Dicks’s Burgers

Dicks’s Burgers

Dick’s Burgers is a place in Seattle where drunks go for food. If you show up at 1:30 am on a Sunday morning the line will be long enough that the Seattle PD finds it necessary to direct traffic and bust people smoking pot.

There is something both sensual and repulsive about most burgers. Dicks is probably one of the better examples of this contradiction. The food is cheap, fatty, and totally disgusting to sober people. Having harbored intentions to become vegetarian at various times, I find it hard to believe I have eaten at Dicks at all.

One night I was there with some friends. We had just been to a party on 15th, catching up with some scensters and trying to talk to their girlfriends. We were all excited because we saw someone from the band Of Montreal at the party. I think it was the keyboard player.

Dicks was crowed that night. The glowing florescent lamps under the façade illuminated all types of people in line for a greasy burger. Many of the people were perhaps looking confused or dizzy. The light was quite unforgiving.

I remember standing next to a buddy, goofing off, probably sexually harassing him, when there was a scream from someone in a nearby car.

For most locations, Dicks is not a restaurant or even a traditional drive-through. It’s just a big glass room that makes french-fries. Outside the room, people wait for their food. To either side of the room are parking spaces. The iconic sign glows omnipotently above. A dull orange color. Cars come and go.

The scream came from an older Acura with tinted windows. It was parked near the back of the lot, where the employers probably look smoke breaks back in the 70s.

There was a shot fired and the sound of breaking glass. Everyone started running to the opposite side of the street and down the block. The cops, who had been dozing on bikes over by some dumpsters, started screaming things into their radios and waving people away from the car. Some of them seemed to be trying to decide it if was worth just shooting a bunch of holes in the car. Probably kill some innocent person, but it might be less paperwork than what might happen if anyone got out of the car.

I ran across the street and tried to see what was happening. The cops were circling the car trying to see what was going on in side.

“My burger. Stupid bitch,” a man’s voice yelled from the car.

“Throw the gun out of the car and walk out slowly with your hands behind your heard.”

“You better get me another one bitch.”

“Get the fuck away from Tony”

A woman slowly came out of the passenger side of the car. She was wearing a black dress smeared with fast food. Apparently it was some kind of fast-food related domestic dispute. It seems improbable, but I saw it with my own eyes, at Dicks at two in the morning.

I heard later that the guy who owned the car was sentence to five years for assault. I guess he used to sell coke to some people I hung out with in the club scene when I was in my first year of college. It’s strange to think that anyone would care much about such a shitty burger.