The depressing 1st day of 2012...

 Don't fret. I am not going always being with a negative view, but this rarely happens. By 'this' I mean it is rare 1st of all that my Boyfriend would be blessed with a day off and rare that I would stick around for one in a handful of the worst dining experiences. What I mean by that is I paid for it. $44.99 for two people to cook their own potentially poisonous meat on pile of coals. I lived to tell the tale.

 The sign read "Live Bbq". I had been here before. Gone were any sort of proper care for what food was being put out, to sit, in metal bins...without the use of proper cold food holding methods. What I saw was uncovered, poorly held raw meat. I ate it anyway, taking full blame while I watched my partner eat this "Live Bbq" as if he had just gotten out of the 'Hole' in Shawshank Redemption. Like on of those people that takes responsibility for a poorly chosen movie, I knew this was on my shoulders. I felt repulsed that I had brought him here, only because the place I tried to take him was closed, but none the less, this, I felt was my FAULT. I wanted to cry. I didn't tip, even though I have been working in restaurants since I was a teen. I tried to make jokes, nothing helped. 

 How many times has it happened to you, where you feel obligated to eat and pay just because the place is so pathetic? It's like paying a toothless whore in hopes she'll go to a dentist instead of buy more crack with the money you just gave her. The money you gave her for some of your life wasted. What does this say about me, about people in the city? Should I have been ultimately rude and just ran for it? I have never dined and ditched, but the thought crossed my mind. I am all for authentic, sometimes scarey places where Eels lay in bus tubs and rabbits are out back in a few cages. Something about this certain place just turned me plain off.
 
 I won't name the place, I'm not sure it has a name. It is just saddening that places like that are allowed stay open. Don't get me wrong, I am all for dirty, grimy, diners and the like, but this place had an air of death. Or maybe that was just the half pan of sliced beef sitting by the cash register, thawing out while a commercial for socks blared through the joint.