The Table Report #006

It's been a long time since I've written one of these reports.

Today I hung out with 2 of my favorite people from the cast of characters within the agent b world: Pastor Hawking and the Hippie.

It began last night. Pastor Hawking, of all the humans on earth, calls me at home. He rarely calls me:

PASTOR HAWKING (in that semi-swank, cerbral palsy sounding voice with a texas accent while trying to immitate a dope pusher): "Haay maan. Whatter you doin?"

AGENT B: "Nothing. Standing in my backyard with a hose feeling sorry for my pathetic garden. I need to just kill it off. It's become a waste of water"

PH: "Listen. I think I've found a place for The Table. And I'm pretty sure I can come up with the cash to fund it for the first year...in a way that's legal. Ah-HAW...HAW...HAW..."

As reported in the above link, PH and The Hippie and their church is getting the boot from a local coc megachurch who owns the dilapidated property that they've occupied for 10 years, ministering to (in PH's own words) "the people in our society who broke into your house last week and stole your grandmother's stuff...that's why rich people won't ever support our church. Ah-HAW-HAW-HAW".

PH & co have found a store front for their church and have been dilligently remodeling it themselves. They hope to move in soon.

The store front next door to their new meeting place is a former restaurant which PH thought would make an excellent location for The Table. PH & I arranged to meet the realtor at the restaurant this morning.

I wasn't too impressed with this place. Filthyness and bad decor doesn't turn me off. Those can be remedied cheap and easy. But lack of key (expensive) kitchen equipment...and fire damage in the back by the central AC/furnace unit that looks fishy turns me off a little. And the rent was pretty high to my liking.

Plus, I wasn't real gung ho about the location. It's on the north side of town where most poor people live and businesses have left over the years. But it's way off the homeless beaten path. But I suppose the homeless would migrate towards The Table wherever it's location ends up.

This location by PH's new church meeting place use to house a greasy spoon diner until 6 months ago. We needed to go talk so we decided to get lunch at that greasy spoons new location.

Man. Talk about good eating. I had a bacon burger with a side of second-hand smoke. It reminded me of the glory days of The Dixie Pig back 15 years ago.

While there, we inquired with the owner why she left her previous location. The fire in the back is what initiated her move. It was the fault of poor wiring. The city came in and inspected it and determined it needed $40K to get it up to code.

Scratch this location from our list.

I then shared with PH and The Hippie about the location I found last February. They sounded excited about the location and PH is still convinced he could raise the money to get it up and running for the first year. He's good at that kind of stuff. I'm not.

I am going to try to get a hold of that owner of the property again...and event that has proven futile in the past. But we'll see.

All in all...a very encouraging day. It's not often a guy gets to conspire to create his dream with others who are equally excited about it. And Pastor Hawking and The Hippie are just cool guys to hang around. If I were writing a novel, I couldn't have dreamed up better characters...