Posts Tagged ‘Phoenix’

The Heart Attack Grill

August 21st, 2009 by Ned

Heart Attack GrillJohn had heard about the Heart Attack Grill before the trip. So when we arrived in Phoenix, Arizona it was near the top of our list. I was ambivalent, especially after having seen the website. I’m as big a fan of greasy, fried foods as the next person, but there was something about the way that the site reveled in jokes about obesity and heart problems that rubbed me the wrong way.

By the time we got inside the restaurant, I was more than ambivalent—I was creeped out. The restaurant’s owner, “Dr. Jon” (Dr. Jon, on the restaurant’s media page, calls himself a “non [American Medical Association] recognized physician.” I guess that by those standards I could probably call myself a physician too.) stretched the whole hospital theme about as far as it could go. Not only is the inside of the place sterile white and the waitresses in skimpy nurse outfits (see photo), but they make you wear wristbands and hospital gowns while you eat. The mannequins, posed in their own skimpy nurse outfits in the corners, were an especially unsettling touch. The skeeviest detail of all: strategically placed mirrors behind and underneath the countertops, so you could check out your waitress’s ass without her noticing.

The burgers were pretty good, but the overall experience was just morbid. But Dr. Jon isn’t entirely to blame; as we could see from watching the aggressively self-promoting video montages broadcasted into all four corners of the restaurant, the network news had a peculiar fascination with this establishment. And why not? It’s a particularly extreme distortion of exactly what FOX News (which seems to have a particular adoration for the Grill) traffics in on a daily basis: the church of mindless consumption and the preemptive mockery of things like prudence and long-term planning.

When we got the check, our server (right) asked us if we wanted a sexy nurse photo op, one of the big selling points for the grill. We demurred, but she insisted, again, as we were on our way out. I’m not exactly sure why. This time we went for it, me reasoning that at the very least I’d have a visual aid to accompany this post. But although it’s one of the major draws for the grill, I don’t think the nurse thing was really doing it for any of us on the trip. Our server was clearly a pro when it came to flirtatious banter, but never once was I not acutely aware of what was being sold to me. We were taking communion in a temple to the almighty heart attack.

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Flagstaff, Arizona

August 4th, 2009 by Ned

Arizona is perhaps the most desolate state we’ve traveled through thus far. This is by no means a bad thing—the stark beauty of the surrounding landscape is just as awe-inspiring as it was in New Mexico and West Texas. But it does mean that there’s a lot of ground to cover in between each sign of civilization, and most of the towns we passed through were little more than a strip of road with a few restaurants.

The two exceptions we encountered before Phoenix were Winslow and Flagstaff. Flagstaff in particular was a very strange place. It was by far the greenest town we encountered in Arizona, thanks to a remarkably high altitude that made the nights there chilly even by the standards of us as New Englanders. And while we only saw the Wal-Mart, we got the impression there of a diverse, endearingly oddball community, shaped in large part by the proximity of Northern Arizona University.

Exhibit A: We were in the Flagstaff Wal-Mart for all of two minutes, surrounded by RVs, before we got a friendly knock on the door. A beefy, talkative guy with a scraggly beard bounded onto the bus and introduced himself as Pockets. He was traveling with his friend, Shadow, and their dog, in a van that they had been living out of for years. Pockets called us “family,” saying, “I knew there would be family in this parking lot,” and asked us if we had been at the gathering that year—meaning the massive flash-hippie commune known as the Rainbow Gathering. We said that we had not, and he launched into an involved description of his various debaucheries and hallucinogenic experiences over the course of the gathering.

Later, after the Sun Dance and the Grand Canyon, we rolled through Flagstaff once more on our way to Phoenix, in search of veggie oil. Unsurprisingly, the downtown was really cool—depending on who aboard the bus you ask, it was almost as interesting, or more interesting, than downtown Asheville, North Carolina. The music shops, food and street performers were all great, but the best part for us was that everyone seemed to genuinely like the bus; it felt like we were surrounded by friends. Or, as Pockets had put it, family.

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