Pizza Street Buffet, Kansas City

Like many people, I was deeply impoverished as a young adult.   I had student loans to pay.  I had a shitty entry-level job and no money in the bank. Of course, I could always find money for beer and other related shenanigans – but paying the rent and keeping food, clothes and shelter around always seemed like an incredibly tall order.  That’s where The Street came into play.

The Street is a buffet-style franchise that’s never really made it out of the Kansas City area.   Their claim to fame used to be $2.99 all-you-can-eat pie.  The weird thing about it was that it wasn’t really that bad.  If one played their cards right they could go to “The Street” late in the day, gorge themselves as much as possible and have their food needs covered for about three days.  Nobody could quite figure out exactly how it was so cheap.  There were several “soylent pie”-based theories that no one was ever able to confirm or deny.  The explanation I liked the best was the “angry sauce” theory:

My friend Mitchell realized that every time he would eat their food, he would suddenly and inexplicably get angry, be a dick to people and have a terrible day.  He theorized that the franchise was actually operated by Satan himself and the reason that the food was so cheap was  because Satan wanted to widely distribute the angry sauce and turn people against one another.  I don’t really think he believed the theory as he was an aggressive atheist, but he never wanted to eat there after he developed the idea.

So anyway, I moved away from the area for three years and I’ve just now gotten an opportunity to return to “The Street” .  The price has increased to $4.49 (hey man, even Lucifer’s got overhead), but other than that, nothing’s changed.  The food was halfway decent, the clientele was the epitome of the “holy shit, we’re broke” demographic and I’m sitting here, two hours later, pissed as hell for no reason.

These here colors don't run

Now, because the food is unlimited and cheap as hell, the clientele is similar to what one might find at Wal-Mart…and like Wal-Mart, one of these guys must be on duty at all times.  You can’t see it because of my shitty cell phone, but there’s a bald eagle on his shirt.  I’ve always found it strange that the people who have the most right to be pissed at this country are the ones that are usually the most vocal (and tacky) in their support of it.  Hey, nobody’s mocking patriotism here…just the tacky assed shirt that was probably made in China anyway.

Nonchalantly Keeping an Eye Out for Her Eyebrows

This lady sat behind me.  She was obviously out for a Saturday night dinner.  Her blouse was silkesque.  Her boobs were appropriately exposed for family dining at a discount buffet.  She was all set for a night to remember.  Except her brows apparently had other plans…