You’ve probably heard by now that the Capitol cafeteria was shut down due to a number nauseating violations. Now they’re busy gutting it and starting from scratch.

Not so long ago, I was a regular at the Capitol cafeteria. Most of my friends (both of them!) know that, and since the bad news broke, I’ll bet they all want to know how it makes me feel–if I’m shocked and disgusted by the truth behind all those greasy burgers and grey green beans I ate in my days as a public servant.

The answer is no. I’m not shocked. And I’m not even especially disgusted. You can say lots of bad things about the Capitol cafeteria, but it didn’t pretend to be something it wasn’t. And what it was was a hellhole. No windows. Spotty fluorescent lighting. Fake plants that nonetheless managed to look like they’d withered and died. The smells of bacon and stale cigarette smoke hanging in the air at all hours. A patina of years-old grease covered everything. With only a few more shorts in the lighting, the Capitol cafeteria would look a lot like the set of a horror movie:

Maybe it’s just because it’s almost Halloween, but I don’t think this guy would have looked the least bit out of place behind the grill or salad station (and the chainsaw would explain that awful shredded lettuce they served).

My point though, is if you ate there, you knew what you were getting into. You were trading quality, health, cleanliness, and ambience for serious convenience. Convenience and price–good God, that place was cheap! (Who knew what you could save by just never cleaning?) No one ever tried to fool me about the kind of establishment they were running, and I’m not going to complain now about the deal I got. (And besides, the employees there were much nicer than the mean old vendateria ladies in building 7.)

In any event, I doubt I’m the only person who thinks it was the perfect setting for what went on there. From January through March, it was packed with state legislators and their unsavory hangers-on, and damned if I can think of a more appropriate setting for them than a dimly lit, roach-infested, grease pit of a restaurant. The work of lawmaking, at least in this state, will seem entirely out of place in whatever shiny new bistro they unveil down there next spring.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 24th, 2006 at 3:16 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.