Ike’s
Seated at the bar at Ike’s, we watched, fascinated, while an aging fellow (possibly only our age, come to think of it, but so bent by care and conscience that he seemed much older) tried to pick up a lovely little girl, shrink-wrapped in a tiny skirt. You can guess the type: an old poop with yellowing teeth, so derrière garde that he ordered a martini without irony, wearing a suit so nondescript that we hardly remember it, enlivened we must admit by snappy socks that we wouldn’t have rejected ourselves but which, frankly, did nothing for him but betray a pitiful struggle against age.
In the interest of bringing you the fullest possible account of Ike’s and its denizens, we consumed quite a few quite awful margaritas and as many “Macho Nachos” as we could stomach as an excuse for lingering to watch the poor fool fail. He did, of course. When at last he left, frustrated and humiliated, we couldn’t help wondering something: Whatever had made him think he might have succeeded? Why had he thought he had a chance? What cruel disease infects a pathetic fellow like this with such impossible dreams? We thought that the gorgeous girl herself might have the answer, so, for the sake of this review, we bought her another of those lousy margaritas and engaged her in conversation. We learned, as, to be honest, we had suspected we would, nothing from her that we didn’t already know, but quite suddenly, this morning, after we had sent her home, in that tranquil time when we jot our notes, it came to us. It was the food, the terrible food. Here the food is not merely bad; it’s paradigmatically poor, and it’s served in enormous quantities, so that we have a case of too much of nothing, by half. Now reason along with us. How does any of us determine where he belongs in the scale of worthiness? By comparison. We measure ourselves against something else. Ahha! Now we see why the food made our pathetic friend try to pick up the toothsome cutie. It offered an unrealistic comparison. Consumed in the quantities Ike’s provides, food this bad would make a cipher feel adequate to anything life might send his way. Think what this miserable muck does to the mediocre. It makes them feel like us. Overreaching themselves, they may fall. Falling, they may be hurt.
— BWB
Ike’s
5050 Boylston Street, 555-1953.
American Express, Visa, MasterCard.
Handicapped: read the review.
Lunch 12–3, Tuesday–Saturday.
Brunch 12–3, Sunday.
Dinner 6–12 Tuesday–Sunday.
Reservations recommended.
[This completes the serialization of Reservations Recommended. The serialization of the entire Personal History will continue with Where Do You Stop?]
In Topical Guide 562, Mark Dorset considers Covers from this episode.
Have you missed an episode or two or several?
You can begin reading at the beginning or you can catch up by visiting the archive or consulting the index to the Topical Guide.
You can listen to the episodes on the Personal History podcast. Begin at the beginning or scroll through the episodes to find what you’ve missed.
You can listen to “My Mother Takes a Tumble” and “Do Clams Bite?” complete and uninterrupted as audiobooks through YouTube.
You can ensure that you never miss a future issue by getting a free subscription. (You can help support the work by choosing a paid subscription instead.)
At Apple Books you can download free eBooks of Little Follies and Herb ’n’ Lorna.
You’ll find overviews of the entire work in An Introduction to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy (a pdf document) and at Encyclopedia.com.
🎧 562: Seated at the bar ...