Carrot and Stick: 01/01/2010

Happy New Year to all of you out there!

This edition of Carrot and Stick comes to you from San Diego California.  I would like the first carrot of the year to go out to the Coffee Cup Cafe in La Jolla.  Al Carbon and I have been going to eat to the Coffee Cup since  1997 when we were spending the summer in San Diego while studying Italian at UCSD prior to our junior year abroad in Rome.  Every time we come to San Diego we try to make at least one pilgrimage to the Coffee Cup.  It is the best breakfast/brunch place ever.  Everything is fresh and tasty and the perfect combination of breakfast/mexican/asian food cannot be beat.

We went there today, a little older than that first summer accompanied by our two children who were not even close to being in the picture back then, to celebrate the first brunch of the new year.  And as usual the Coffee Cup delivered.  Al Carbon noted while we were eating that the quality of the food at the Coffee Cup, unlike many other places, has stayed constant or maybe even improved throughout the years.  I have seen many places start strong but go downhill after a while.  The obvious care and dedication of the people running the Coffee Cup stands out and the fact that the place has lost no steam in over twelve years deserves some serious props.  So props to you Coffee Cup you deserve them.

Now the first stick of the year goes to an establishment close by to the Coffee Cup, namely Warwick's Books also in La Jolla.  Warwick's is a strange amalgam of a store with one side having gifts, stationary, and office supplies and the other side being a bookstore.  I was there a couple of days ago and it was literally the first time I have been kicked out of a store in my life.  I went there to get a book I had seen a couple of days earlier to give to my father as a gift when we get back from our little trip to California.  I grabbed the book and was browsing, looking for other books to purchase, while #4 and Lulu drew in a notebook I brought for them.  While looking at books I heard Lulu give a little cry so I went over to see what had happened.  It seems that Lulu had drawn on #4's side of the notebook and he had pushed her as a result.  So I put #4 on time out and he screamed a couple of times.  Honestly, it was a level 3 tantrum on a 1 to 10 scale.  Immediately I heard the cacophonous sound of uppity rich white people expressing their disapproval: "children should be seen and not heard."  And then I was besieged by a sixty-something clerk instructing me to "resolve this OUTSIDE."  It took a not insignificant amount of self-control for me to not tell him to go fuck himself.  But I did, and I placed the books I had down and took the kids out and left, never to return again.   The entire attitude was stinky and left me so angry that I wished I could return every book I ever bought there, which is not an insignificant number given the many trips I have taken to San Diego in the last twelve years.  Warwick's has lost a client for good.

I am completely fed up with the bullshit, so prevalent in the US but present elsewhere too, about how children are a nuisance and the accompanying mistreatment parents and adults traveling with children receive.  You know what fuckface? You were a kid once too.  Kids misbehave and kids make noise.  It is the way it is.  Sure there are tons of overindulgent parents out there but that is just the other extreme and neither one is ok.  I've had people actually tell me that I should DRUG my kids before we go on a plane as to not annoy them with the noise the kids make.  Are you fucking serious?!?  Why don't we just drug you instead?


Stick: Warwick's Books in La Jolla.  (You just lost out on a couple grand in books in the coming years.)
Carrot: Coffee Cup Cafe.  (Long live Papas Loco!)