I'd stick this in a back alley in Rogers Park or maybe some filthy alley off Bryn Mahr Avenue. It would be great to have a crack house nearby. There would be no sign indicating the place. You go inside. Gentle candlelight greets you. Within it's all brick and dust, broken-down sofas and chipped crockery imported from a bankrupt curry joint in Pakistan. The menu is brown rice, curried beans, vegetable-stuffed samosas and highly spiced, very strong Indian milk tea. That's it. It's all organic, all vegetarian, and all quite tasty. No drugging is allowed in the mise, but permanently stoned crack addicts are encouraged to eat and sleep there. Affluent people pay for everything. The poor and drugged get free rice and tea but have to pay for the samosas. Despite the fourth-world atmosphere, sanitation will be maintained.
01/2/14 By the way, the curried beans would not be free of charge. Just so you know.-- Vance, Feb 08 2001 Er...because!-- Vance, Feb 08 2001 Er...no...-- Wes, Feb 08 2001 Er...yes...-- Vance, Feb 08 2001 the connesseurs wouldnt want to sit near the addicts. but you have a nice hybrid atmosphere going there with a candles and all. maybe a velvet rope bisecting the have samosas from the have not samosas.
the staff at that place would be really cool people to hang out with.-- gnormal, Feb 08 2001 I take it you are tired of the same old steak and lobster places that you frequent near your local crack house?-- blahginger, Feb 08 2001 Well that's the thing: none of the cool addicts come to hang out at the steak 'n' seafood joints I frequent.-- Vance, Feb 13 2001 Anything which encourages people to eat beans and brown rice has to be a good thing. I'm not sure how you're going to sell the back-alley-hell-hole bit though. "Come to Veggie Paradise: The food's great, and you probably won't get robbed or murdered".-- Skinny Rob, Feb 13 2001 generally called soup kitchens...the poor eat, the wealthy come to serve every now and then to relieve their guilt...and they pay now for everything now since they pay the taxes which generally support these things or they donate....I guess they could eat together if they really wanted to...it may bring the menu up some. However, I would think that the crack addicts need some protein in their diets so while the veggie menu would be good..... I'd suggest some roadkill too... :-)-- Susen, Feb 13 2001 Roadkill? Perhaps a deer or two.
This would be karmically quite different from a soup kitchen. A soup kitchen aims to find the poor and feed them. The Hell Hole would feed the poor simply because they show up. And then only the basics. The poor (in this case, drug addicts) would have an incentive to get some money so as to afford the samosas. Would this contribute to their reform? Unlikely. Yet reform is not the goal of this mise. Rather, it is art in food and food in art, in which the addicts and well-to-do are part of the canvas, as it were. Yet it will not do to exploit these addicts, to let them become part of the "cool atmosphere" and not reward them. They are getting their rice and tea, but it is not charity; they are earning it.-- Vance, Feb 14 2001 That's what I thought you meant by "cool addicts." Certainly there are some cool people who are addicts, but since when did addiction confer coolness?
I recognize, though, that this could all be tongue in cheek, in which case <Voice = "Emily Litella"> nevermind. </Voice>-- beauxeault, Feb 14 2001 I don't know about your "neck of the woods", but in Los Angeles there are several cool coffee houses that have a similar atmosphere... The Bean and The Livingroom especially come to mind. 'Course they don't serve curry, just toast sandwiches.
As for the debate over whether the addicts are "cool"... I believe the experience Vance is describing is sometimes referred to as "slumming"; I like slumming -- it's a great way to raise one's diversity awareness!-- danrue, Feb 14 2001 Of course, if the idea of having real addicts is considered too dangerous (around here, they're known to mug people in a desperate quest to pay for the next hit of smack), they could always hire out-of-work actors to play addicts.
Something like that could happen in thoroughly gentrified areas caught between maintaining a vestige of the edgy bohemian feel that attracted earlier waves of trendies and keeping the area safe for conspicuous consumption. Slumming meets Disneyland.-- acb, Apr 05 2001 And Bruce Campbell would be just the man for the job!-- absterge, Apr 05 2001 This is my aunt's apartment you people are annotating! Except her landlord doesn't let her flaunt the Uzis. Everyone gets onto the ground, she dumps beans and brown rice onto the plate and you eat. No talking, or you get slapped. If you luck out, she'll give you one of her millions of samosas. Everyone pays for the meal, but the family steals back $20 at night. Everyone else pays full. And no milk tea. Just sake. 4 Indian aunts, and I always have to go to the one that makes me and a few hobos drink up all her sake and eat beans. BTW, this is not a rant. Just a decription of my aunt's apartment.-- Shadow Phoenix, Oct 21 2007 "you think samosas grow on trees, son? you'll pay for that samosa and you'll like it!"-- k_sra, Oct 23 2007 random, halfbakery