Lunch Adventure

One of my co-workers infected my brain with the thought of a restaurant supply store in the Berkeley/Emeryville area. It's close to one of the Berkeley Bowl stores and as I'd never been to one, plans manifested of a little lunchtime field trip.

What a hoot!

Berkeley Bowl (off of 7th street in Berkeley) is freakin' AWESOME!!! All kinds of stuff there, including a nice little deli. Best of all, they had some Scharffenberger chocolate I'd previously needed to truck to San Francisco to get. JOY!

The restaurant supply store was quite a trippy little place. I got a cookie spatula thingie that will be nice for baking endeavors.

What got weird was walking back, we detoured through Urban Ore Ecopark.

I've walked and driven past Urban Ore Ecopark many, many times. I always thought it was just some place that dealt in gravel or something. The bulding looks like hell and I've never given it any thought.

Oh, it doesn't deal in gravel. It deals in awesome.

When I was a kid, I remember many a tale of child characters who lived or had clubhouses in dumps, scrapyards, and the like. I'd like to claim that's why my natural tendencies are to have a place that's a messy pigsty (it beats the truth: I'm too lazy to do any proper housekeeping).

Urban Ore Ecopark reminds me of all those childhood-story scrapyard places.

They sell people's refuse. Old safes, toys, LPs, clothing, furniture, toilets, you-name-it... Essentially it's a junk store. It's a junk store that just looks... cool. I could spend hours dinking around in there. Hell I could just enjoy watching the quirky staff do their thing.

It was like wandering into a Neil Gaiman-themed fairy tale for a few minutes. Hell, the whole lunch had that feel.

OH HAPPY DAY!