I was waiting at a bus stop, and the wait was going to be twenty minutes, so why not kill some time and maybe buy myself something salty or sugary in the convenience store, conveniently located beside the bus stop?

Masked up, walked in, wandered the few aisles, and narrowed my options to one of those manufactured fake pecan pies, or maybe a sack of corn nuts.

It’s a convenience store so sure, the price would be high, but that’s where things got strange. There were no price tags on the merchandise, and no prices on the shelves, either — only stickers with barcodes.

Noped right outta there, and started scribbling my annoyance into my ancient spiral notebook.

I’m ancient, too, but let me guess — there’s an app, right? There’s an app where you point your phone at a barcode, and it tells you the price?

Well, pardon me for living but I don’t have that app, nor a smart phone, and can’t read barcodes myself, so it’s me and the 21st century butting heads again. 

♦ ♦ ♦     

Another day, a different frustration:I was on my way home from Chinatown and some rotten luck. I’d come only and specifically to eat at a particular Chinese place, but it was closed for a “family emergency.”

Harrumph. As if someone sick or dying is more important than my kung pow chicken!

Could’ve and should’ve chosen a different Chinese place. It’s Chinatown; there are hundreds of restaurants, most of them good and many of them cheap. But being stupid and stubborn, I got onto a #99 bus headed for home instead.

Only after several blocks of rattling along in a rickety bus, broken-hearted, empty-bellied, did I start strategizing a back-up plan, a substitute for a cheap Chinese dinner.

Due to complex bus logistics and limited options along shitty ol’ 4th Avenue, and me being grumpy and unwilling to walk much further, the only choice remaining was Kentucky Fried Chicken. And I have never much liked KFC. With their pressure-cooking system, even if you wait five minutes to let it cool, when you take a bite you’ll be splattered with boiling hot grease from inside the meat.

But … screw it. My belly had expected kung pow, and if it didn’t get something, even KFC, then lunch would be from the fridge or a can, at home. Arguably, I deserve better than that, so in walked a fat guy in a greasy t-shirt and cat-hair-coated sweatpants, and that fat guy was me.

Haven’t put the Colonel inside my mouth in about twenty years, and the prices were exponentially preposterous — $34 plus change, for an 8-piece bucket, with two sides and four biscuits … and there were signs bragging about that price!

But again … screw it. Eight pieces and two sides would be two meals. Two too expensive, greasy meals. So I smiled and ordered and paid thirty-four frickin’ dollars, and brought my bucket of fast-food home on the bus.

After the half-hour ride, the chicken had cooled enough that I was sprayed with warm grease instead of painfully hot, and the bird bits were edible. But they hadn’t given me any sides, nor any biscuits, and there were only seven pieces of chicken, not the promised eight.

That’s about $5 per piece, and two of the pieces were scrawny wings. Never again, KFC, and I’m old enough that when I say “never again” it’s literally.

♦ ♦ ♦      

Did I ever tell you that I met Colonel Harland Sanders once, when I was a kid? He’d sold Kentucky Fried to some corporation that ruined the recipe, but he was still their spokesman, and they’d spun off a new chain called Kentucky Roast Beef, with the Colonel’s face on the sign. They sent him to Seattle to attend the grand opening of a new Kentucky Roast Beef place, and my mom took me to meet the Colonel.

And there he was, wearing the full-body white suit and bow tie and everything. Mom & I waited in a short line to shake his hand, and he seemed to be having a good time, all smiley. He wasn’t drunk, didn’t smell funky, and he wasn’t openly playing grab-ass with any of the teenage employees.

My roast beef sandwich was lots better than Arby’s, but there’s no more Kentucky Roast Beef, and like most days, there’s no story to tell but I’ve told it anyway.

Kentucky Fried Chicken
2201 4th Avenue S, Seattle (Sodo)
Food & drink: subpar
Price: expensive
Service: crap
Transit: #131, #132
Verdict: BIG NO.

10/8/2024   

Cheap Seattle

Affordable eats

itsdougholland.com
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