lovers gotta stick together.
Kristen,
I was a vegetarian for nearly ten years in the nineties, before I fell off the wagon in Spain on the same tour where I met my wife. I was never really partial to vegetarian restaurants--I had much better luck eating Thai, Indian, Mediterranean food, etc. I always felt some of those places tried too hard to create non-meat meat dishes( like mock chicken, Neatloaf, etc.), when I would just as soon have eaten a good falafel! But I did have to eat a lot of grilled cheese back then!
Star Wars--my son just turned five, and I’ve been introducing him to Indiana Jones and Star Wars lately. He’s going to be Obi Wan Kenobi for Halloween this year!
Now when you guys talk about gnomes, are you talking about the garden variety, or the Pink Floyd variety? If the latter is your preference, Terrence McKenna wrote extensively about the reality of gnomes and their relationship to the DMT experience. He was convinced that the lyric “hoooooraaay” in the Pink Floyd song was a nod to the sound one hears upon being welcomed into their world.
Sounds like there sound be a Che Underground family picnic. I am do down. Balboa park?
Ray I just dig gnomes, with or with out Barrets Flyod. Had the Gnome book as a kid, also wrote a peom about a unicorn once and read it front my class(3rd grade), punk rock saved me from dorkdom. Or did it?
Dylan! Once a dork -- always a dork --
I am so down for a Balboa Park family get-together. Let me know a time and we’ll show up! Or of course we could all meet at Lady of the Lake to say hi to the gnomes first.
Punk rock never saved me from dorkdom (or the female equivalent), thrown in with those that play dungeons and dragons, collect vintage records and yes, even read Terrence McKenna! By group standards, I wasn’t a punk OR a mod. But I loved the psychedelic element of the 60’s retro thing -- op art. yellow submarine. blasting off to Astronomie Dominie…..I really got to the Che Underground the same way I got to Mike Stobbe’s house -- by association.
I want to make some t-shirts that say: “I saw Star Wars 50 times Before You Were Born”.
>>I want to make some t-shirts that say: “I saw Star Wars 50 times Before You Were Born”.
Let’s all go out and watch a space opera,
That was a hit before your mom or your pop-era …
How about some ” I got drunk at stobbe’s house before you were born ” shirts . . .
I’ve met and tattooed people who were the children of people who used to party at my house , and I’ll tell you , nothing makes you feel your years like having a conversation with someone who wasn’t alive when you used to party with their mom on mushrooms & southern comfort . . .
I’d be up for a saturday afternoon , 6th & quince balboa park picnic .
>>nothing makes you feel your years like having a conversation with someone who wasn’t alive when you used to party with their mom on mushrooms & southern comfort . . .
LOL! I believe Will Rogers said that.
Always a dork! Dork for life, Stobbe knows I’m a dork for sure.
My wife, two year old son and I won’t be back in San Diego till the first of the year, so if we can do it in Jan. that would be cool.
I wanna make t-shirts that say ” Unicorn Poet”.
and that would be poem and Floyd…….
Dylan: January it is -- I hear that is Gnome Season.
Until then, you will have to throw down some of your “unicorn poetry” here on the blog.
A chicken is dismembered in six stages,
And the seven brings return.
and then they say hooorrray, another way for gnomes to say hooooorrrrayyyyyy.
I will set up a “Unicorn Poetry Slam”.
oh my! girl sitting in the sky,
go buy, mashed potatoes and a chicken pie.
I’ve got a pie, and it’s full of beaks and eyes;
It’s got a crust underneath, it chipped my teeth, I’ve had it for months.
I’d give it to you if I could, but I swallowed it!
Scream thy last scream, old chicken with a biscuit …
Dylan,
I knew about the gnome thing, what with the album cover and all but you never told me about the unicorns. I thought we were friends?
Call me a one-trick pony, but I still love this:
This has gone way too far.
Sorry Steve, should have come to you first about my unicorn poetry, I must say, feel like a huge weight is off my shoulders.
Steve I think you took me to CPS for the first time. Thanks!
Thas ok Dylan. When they open that new leather bar ” House of Musache”, I will take you there too…proudly.
“Grimble Grumble … heh, heh … Grimble Grumble … heh … ”
“Lying on an eiderdown! Heh, heh … “
Megan S:
>The Blue Door Bookstore–is it still there?
It closed in 2001 (http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080722/news_1m22peccolo.html), but there’s a good book store in approx. the same location called Bluestocking Books. I always shop this block when I’m back home.
I LOVE Albie’s Beef Inn, Hob Nob Hill, and the Red Fox Room. Not too keen on Kelly’s since they remodeled it in dark green and brass. Another great time warp restaurant is The Imperial House by Balboa Park (by the fruit loop!), where you will encounter the “Most Charming Maitre d’ in San Diego, Felix Galindo, “the man who rolls his R’s”.
Imperial House
“chhh..chhhh…doy…doy!”
I don’t know Matthew. It’s not working for me.
maybe pr tock h:
“gold is lead. choke on bread. underfed. pain is red.”
a bit more droogish?
“Look a’t’sky … Look a’t’river … Isn’t it GOOD? Heh, heh … ”
On a related note, Dave Fleminger did an incredible version of “Venus in Furs” enunciated like Elmer Fudd.
I would pay a dollar to hear that.
“Taste the whip, in wuv not given wightwy … Taste the whip — now BWEEEEED faw me!”
The Blue Door was such a haven for me growing up. THere was this wonderful man named Charles who worked there.
Wear It Again Sam is now in the space where the Blue Door was.
Speaking of literary hubs, I don’t know if we’ve even mentioned F Street Books yet.
Who could forget those soirees? Kind of like the Algonquin Round Table — only funnier smelling, with more zippers.
Was that the more risque purveyor of intellectual titillation?
F Street Books offered a colorful mix of specialty publications, lavishly illustrated instructional manuals, tobacco- and snuff-processing goods, intimate apparel, personal massagers, amyl nitrite (an important vasodilator for the treatment of angina), and whipped-cream chargers.
Small wonder it was a rallying point for SD literati! You could change your underpants, store your snuff, calm your heart palpitations and top a pie — and possibly broaden your horizons in unexpected ways, especially in a few of the shop’s further corners.
Just don’t drop a zoo at F Street.
Tony: “Don’t Drop a Zoo at F Street” was featured on the notorious “Homegrown, Uncut” compilation.I still remember that plain brown wrapper and rhe liner notes by Mac Heald.
I’m sure more things have risen at F street than dropped, in any event.
What kind of royalties do you get on something like that, Dean?