Mom and Pop

After we painted the exterior walls of Ba this week, we continued on to paint the storefront of our neighbor Elsa’s Bakery.  Not only are we renting our space from Elsa and Manuel, they are our colleagues and friends. Now in their eighties Manuel and Elsy Vargas are in the bakery every morning, usually before dawn running the business. They arrived from the Yucatan when they were teenagers, lured to California by a job picking cantaloupes. While the pregnant Elsy cleaned food trucks full-time Manuel learned the trade of baking in a french bakery in Santa Monica.

They purchased this bakery and the building from its builder, who ran the kitchen for forty years, Manuel and Elsy are the second owners of the ninety-two year old building.

Mr Vargas brought his French technique to the business and made baguettes and Pain au chocolate. They bought up the adjoining buildings as investments and  to create homes for the families of some of their five children,  twelve grand kids, and three great grand children.

When the supermarkets evolved into big corporations they did their own industrial baking in-house and that wiped out a lot of independent Mom and Pop bakery’s like Elsy’s. The Vargas’ hung on through their retail business and  the restaurants they cater too. The space I rent from them has been empty since Von’s and Ralph’s left the communities. It is easier I suppose to take a check from me than to get up at three in the morning to bake that much more bread. I suspect Mr Vargas would be just as happy doing either.

So Julia and I  are painting their storefront in the colors they chose to show our  admiration to the original Mom and Pop.

 

VICTORY!

After six months, and $15, 000, we have finally passed our 10th and final plumbing inspection!!!  And that is not counting the months of planning it took to get our plumbing blueprints approved. We are done with that.Done.  Finally.

Next week is our Building and Safety inspection, if we pass that it is on to the Health department inspection. So we could open next Tuesday. Or in three months. Keep you posted.

We passed our plumbing inspection though!

Worry about the government

Well after months of defending the government, who has been pretty supportive thus far, I am now seeing things in a Libertarian light.

The plumbing inspector, who you remember made us go through 7 inspections for the drains and water lines, came to do our final inspection. He flushed our hopes down the crapper, poured our plans down the drain etc. The damage: four days and five hundred dollars. That’s done  but the humiliation stays with us. He made us put in those dumb ass faucets that you push down (like in the greyhound bus station), he made us put a tempering valve on the hot water line to protect you from burning your little pingy’s, he made us put in those ghetto split front toilet seats (which isn’t even a plumbing code thing anyway, that’s the health department or somebody), and best of all: he made us move a toilet a half an inch. That’s right the inspector made us move the toilet a half an inch. So now it is really, really ADA compliant.

No wonder those crazy ass anti government people get so many votes. And now you know why bathrooms are so generic, bland, sterile, and dorky. I wanted to make a cool bathroom for you, with stylish vintage stuff, and wild colors, but the man had other plans. Sorry.

Fire!

We had a visit from the fire inspector today to test our new kitchen hood/fire suppression system.  If there is a fire in the kitchen, which there wont be, but if there was…the room would fill with blue foam, the power would cut out, the gas would shut off,  the air coming to the kitchen would shut off, and the air going out would increase, and the fire department would be alerted electronically. All within a 30th of a second! So no wonder this system is the most expensive thing in the restaurant. But it is my health and safety we are talking about so….

The fire inspector, who was very thorough watched as Jason from Alpha Systems Fire Control putt he system through it’s paces, using balloons to demonstrate the foam jet velocity.

And we passed the test! Fire inspection is done!
Plumbing Round II tomorrow, mechanical and electrical Monday. Tick, tick, tick….

All gave some, some gave all.

Or something like that. Many were called…

Chris Wagganer has become a Ba supporter this week by underwriting our coffee system. That’s right, Chris, who you may remember from his volunteering at Grill many years ago, not to mention the hours he put in at the Toole Shed studios, or the Shane House, or Bernal’s, or any of the other cockamamie projects I have come up with, is here with me again. People come and go but I can count on Chris W. to enable me to the bitter end.

Here he is choosing a handsome Bunn CW series in line brewer from Mikael our man from Moscow. If you are in the market for restaurant equipment I highly recommend Mikael at Amberdi Equipment, http://www.amberdi.com/ He is the secret source in this biz.

And enjoying the fruits of his labor:

No celebration yet.

We failed the first of the final inspections. I failed. In my defense the plumbing code book is 325 pages long. I skipped some pages and got busted.  Elbows and nipples, not street joints. Bells not bushings! OK, now I know.

Try again tomorrow.