My wife Tracy discovered a strange and scary scene in front of our house this morning, while getting back from walking the dog. On our front porch — in addition to the morning newspaper — was a discarded pair of jean shorts with a belt, bloodstained work boots and socks, a large puddle of coagulated blood, and a half-dozen quarter-sized spots of blood — all about a foot from our front door.

We’re not crime scene investigators, of course, but it appeared that the person staggered up to our front porch, sat on the ledge of the flowerbed, and bled onto the concrete for a while. The person smashed one of Tracy’s plants and knocked over several others, took off his boots, socks, and shorts, sat and bled for a bit, figuring out what to do, and then left.

We canceled our breakfast plans and called Fresno PD. They dispatched Officer Maynez, who slipped on his rubber gloves and poked around at the items. “So, these aren’t yours?” he asked. He found a single folded dollar in the pants pocket and noted what he called a significant amount of blood on the porch and on the boots. He speculated that maybe someone ran from a DUI, but he said that those kinds of incidents usually involve the person discarding their shirt in order to avoid description. After taking some notes, he then asked us for a paper bag so he could pick up the items, recommended we clean things up with a generous dose of bleach, and then at my request gave us a couple pairs of rubber gloves to protect ourselves.

Officer Maynez said he would make a report on the call, in case “there was a homicide or a shooting or something” nearby. I asked him if he would need any photos or samples of the blood. He said, “No, there’s plenty of blood on the shoes if we need DNA.” I went to Walgreens and bought a cheap jug of bleach and a scrubber. I slipped on the gloves that Officer Maynez gave us, doused all the bloody spots with bleach, and scrubbed the porch clean. Tracy then hosed everything off and we righted her overturned plants.

The whole sequence reminded me of an incident in 2004, when my brother from another mother, Eric Parker, first moved in. It was Eric’s first night in the house and he walked out to his car the next morning to bring in some of his things. He noticed that my garage had been tagged with graffiti. We discovered later that day that our neighbor’s front door and car had also been tagged, as well as the baseball backstops in the park across the street. It was a rude welcome to the neighborhood for Eric, and it was the kind of unsettling incident that happens in the dead of night that we often do not see until morning.

I am definitely not the most high-profile taco connoisseur in these parts, but I do like to frequent a few good taco joints around Fresno. One of my favorites is Robertito’s Taco Shop at Blackstone and Gettysburg. It’s open 24 hours and it has become the perfect late-night stop for my wife Tracy and me when we’re coming home late from a show downtown or in the Tower. My stand-by order is two chicken tacos a la carte, although there are plenty of other guilty pleasures on the menu.

I recently ate lunch at Robertito’s with my dear friend Teresa Flores, a local mixed-media artist and filmmaker. Teresa is a Fresno native and, like me, has a longtime love affair with Robertito’s. We met there for a going-away lunch on the eve of Teresa leaving for Santa Monica and the prestigious Otis College of Art and Design, where she will pursue an MFA in public art. Teresa ordered the California burrito with carne asada, which is a favorite order of another artist friend of ours because it’s a burrito that includes — wait for it — french fries!

While there, Teresa told me about a short film she once shot in the Robertito’s women’s bathroom. She said that it used to be covered floor to ceiling with graffiti, a scene that someone like Teresa, who loves graffiti art, absolutely loves. The day we met for lunch was the first time she’d eaten there in a while, and she reported that the current bathroom was much different now. Teresa wrote on her blog about the cult status of the Robertito’s bathroom and her disappointment at its cleanup and makeover.

Even though the place has a long history of being sketchy, we agreed that both the food and the company was good. (The bathrooms are also pretty clean now, as you can see.) Graffiti art in the bathrooms or not, eating at Robertito’s feels a little like sitting inside a time capsule — the ripped vinyl seating, the faded menu board, the greasy order window, the rickety wooden trash box, and so on. The cache always feels special.

Bathroom photos courtesy Teresa Flores, who is camera shy.

Robertito’s Taco Shop
4509 N. Blackstone Ave., Fresno, CA 93704

Tracy and I had a lovely visit from my cousin Marisa a few weeks back. She was up from Simi Valley visiting family in Fresno and Dinuba, just weeks before leaving to Albuquerque, N.M., to begin her Ph.D. program in communication and media studies at the University of New Mexico. Marisa and I, through the wonders of Facebook, have kept in better touch these last few years, and she and Tracy have a lot in common, being fellow speech and communication scholars.

Marisa and her family eat mostly vegetarian and vegan food, so we delighted in taking her to one of our favorite Fresno vegan restaurants, Loving Hut, near Fresno City College in the Tower District. Loving Hut is a small national chain of vegan restaurants whose motto is: “Be veg. Go green. Save the planet.” Of course, I love saving the planet and being green as much as the next guy. But I also happen to love the vegan Vietnamese food at Loving Hut.

I ordered the No.6, a dish called Blissful State. It consisted of lemongrass vegan soy protein, steamed rice, and veggies. This is my favorite dish from Loving Hut, and has stayed mostly the same since the restaurant was formerly called Au Lac, before the national affiliation sometime in the last year. The pepper flakes make the lemongrass vegan soy protein so hot, and it’s one of my favorite fake meat dishes in town.

Tracy ordered the No.11, a dish called Meditative Chow Mein. It had delicate yellow noodles, tofu, vegan soy protein, onions, and veggies. Later, in her experiments with her Take-out Menu Cookbook, Tracy has tried to re-create this dish at home, to excellent effect. So excellent, in fact, that I’m actually eating bok choy willingly these days. (I’m a picky veggie eater and always have been, but this dish has changed my mind about bok choy.)

Marisa ordered the No.18, a dish called Divine Pho. It consisted of rice noodles, veggie broth, oyster mushrooms, tofu, and vegan protein. Marisa said she often likes to order pho at pan-Asian restaurants. It made me feel a bit guilty, as a longtime Fresnan, that I didn’t take her to one of the many hole-in-the-wall numbered pho joints near our house. But there’s always a good bowl of pho to be had next time when my dear cousin comes through town.

Loving Hut
1495 North Van Ness Ave., Fresno, CA 93728

I love back to school time, when all the deals on school supplies come pouring out at retailers, office stores, and drugstores. After eating breadsticks and pizza for lunch with my parents at Corsaro’s Pizza on Draper Street in downtown Kingsburg, Tracy found these amazing portfolios while puttering through the Walgreens in Kb. While it is true that I love my Pee Chee portfolios from back in the day, these folders at Walgreens were supercute.

Tracy’s favorite, with li’l crabs.

Some folders were quite a bit nuttier than others.

I’ve always suspected popsicles and peace were connected.

Pirate themes are always a big hit with the kids.

Now here’s a portfolio that the farm bureau and the C+C Music Factory could equally love.

I love new portfolios. The end.

I took my good friend Reaz to Home Depot this morning so he could get a spare apartment key cut. When we got there, I noticed that the key center had a whole wall of sports team keys. Keys of all shapes, sizes and team affiliations were available. I snapped this photo of the NFL keys available for the Raiders and 49ers. Reaz, who previously lived in Texas, looked for a Cowboys key but we couldn’t find one. He picked up his regular spare key, with cutting, for less than two bucks. These sports team keys started at more than three bones just for the blanks, cutting not included.

I asked the Home Depot lady if they sold a lot of the sports keys. She said not really, but that they do sell a lot of the Diva keys to women. What are those, you ask? Well, on the side of the key center was a whole collection of Diva keyblanks for sale, starting at $4.48 just for the blanks. Some later Googling revealed that Diva keyblanks were available in dozens of designs, colors and bedazzled options, often for cheaper than Home Depot charged. I think my blogger/artist friends Aurora and Jenn would particularly appreciate Diva keys.

The keys got me to thinking about how everyone seems to be talking about divas these days. I told Reaz my theory about how I feel like I have to “look the part” when shopping at Home Depot. Since I bought my house in 2002, I’ve made many, many trips to the home improvement giant at all hours of the day for all sorts of tools and gadgets I’ve never even heard of, let alone thought to buy. I’ve often joked that I feel as if I need to clip a tape measure onto my belt or wear dirty work boots to be taken seriously by many of the Home Depot customer service folks. On this day, Reaz and I entered the store in our tennis gear on our way to the courts at Kastner Intermediate. I had on my little white footie socks and my Fresno State tee and he had on his headband. We did not exactly look like Home Depot types. But if a diva could do it, I guess we could, too.