The Way They Look Reveals Empty.

They travel in packs. They eat outside. They are pale, clenched, masking their true hair color, and for the past couple of months I can't help but feel like they've decided to invade my neighborhood. Even more so that is.

A little anonymous place across the street from my mini-mart opened up a while back, and I know it kinda sounds dasracist, but there was just something a few blocks off about the people sitting outside this joint.

At first I dismissed it as a drug front, then as an AA meeting, then as a fledgling hipster guerilla diner, then I went back to thinking it was an AA meeting. You see it is how they eat outside, and sit on crates doubling as actual chairs. Obviously I went through a stage where I thought they were Scientologists, but then I convinced myself it was an AA meeting for sure since the only signs said "Coffee" and "Toast". No one was really smoking, but this is LA, so I didn't think that meant anything, even if it totally does. If there was only a cross-walk I could just pop over and find out, but this bird just don't jaywalk no.

So come to find out, a couple a days back, it is some hipster joint that makes artisan jellies and creams and such. Called Sqirl Preserves or perhaps just Sqirl. You may have heard of it even if I haven't. It's been on blogs. I mean actual blogs. I guess they just slather their jellies on toast bread (which was totally my idea years ago BTW) and then people just sit around and shit looking like they're at an AA meeting. Brilliant.

But like I said, I had the idea of the toast bread restaurant years ago, and people said I was nuts. A restaurant that only served bread and water. I toyed with the idea of branching out into artisanal varietals of brown rice and mineral water, but then thought if you're going to go down that road you might as well open a Chuck-A-Rama on Pico.