No go, my flu induced psychic abilities have been debunked. But it's coming folks, it's close, it could be any minute. There's a lot on my mind, and more than anything, it's the memory of Shakey's.
Shakey's was a pizza parlor that had flourished around the Seattle area when I was a kid. It was a place that we went to for special occasions, like birthday parties or after baseball games. There is a little Kodak Instamatic picture that I remember very clearly of me, Kenny, Tom and my brother at the Shakey's near Kent's East Hill, where I believe it was a birthday celebration, and I want to say I have a Greedo action figure in my hand. The Shakey's was also so very close to the Skate King!
Shakey's had this old timey thing going for it. The guys making the pizza used to have to dress like this:
There was a player piano, and the one in Kent would often show old Laurel and Hardy shorts on a projector. All the signs in the place were made of wood and had like this "Robin Hood" font.
Shakey's was started by a man named Sherwood "Shakey" Johnson in Sacramento, so named due to nerve damage caused by malaria. Ahh, back in the day when people weren't afraid to take a malady and make a nickname out of it. I can't say why, but this makes me want to snigger behind my hand like I just overheard the teacher fart.
The pizza at Shakey's had this thin crust with an almost overpowering beer/yeast flavor. Eventually the Shakey's developed a buffet style deal where you could get fried chicken and freaking mojo potatoes. Sometimes I see those seasoned, fried potato discs in my dreams...
On thinking back on it, the pizza was probably not so good, the mojo potatoes even less so, but the memories! All those drunken memories...
This was before you could call up and have a pizza delivered, and back before there were many pizza parlors out there at all. At least in Kent, WA. If you wanted pizza, and much like today I always wanted pizza, you went to Shakey's or made it yourself. Pretty soon, other places like Godfather's and Pizza and Pipes opened up. The Chuck E. Cheese's took over the special occasion pizza market for awhile. And then it just became easier to have some stoner 19 year old bring you a pizza and a 2 liter in his battered Honda, free if it took longer than 30 minutes, than to take the kids out.
Shakey's is now apparently huge in the Philippines, but not really anywhere else. There are about four left in and around the greater Seattle area. There was one left in the Hollywood/LA area a couple of years back that I went to after my brother-in-law's wedding. But this wasn't a particularly good memory as I was tired, hot, hung over, and had spent a majority of the night before cleaning up someone else’s regurgitated Filipino Bar-B-Q. Irony?
No!vember song of the day: a 2fer Tuesday selection, a double negative, of No Children by The Mountain Goats and No Love Lost by Joy Division.
2 comments:
1. Maybe you did dream the right day, just the wrong month!? (I can almost hear Beth screaming DECEMBER from here!)
2. I accidentally ate at that Shakey's here in LA. The food was exactly how you described, but it felt strange actually going to a pizza place and sitting in the main room while kids ran around...
We had a Shakey's here in Oklahoma City and I used to go there when I was a kid. Occasionally there's a smell in the air that brings back all the good memories of Shakey's.
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