Saw this in Crimson Mei’s Journal
So I was feeling a little stressed because I had to spend the afternoon in Beverly Hills again today. Doctors and lawyers, lawyers and doctors. So I went to Cirxa which theoretically serves decent southern food. It is a bit of a trek east for me, but I thought it would counterbalance the excessive west side experience.
I get to Cirxa and their Health Dept rating has been lowered. And it is empty. Bleah, but I’m hungry and the owner comes out and tells me to have a seat and his server should be back soon. He disappears back into the kitchen without giving us menus, but I go to the door to read the restaurant reviews pinned up there. I already know the food there is supposed to be variable and figured I could read reviewers’ recommendations.
So I’m starting to read an article and this creepy chick in a green safety vest comes up to me with a pal following her. I see that she is carrying religious tracts and I just ignore her and keep trying to read. So she steps waaaaaay inside my personal space, not to mention onto the restaurant’s property. I tell her “no thanks, not interested.” She keeps murmuring incoherently under her breath about Heehoo Kri. She keeps encroaching on my personal space. I glare at her. No effect. I glare at her really mean. No effect. I tell her I am REALLY not interested. No effect. I repeat it more hostiley. No effect. I tell her to go away. She smiles at me beatifically and tries once again to press her pamphleture upon me. She is like a jesus robot zombie with a defective circuit. She smiles more and more like she is on drugs as I get more and more upset. Not one sentence she utters is entirely comprehensible. She steps so close to me that any motion on my part would mean I had to touch her. I scream at her repeatedly to GO AWAY and to GET AWAY FROM ME. I am finally screaming in my most hostile voice and the few people who have heard that voice I think would vouch that it would make most people think twice about continuing. According to witnesses, at this point, the creepy safety-vest chick’s associate apparently starting moving back, but this jesus robot zombie did not. Finally, I’ve got my fist cocked and I am pursing my lips to spit on her and Forrest Black steps up and stands between me and creepy green vest woman. Apparently, he is more intimidating than I am — even though I really was about to punch her, although I am really really not a violent person normally — or perhaps he has the mark of the Beast more prominently displayed on his forehead than I do. Finally, the pair of evangelists leaves. The green safety vest has some aggressive slogan about DON’T GO TO HELL on it.
The owner comes out of the kitchen and I ask him if he normally has a problem with jesus freaks. He says no, he always just tells them to leave. He comments about people who are just really bent on bringing other folks up to heaven with them and not being ready to go yet himself.
I told him that I lived in the South for a while and, as I recall, the food was good and the christians were overly aggressive, so at least his place was authentic.
Except, even once the server showed up from her errands, the food was not nearly good enough to justify the aggravation.
And before I got any food, another pair of creeps — one in a green safety vest and one without — actually accosted us at our table inside the restaurant. Same incoherence in the vest-wearer and same beatific zombie smile. That time the owner told them to leave and they did pretty quickly. I had told him I almost punched the first set, so I’m not sure if he was opposed to their obnoxious intrusive behavior, concerned for his business which could only suffer from this, or concerned for the well-being of the proselytizers.
Cornbread fried seafood was decent. Not exactly New Orleans, but I didn’t expect that. The vegetables were pretty bad and the bread was inedible. A member of my party had to get up and ask the mostly absent waitress for the check because she was concentrating on diving swag. Yes, diving swag. It was all surreal.
I went to the bathroom before I left. It is the kind of restaurant with paper and crayons on the tables. Some of the better patron’s drawings were taped to the wall. None of them were taped over other drawings. Except for one. There was one piece of table cover with a slogan from the new testament on it and it was taped on top of a perfectly good drawing of a woman’s face. I took the vandal’s slogan sheet down, crumpled it up, and threw it out.
