Sunday, January 04, 2004

the chattaway This may very well be the best restaurant in all of St. Petersburg, Florida--or all the world for that matter.  It is the Chattaway, and you have not lived until you have eaten one of their Chattaburgers. 11:17:04 PM    comment []

The chattaway is an almost mythical place, and it has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember.  I have found friends and girfriends there.  I have gotten drunk and had panic attacks there.  I have even been hit by a car there while sitting on a bar stool. 10:18:43 PM    comment []

You see all those bar stools there?  They used to be bolted to the ground, once upon a time.  Well here's what happened:  I was sititing at the bar, eating a chattaburger and watching the news up on the tv.  I remember it was a story about a sinking ship, and while I was munching on my delicious burger, I was watching these little people swimming and struggling in the cold waters of some foregin land, trying not to drown. It must suck to be them, I thought.  Then just after I thought that, there was this screeching of rubber that filled the air.  A giant, old sedan careened through the intersection next to the restaurant, jumped the curb and plowed into the bar stool area where I was sitting.  The car leveled the first four of five seats to my right, crushing this one old man up against the bar.  Then the hood of this wayward vehicle literally lifted me up by my butt and nudged me onto my feet with its last few feet of skidding.  I stood there for a moment dazed at sudden and strange turn of events, but completely unharmed.  Then I saw the old man, pinned against the bar.  There was no room for a rib cage or body, but yet it was in there somewhere. Suddenly, everyone in the restaurant started screaming at the man in the driver seat. "Get off him!  Get off him!" they screamed.  I remember the driver looked like some drunk piece of shit.  He had a mullet and was wearing those really cheap rubber sunglasses with bright orange stems that you get at gas stations.  The mullet guy slammed his old clunker in reverse and pulled back out the way he had smashed in.  With the car removed, the old man fell to the ground, his broken body wracked with pain "He got me! He got me!" he repeated again and again like something you would hear in a cartoon. God, it must suck to be him, I thought.  I still had half a chattaburger left, however, and I meant to enjoy it. 10:17:31 PM    comment []

This picture has been up behind the bar of the Chattaway for as long as I can remember.  It might possibly be the most studied and stared at work of art in St. Petersburg.  If you owned this picture, you would own a piece of St. Petersburg history. When I heard they might be selling the Chattaway, I offered to buy the poster with whatever money I had. "Not for sale," Everett told me.  "A guy offered me five-hundred bucks for it one time and I turned him down."             10:14:54 PM    comment []

Here's what its all about.  The infamous Chattaburger.  This is why I will never be a vegetarian.  I don't think I could continue living if I could no longer chomp into a juicy 7 oz burger like this one. 10:05:16 PM    comment []

her own cell phone I finally had a chance to take Mariel Christmas shopping this weekend.  I took her to Toys R' Us and told her she could get anything she wanted.  We walked all around the store twice, but the shelves looked disheveled and half empty.  The stuff they had just looked like it was for babies or retards. So I took Mariel to the mall and we looked  through store after store.  She picked out this little watch with a charm bracelet at a place called Claire's.  It was a nice little gift, but after getting it for her she didn't exactly seem overjoyed. We were halfway home from the mall when I said,  "how would you like to get your own cell phone?" Now then I got a reaction.  Mariel was more excited than I 'd seen her in years.  "This is almost as good as getting my little sister," Mariel said.  Then she kept hugging me and kissing me and saying, "thank-you daddy." It didn't take long before Mariel had her own phone number and rate plan.  She gets 3000 minutes a month.  The next thing you know she was calling her friends with the numbers stored in her personal phone book. "Guess what I got?" Mariel would say to her friends, beaming with pride.  One of her friends told her that she got something just as cool. "What's that?" Mariel said. "A pair of walkie-talkies," her friend said. "Walkie-talkies?" Mariel said.  "I got some of those when I was three years old." 8:57:49 PM    comment []

the bay breeze This is the Bay Breeze Inn, or Hotel, I guess, where I brought my high school prom date after the big dance. Being the independent, trend bucking rebel that I was in school, I shunned the generic resort hotels on the beach with their hot tubs and heated swimming pools and views of the beach and setting sun. 6:35:17 PM    comment []

As you can see, the Bay Breeze has a pleasing nautical motif: wooden pylons strung together with heavy sea-faring rope.  I think there's even a rusty anchor there somewhere. The peach colored walls, teal doors, and battleship gray sign all blend together to form a pleasing and soothing vacation ambience. 6:33:07 PM    comment []

Each room comes with many luxury features and amenities.  For instance, these doors have their own outdoor buckets for cigarette butts and other waste. The unit air-conditioners keep the room cool or hot, depending on your personal preference. 6:32:01 PM    comment []

As dusk falls on the Bay Breeze its tranquil and distinctive landscape is bathed in hues of gold. Many a lover has made memories here that will last a lifetime, and beyond. 6:31:01 PM    comment []

And finally, what luxury hotel would be complete without a shopping cart full of dead palm fronds. Most of you will never be lucky enough to check into a room at the Bay Breeze hotel, but I'd like to think that I've given you just a taste of what I feasted upon back when I was a young man learning of love and coming of age. 6:28:07 PM    comment []

hello, my name is I went on vaction to New York City from September 2-9, 2001.  I went with my girlfriend Liana who has family up there.  Her brother is actually a builder that lives in the East Village and he lives in the whole top floor of this fifteen story building.  While we there there we had this beautiful sweeping view of Manhattan.  The Twin Towers were still standing on the south end of the city, gleaming in the clear blue skies. I was still pretty heavy into my "guerilla art" endeavors at that time, and when I saw all the tagging and cool posters plastered everywhere around the city I just had to figure out some way to spread my own name and fame. So I went to Kinkos and bought a couple hundred of those "Hello, My Name Is" stickers.  Then I wrote my name in black marker in the white space of every one of them.  From there I went on a stickering binge.  I put my name in all the places that the other taggers and posterers and stickerers put their stuff.  I put my stickers on parking meters, mailboxes, cigarette ads, boarded up windows, crumbling walls, and just about anywhere a sticker would stick. I just walked along doing this, not paying any real attention to where I was going.  Then at one point I felt a sudden need to stop and look up.  There above me was this apparently infinite tower of glass and steel.  It was the World Trade Center.  I wasnt' about to put my sticker on such a clean and sleek looking structure, but as I walked around the base I noticed there was one of those construction walk zones around the perimeter of it.  You always seem them in big cities when a sidewalk or street is being torn up.  They always say, post no bills on them every ten feet or so. So this seemed like the perfect place to put my Mark Michaels' stickers.  I put a couple dozen of them on the construction walk as I rounded the towers.  Before long I ran out of stickers and money and that little project was over. On Semtember 9th I flew out of La Guardia with Liana on my way back to Tampa.  I started having such a bad panic attack as we soared up and away from Manhattan that one of the stewards had to come back and give me oxygen and beer. In my brief little conversation with him I found out that he had a dream to become a country music star and had even recorded his own demo. "Wow, that's neat," I said. 3:27:15 PM    comment []

vibrating at a higher frequency  I remember the first party I went to just after the 9-11 attacks.  I was curious to see how all my friends and other scensters felt about this tradgedy.  I remember there was this strange feeling in the air like we were living in a brand new age of doom.  But I could tell some people thought it was kind of thrilling. I was there with my girlfriend of the time, Liana.  Liana was this sexy little Jewish girl.  She was about the hottest girl I knew that year.  When her boyfriend moved to Miami, I asked if she wanted to go out.  To my delight she said yes. Anyway, Liana and I ended up in the middle of this ridiculous conversation in the kitchen about the attacks.  This dude named Carlos was characterizing the destruction of the World Trade Center as the dawning of some great, new advanced age. "We're all vibrating at a higher frequency now," he said. I was so disturbed and flabbergasted by what he was saying that I just responded with the first non-sensical thing that came to my head. "Vibrating at a higher frequency?  Liana, here has a vibrator, but that doesn't mean that its okay to blow up buildings and kill thousands of people!" Liana looked at me with this hurt and disappointed look.  It was the beginning of the end of our relationship. 3:05:18 PM    comment []

2:28:07 PM    comment []

mise en abyss I went down to Cafe Almas last night to have beer and see what was going on.  I was just sitting at the bar for a moment when this girl, Ann sat next to me. I had gotten a professional massage from her a couple of months ago so right away I thought about my recent neck problem, which now seems to have moved and localized to my right shoulder. Right away I started into my story of how I nearly paralyzed myself trying to do my workout routine while watching Curb Your Enthusiasm, or the Larry David Show as Ann calls it. I'm really a pretty terrible story teller in person, but since I had written it all out already, and had  told it to a couple of  other people, I started to really get into it. "I mean, isn't it ironic that I'm watching this show where a guy is getting his neck and shoulder massaged, and then suddenly I have a hurt neck and shoulder," I say. Ann seemed to be into my story, smiling and nodding her head.  So I get into the part where I wake up and I can barely lift my head andd then I go to the bathroom, but I can't even look down to piss and see where the toilet seat is.  And in the meantime, I'm thinking, wow, I really have this girl on the edge of her seat with this story.  I'm really funny. "Well, the next thing you know," I go on.... But then, Dwight, the owner of Cafe Almas walks up with his wife and Ann immediately turns away from me to say hi to them. At first, I don't think anything of it, since people will often have to break away from a story or a conversation to greet a person that they know well.  So, I just sat there with my story on pause.  I was trying to keep my energy for the sprained neck story in high gear, so I could resume it with full force as soon as Ann finnished greeting Dwight and his wife. But Ann just kept talking and talking to Dwight.  I looked over at Dwight trying to make my presence known, but his gaze seemed to go above and around me, and even right through me without ever acknowledging me.  Pretty soon, I get kind of anxious and uncomfortable.  I can't keep my story on hold forever.  I took a couple sips of my beer and looked up and down the bar.  I looked back over to Dwight and Ann but they were still talking about something Finally Dwight's wife seemed to remember me from a brief meeting a week ago or so.  She said hello and I shook her hand.  Then I suddenly registered on Dwight's radar screen. "Hey, how's it goin', Mark?" he said. "Oh, great," I said. Well, here's my chance to finish my hillarious sprained neck story, I thought.  But then Ann just scooted out of her chair and walked away without even looking back at me.  Then Dwight and his wife kind of drifted away and so my neck story just sort of deflated in my head like a punctured beach ball. A couple hours later I actually had a girl over to my place.  We made love a couple of times and then I was lying behind her, spooning her. I started to tell her about how I tried to tell Ann the massage therapist my neck story and how she just blew me off. "Isn't that just a whole new level of irony to the story," I said.  "I mean, I'm trying to tell a story to a massage therapist, about how I injured my neck, while I'm watching a show where a guy is getting his neck messaged by a therapist? Isn't that pretty strange," I asked the girl. But ther girl didn't say anything.  She had fallen asleep. 2:13:17 PM    comment []

© Copyright 2004 Mark Michaels. Last update: 2/1/2004; 6:28:25 PM.