Live Nude Chickens

This summer, while in the process of moving to New York, I regularly stopped in to visit my friend John in Alexandria. John was an amazingly helpful resource: he once lived in the Bronx, had several other friends who had also made their homes in the blighted borough, and generally had a good feeling for how things worked in the City. Also, his home lay roughly halfway between New York and Southwest Virginia, which made it the perfect stopover if I was feeling particularly exhausted. Best of all, John's local bar, Kitty O'Shea's, is the home of the infamous Three Mile Island shot, not to mention a pretty impressive selection of more generic tipples.

Anyway, one evening, as we were drinking beer in Kitty's, John and some of his friends started telling stories about the Bronx. John's big tale of the night began with a train stoppage. Apparently, John was on his way home from work when his subway train randomly halted in the middle of the Bronx. The conductor kicked everyone off, leaving them to find their way home. Anyway, John had to walk a mile or two through some pretty skeevy neighborhoods. On the way, he passed a store. Sitting out front were two Muslim boys who were crying inconsolably while their mother was inside with the proprietor. Looking closer, John realized that the store was a live butcher, and that the mother was dropping off a goat.

John paused to take a sip of his beer and light a cigarette. As I waited for the conclusion, one of John's other listeners looked up from his drink and said, with beery gravitas, "They named it."

John laughed and said "they named it." The rest of his listeners nodded their heads like a jury confirming a verdict. "They named the goat." We all paused to reflect on the cruelties of youth, the hard-won wisdom of age, and the fact that a half-pint beer glass is pretty insufficient for anything more taxing than a urinalysis.

Flash forward a couple of months, and I now realize that every third or fourth butcher in my area has a sign outside his store that says "Vivero" or "Pollo Vivero." When I initially saw these signs, I felt a little thrill. The idea of live animals struck me as quaint and amusing, a sort of nod to the past. I liked the link to a simpler time, when healthy animals were fed by humans, not feed tubes, and killed by butchers, not machines. This, I thought, was infinitely more attractive than the concept of said animals being slaughtered, plucked, chopped, shrinkwrapped, shipped hundreds of miles, and rearranged in a grocery store to hide the scrapes, freezer burns, and assorted rotted spots.


The reality, I must admit, can sometimes be a little disturbing. As John and I were walking back from the Hall of Fame of Great Americans, we came upon a Pollo Vivero store. I was immediately disarmed by one of their signs, which read "Nobody Beats Our Prices: We Kill Halal."

I'm not sure how I'd advertise a live butcher, but I have a feeling that cute little pictures of rabbits, turkeys, chicks, and roosters isn't quite the way to go. On the bright side, it probably weeds out the squeamish, but it also might drive away customers who don't want to imagine their dinner posing for a Keane painting. In the painting, the animals appear prosaic, filled with barnyard dignity. They don't look like food so much as characters from Babe or Charlotte's Web. I don't mind eating real, live animals--in my opinion, we have canines and incisors for a reason. For that matter, most of the vegans that I've known have been passionless, weedy-looking people who did not look even remotely healthy. That having been said, I have also read The Chronicles of Narnia, and try to avoid eating animals that look like they have souls. The chicken, in particular, gets to me, as I can easily imagine her singing "One Day More" from Les Miserables.

Moving on...

The next sign was equally disturbing, in its own special way. It featured the name of the company above a picture of the World Trade Center. I'm not sure about the juxtaposition of the words "New York Live Poultry" and the scene of New York's greatest tragedy. I wondered if the idea was that patriotic Americans eat live chicken, or if the owners are somehow hinting that live killing keeps the terrorists at bay. Regardless, it seemed a little exploitative.

I'm guessing that Thanksgiving is a big time in the "Pollo Vivero" biz. After all, with the family coming by, every cook wants to do his or her best. And what, after all, is better than a freshly-killed turkey?

That having been said, I really could have done without the irony of a picture of a turkey, over the words "Holiday Special," with its head missing.

While we were hanging around outside, I peeked through the door. It looked like a vet clinic or a pound, with row after row of cages. Overall, it seemed pretty clean.

A little story about the woman in this picture: while John and I were looking inside the store, a young Dominican woman came out clutching a bag. As she exited, she opened the bag, glanced at its contents, and dry-heaved. John and I agreed that she was probably a first-generation American doing errands for her mom, and was unprepared to face the bloody realities of where dinner comes from. I'm not sure that I can blame her.

As a side note, it isn't always easy to get pictures of things in the Bronx. Usually I can get away with taking things from oblique angles, using the close-up function on my camera, or pretending that I'm taking pictures of my kid. On the occasions when these options aren't open to me, I do my best to be quick and subtle. On this particular day, I was neither, and one of the Pollo Vivero guys came out to express his displeasure with my photojournalism:

 

John and I went quickly on our way.

The Three Mile Island: An Update

I visited John again this weekend as I traveled for one last time from New York to Christiansburg. While in Arlington, I was able to go on a pilgrimage to John's local bar, Kitty O'Shea's, home of the famous Three-Mile Island shooter. Kitty's, by the way, is located at 2403 Wilson Blvd, in case you were wondering. Here's their website.

The creator of the famous glowing green goo is Erik, who apparently doesn't work on Saturdays and doesn't like to share his recipes. Consequently, I was not able to enjoy the now-improved shot, which John says tastes like "An atomic-powered slurpee. Seriously, it goes right to your brain."

I strongly encourage you to visit the bar and try the wonderful mind-eraser, available evenings, Monday through Friday. If you do, please post your comments here!

Three Mile Island Iced Tea

I meant to write about the NRA museum, but I got a little sidetracked on the back story, so it'll have to wait for a few days. I'm going back up to New York tomorrow, and hope to be back on Saturday. I will probably be running all over the place, so I won't be posting for the rest of this week. I promise to get back to it by next Monday. In the meantime, this is just a little vignette about my last trip to Christiansburg.

And, by the way, thanks so much for your encouragement over the past month or so. I can't convey how much I've appreciated the comments and e-mails!

On the last trip South, I didn't leave Brooklyn until one, which meant that I didn't leave New York until two, which meant that I got caught in the grip of some seriously awful Pennsylvania traffic. Route 78 in the Keystone state is constantly under construction, which means that one has to plan one's trip through PA with a level of precision usually reserved for moon shots or the German auto industry. Alternately, one can simply pack a book. War and Peace is a good choice.

By the time I got to Harrisburg, it was apparent that I would reach Christiansburg sometime around midnight. Not relishing a high-speed ride down 81 fueled by terror and coffee in a can, I decided to call my friend John and ask if I could crash (pun definitely not intended) at his place in Arlington. Being a true mensch, he readily agreed, and my evening brightened considerably.

The evening in Arlington won't quite live in infamy, but it was a lot of fun. This was largely due to the "Three Mile Island Iced Tea," a beverage that John is developing with his local bartender. John came up with the name, and has dedicated himself to taste testing. The bartender, on the other hand, has taxed his resources coming up with a wide variety of glowing green potions that look like antifreeze and taste like bubblegum, pineapple juice, and sterno. After test tasting four of the damned things, I was in a very good mood. I couldn't feel my gums, but there was a slight ache somewhere around my middle. I think it was my liver.

I also got to meet John's girlfriend, Andrea, who contains multitudes. She has an anarchic sense of humor and also took delight in John's iced tea from hell. I think she might be truly evil, in the absolutely best way. When we got back to John's, we savaged the small selection of Dietrich's treats that I had packed as a late night snack and host's gift. In the process, I discovered that Dietrich's makes a truly outstanding kielbasa. In case you were wondering.

The next morning, the sun shone brightly and I looked forward to a leisurely trip back to Christiansburg. Perfect side-trip weather.