Sunday Afternoon at Casper's
In the middle of grocery shopping today, I realized I had to eat a hot dog *right* at that moment. Hot dogs are my favorite kind of junk food ever. I love them even more than boxed macaroni & cheese, unless the macaroni & cheese has cut-up hot dogs stirred into it.
I think it's a hormonal/menses thing, though, today's urge for the hot dog; all day long I've been craving salty, fatty, carb-high food (and the day is still fairly young). Once I got home and put the groceries away, I walked several blocks away to Casper's on San Pablo Avenue, which would quell my hot dog yearnings.
Casper's is a small Bay Area franchise of hot dog restaurants. For year I'd walk or drive by the Casper's that was so close to our house and peer inside the windows to see huge, lonely-looking woman staffing the place solo, one or two customers sitting at the counter with their paper-wrapped hot dogs. It painted a sort of post-Cold War update on Hopper's "Nighthawks" vignette.
I finally checked it out myself a few months ago--it's pretty amazing I held out so long, given this ridiculous attachment to hot dogs. But the place always scared me, so lost in time and desolate it seemed. The interior is stark, with little stools affixed to the floor along about a dozen almost perenially empty tables. The staff--all women, all inching slowly from middle age to a haggard upper-middle age--wear orange and yellow polyerster Casper's smocks. The place visually reeks of '70s.
On my way to Casper's today I passed a father at a payphone with two young kids. His little girl clutched a tin of Asian butter cookies whose handles had allowed its double use as a purse. The boy was pulling on his father's flannel sleeve. I used to see families like that in Ohio all of the time; I think of them as classic semi-trashy families, Real American People.
Once I arrived, Casper's was fairly empty as always--they do get a fair amount of foot traffic, though, regulars who get take-out as opposed to enjoying the orange, pink, and yellow vinyl stools for the experience of dining in. Two ladies were behind the counter. They have a system, I've noticed, if there are two ladies behind the counter: one takes the orders and prepares the hot dogs, the other gets drinks and rings up the sale. I got a Kraut Dog with mustard and ketchup (the relish there is not my favorite, and "everything" dogs come with pulpy slices of tomato and thick, overly piquant slabs of raw onion). The lady rining up sales asked me if I'd like chips or a cookie, and I politely told her no.
Casper's ladies may ber haggard, but they are kind. I looked over to the side counter andsaw a third Casper's lady on what I assumed was her lunch break. Several Casper's ladies are large, but she is quite possibly the largest and oldest; perhaps the younger large lady is her daughter. She sat pushing bright orange BBQ potato chips into her mouth in steady slow motion. What is the life of a Casper's lady like? They take hot dogs out of packages and place them in the steamer, fill up neon plasic souvenier cups with gallons of Pepsi, artfully dodge the antiquated, gentle but persistent sexual harassment of leathery, nicotine-stained elderly regular customers, and slice raw onions too thickly. They are lifers. What will happen to Casper's once they are gone?
It's rare to see young kids in Casper's, though I am perhaps just not there at the right time to catch them; there are middle and high schools not far away, and an after-school crowd of kids craving cheap, harmful food could easily congregate there. But Taco Bell is not far, either, and it's far more attractive to mainstream, TV-fed kids.
Shortly after I sat down at the largest table in the place, the father I'd seen by the payphone came in with his kids. The little boy kept on insisting that he wanted a "puppy dog," not a Casper Junior. I got one of those free classified ad circulars from a rack and began flipping through the pages, browsing over services--stereo installation, trash removal, computer repair--that I'd never use.
The family sat at the table across from me. The kids both had neon souveneir cups filled with soda--probably enough sugar in there to bake a cake, I thought. The little boy was very excited about his hot dog. "The best part of a hot dog is the cheese," he said. "All hot dogs with everything should come with cheese."
The father looked up at me. He had glasses in thick brown frames and a mesh-and-foam trucker hat not unlike those that my fiancee and many of my male friends wear. I realized that he was just a hipster like me, only with a family. All true hipsters are pretty trashy, after all. Today, for instnace, I am wearing a fraying long-sleeved thermal shirt with a navy t-shirt over it, baggy baby blue cords, and dirty pink Pumas. I also have not washed my hair in nearly a week, hoping that the residual hair goop will help easy me into a new hairstyle (it's not working, by the way; I look like a greasy dyke). Maybe someday if Mr. Bir Toujour and I have kids he'll be a cool dad and take them to a fading-glory hot dog chain on Sunday Afternoon and buy them tons of soda and a puppy dog with everything, including cheese. All of us at Casper's share the same attraction to its happy melancholy...as well as its hot dogs.
I think it's a hormonal/menses thing, though, today's urge for the hot dog; all day long I've been craving salty, fatty, carb-high food (and the day is still fairly young). Once I got home and put the groceries away, I walked several blocks away to Casper's on San Pablo Avenue, which would quell my hot dog yearnings.
Casper's is a small Bay Area franchise of hot dog restaurants. For year I'd walk or drive by the Casper's that was so close to our house and peer inside the windows to see huge, lonely-looking woman staffing the place solo, one or two customers sitting at the counter with their paper-wrapped hot dogs. It painted a sort of post-Cold War update on Hopper's "Nighthawks" vignette.
I finally checked it out myself a few months ago--it's pretty amazing I held out so long, given this ridiculous attachment to hot dogs. But the place always scared me, so lost in time and desolate it seemed. The interior is stark, with little stools affixed to the floor along about a dozen almost perenially empty tables. The staff--all women, all inching slowly from middle age to a haggard upper-middle age--wear orange and yellow polyerster Casper's smocks. The place visually reeks of '70s.
On my way to Casper's today I passed a father at a payphone with two young kids. His little girl clutched a tin of Asian butter cookies whose handles had allowed its double use as a purse. The boy was pulling on his father's flannel sleeve. I used to see families like that in Ohio all of the time; I think of them as classic semi-trashy families, Real American People.
Once I arrived, Casper's was fairly empty as always--they do get a fair amount of foot traffic, though, regulars who get take-out as opposed to enjoying the orange, pink, and yellow vinyl stools for the experience of dining in. Two ladies were behind the counter. They have a system, I've noticed, if there are two ladies behind the counter: one takes the orders and prepares the hot dogs, the other gets drinks and rings up the sale. I got a Kraut Dog with mustard and ketchup (the relish there is not my favorite, and "everything" dogs come with pulpy slices of tomato and thick, overly piquant slabs of raw onion). The lady rining up sales asked me if I'd like chips or a cookie, and I politely told her no.
Casper's ladies may ber haggard, but they are kind. I looked over to the side counter andsaw a third Casper's lady on what I assumed was her lunch break. Several Casper's ladies are large, but she is quite possibly the largest and oldest; perhaps the younger large lady is her daughter. She sat pushing bright orange BBQ potato chips into her mouth in steady slow motion. What is the life of a Casper's lady like? They take hot dogs out of packages and place them in the steamer, fill up neon plasic souvenier cups with gallons of Pepsi, artfully dodge the antiquated, gentle but persistent sexual harassment of leathery, nicotine-stained elderly regular customers, and slice raw onions too thickly. They are lifers. What will happen to Casper's once they are gone?
It's rare to see young kids in Casper's, though I am perhaps just not there at the right time to catch them; there are middle and high schools not far away, and an after-school crowd of kids craving cheap, harmful food could easily congregate there. But Taco Bell is not far, either, and it's far more attractive to mainstream, TV-fed kids.
Shortly after I sat down at the largest table in the place, the father I'd seen by the payphone came in with his kids. The little boy kept on insisting that he wanted a "puppy dog," not a Casper Junior. I got one of those free classified ad circulars from a rack and began flipping through the pages, browsing over services--stereo installation, trash removal, computer repair--that I'd never use.
The family sat at the table across from me. The kids both had neon souveneir cups filled with soda--probably enough sugar in there to bake a cake, I thought. The little boy was very excited about his hot dog. "The best part of a hot dog is the cheese," he said. "All hot dogs with everything should come with cheese."
The father looked up at me. He had glasses in thick brown frames and a mesh-and-foam trucker hat not unlike those that my fiancee and many of my male friends wear. I realized that he was just a hipster like me, only with a family. All true hipsters are pretty trashy, after all. Today, for instnace, I am wearing a fraying long-sleeved thermal shirt with a navy t-shirt over it, baggy baby blue cords, and dirty pink Pumas. I also have not washed my hair in nearly a week, hoping that the residual hair goop will help easy me into a new hairstyle (it's not working, by the way; I look like a greasy dyke). Maybe someday if Mr. Bir Toujour and I have kids he'll be a cool dad and take them to a fading-glory hot dog chain on Sunday Afternoon and buy them tons of soda and a puppy dog with everything, including cheese. All of us at Casper's share the same attraction to its happy melancholy...as well as its hot dogs.
posted by Lefty at 1:11 PM
2 Comments:
Casper's on San Pablo always looked real mangy to me so i never set foot in the joint. people told me there used to be a bunch more of them around that neighborhood back in the 60s. i think there's still a wienerschnitzle further down the road towards richmond. there's a last bastion of bad 1970s TV commercials for you. i didn't even know that chain was still around until i saw that one.
try hitting that nation burger on central and san pablo at 3am. i don't think they serve the hotdog action but you'll at least get to eat your burger and slice of pie while all the cab drivers show up and kick bums out the back of their rides.
Caspers is great. Lost in time little spot on the edge of yesterday. Nothing, I mean nothing changes at Caspers, ever! Yeah, we'll take our kids there someday and the same, huge, shuffling women putting nasty old slices of onion on our dogs will still be there. They sell hats too! I've never seen anyone wearing a Caspers cap.
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