THE TRIDENT CHRONICLES  Or “The Dishdog Diaries”   Oh! Goofeee     

     I don’t know if this is true with all vocations but I know from personal experience that there comes a time in every struggling musicians career when you just have to say “this is the shits…I’m tired of constantly being broke” and go find a “day gig”. Well….armed with a lofty resume and a great opening interview line..”Hi! I’m a  20 year old  struggling musician, high school drop out w/ a grand total 3 yrs. dishwashing experience”……fortunately for me the girlfriend of one of my bands mates had taken note of my situation and said “hey, why don’t you go apply at the Trident in Sausalito where I work. They take applications on Mondays and they’re lookin’ for dishwashers”. So I went the very next Monday and applied & was hired on the spot. Little did I know just how drastically this “career choice” would affect my life’s path…even to this very moment. I learned an incredibly diverse array of skills in a relatively short span of time (and no, it wasn’t the fine art of de-glazing a brandy snifter after some asshole had demanded a “Spanish Coffee” or the art of not actually getting in “The Big Soup Pot” after they cooked up that God awful cold fish soup (I don’t know how to spell it but I’m sure y’all know what I’m referring to) but still getting it spotless and w/o smellin’ like a huge dead tuna. Most of the kitchen staff were pretty cool about showin’ ya the ropes. Especially the sauté (or “hot side”) guys. I think mostly because they wanted their stuff prep’d just so. I got real proficient with an assortment of cutlery. I began to diversify my budding mechanical career fixing “Old Hobart” at least once a week (until that time it had been strictly automotive born of the 16 year old need to drive….Father to son ..”if you can make that POS run I’ll buy it for you….all of $175  for a ’48 Ford F1 flatbed w/ a Chevy 283 V8 in it….what a mutt!) and if you wanted extra work, you could come in on Mondays and work w/ ace handyman Chuck Fallo on all kinds of stuff.  

          All that was and still is useful, but the knowledge gained and experiences I value the most are from the interactions with the people that I worked for & along side during my 8 year career at Trident. Christ! What a character study! Like a Goddamn Fellini flick! From Pierre the chef to Iraj (aka Roger), Terry Lawson, Bobby Lozoff at the bar, Lou Gannapoler & Dagne to Big John, Mike Toomey & the late Jim Sassani to Richard L, Marshall Bloomstock , Dennis Wright & Lisa Sharp……..and the supporting cast in the kitchen and on the floor the names of whom will undoubtedly arise somewhere in the following text. And then of course, there were……the women. Ah yes…the famed “Trident Waitresses”. This, I have to admit, was definitely a new development & addition (and a welcome one boy howdy!) to my food services employee experience. DAMN!

These weren’t just “good lookin’”…no, more like….exquisite……stunning… ….ravishing………….WOW!  Needless to say this could be heaven or some sort of cruel torture for a 20 yr old walking hormone. I probably could have made a fortune selling my “dry side” shifts as well! For those of you who didn’t get to experience the dishwashing environment, “dry side” was the dishwashers station parallel with and had a direct view of, the waitress station side of the kitchen. I’ve often wondered if the amount of dry side breakage increased substantially during the warm summer months.  

        All adolescent hi jinx aside I have to say that their physical attributes not with standing, most of these ladies were and still are some of the sweetest, caring human beings I have ever known.  

        I’m pretty sure I didn’t start until the following week but I am sure that it was late June. I opted for all day shifts because of my musical obligations. Even though I was broke, the group I was with at the time was actually starting to work quite a bit (hind sight realization here…in the music business, at least at this particular level…more work = less pay). Out smarting myself as one of this age group does on a daily, sometimes hourly, mostly moment to moment basis, I figured “ah! the day shifts will be a piece ‘o’ cake”……..well, needless to say as anyone who worked those shifts can testify, I don’t care if you tended bar, waited tables, espresso bar, bussed, hot side (kitchen), cold side (kitchen), managed, inside or outside on the deck…you were slammin’ sometimes right when you walked in the place till you sat at the employee table at the end of your shift and had your “teriyaki steak” or “vegi-burger” or just sat there starin’ out at the bay. I mean this was bar none the busiest restaurant, club or bar that I had ever set foot in much less worked at! And when you started at the entry level (dish maintenance technician 1…….okay…I made that up..) as I did, by the time you got to that employee table at the end of your shift, you had thawed, peeled and veined 50 lbs of prawns, peeled anywhere from 3 to 5, 5gal. buckets of potatoes,  as many  half gallon buckets of husked garlic as Pierre (Yup that was his name…and besides, you couldn’t have a ultra hip restaurant with a head chef named “Homer” now could you?….DOE!) had ordered, chalots,

onions…and this was usually before 10 am. Then, after the place had opened, you took your turn in rotation with three other “dish dogs” doing pots, bussin’ the incoming dishes, hustlin’ dry side and as we liked to say (a direct link to the Lou Reed hit at the time) “take a walk on the wet side”.  The later required full compliment of classic fisherman type rain gear…well that’s a slight exaggeration but the point is, you didn’t smell real great by the end of your shift and there ain’t to many things more demoralizin’ than sittin’ down at a table with a whole bunch of great lookin’ women smellin’ like a dead fish….(mental image here: A big wooden table  with a semi circle bench type seating arrangement….one skinny, stinkin’, drowned rat lookin’ dude at one end and about 4 or 5 ladies crammed towards the other end, quickly finishing their employee meals and nearly falling off the other end in exodus (Another slight exaggeration…very slight).  Did I mention “the big soup pot?”. 

        Ah yes, the famed “big soup pot”.  This is a phrase that, to the untrained ear, could possibly muster a “what?” response, because it described…well yes….a big pot they cooked soup in. Ah, but to that well seasoned (literally), well trained, master Dishicus Cleanupicus Techniciacus (wow! I just drove spell check crazy!) it brought the fear of God to your bones. This was due not only to the fact the this meant physically getting into this enormous stainless steal pot unavoidably becoming drenched in fish guts but also due to the fact that you were summoned by means of a plotting, conniving, sneaky…head chef who would wait for his moment like a large cat stalking it’s prey, and then pounce…there would be this, what felt like a gun in your back followed by the blood curdling phrase in an equally chilling French accented whisper, ”oh goofy guy!.. The big soup pot is waiting for you…”. This usually occurred when you were on “dry side” stacking the clean dishes & glasses. So it was equally annoying when you dropped a chimney or a fizz or goblet and you would look up to see this slightly hunched over guy turn to walk away with just the slightest hint of a smile while shakin’ his head and again whispering “gooofeee” This is where I picked up one of those skills I mentioned earlier. In this case, it’s the fine art of “breakage minimization”. This is where you become almost  Pele´ esque (famous soccer player…..of our generation thank you) with the use of your feet breaking the fall of suicidal dishware. This skill has undoubtedly saved me …oh I don’t know….a lot …in dishware costs for myself and/or whatever establishment I happened to be working for. There is a draw back however. Unless you plan on a career in dish contamination management, it could be detrimental to……well..your feet  i.e., while working on autos trying to break the fall of a brake drum or for the last 26 years building and installing components for particle accelerators which can weigh anywhere from 1oz. to 6 tons or more. I can say though that I still retain all ten lower digits. However, the reflex action ingrained in my very being from my experience at the Trident is still extremely hard to control.  Oh Goooofeee guy….. 
On The Floor     
  As it seems to be a natural evolution of sorts, as one gets more proficient and confident with the task at hand, suddenly (well…maybe not too suddenly) you get the itch to advance, try different and more challenging tasks & skills…..hang out in the dinning room where the real action is. By this time I had become the lead “dish maintenance tech” aka King dish dog on whatever shift I pulled. This had definite advantages over being the “new boy”. The most useful was being able to delegate any number of the “not so desirable tasks” to the newer (but not yet wiser) dish cadets. The more significant fact at this juncture was that  Pierre & most of the cooks had decided they wanted to groom you for either prep, cold side, and possibly even “hot side”….but that was a stretch ‘cuz the guys they had back there were institutions, they were like fighter jocks with sauté pans instead of machine guns, micro wave ovens instead of airplanes (and in top dog Pierre’s case the Enola Gay aka big soup pot) with all the “attitude” and “swagger” one would expect from someone in the ah…restaurant business. So one day I was told that they thought I was doin’ an outstanding job and would I like to “train” to do cold side……but I had already been beckoned by the lure of “the floor” with it’s promise of actual interaction with the “Trident Waitresses” (as in actual verbal communication instead of the looks of pity you get as a “dish dog”) interaction with consumers, better tips, etc., etc., So yes, I went the way of the college drop out turned pro athlete (a figurative analogy here folks) and turned them down to be a “busboy”. I must declare here & now that my experience working in an industrial kitchen, especially this one, is directly responsible for solidifying my work ethic (originally instilled in my psyche by my mom). These people worked their asses off! And expected no less from anyone else at the establishment and it rubbed off on me permanently for which I am eternally grateful.  

        But none the less I accepted the offer to get “on the floor” and put that work ethic to use as a Trident busboy! Whoa! I was actually there…….and this job turned out to be just as jammin’ as doin’ wet side or anything else for that matter. But it was different. You were treated different, not better or worse, just different. If the hot side guys were fighter pilots, the busboys & dish dawgs were ground support. The waitresses were Vegas showgirls & the bartenders gunslingers! It was a stage, a show case that people came in droves to witness while dining, drinking or just “hangin’ out” (which there was a lot of) and just when you thought you could catch your breath and take in some of this spectacle, the unmistakable sound of “carry out” would find you at the very deepest recesses of the dining room. I could even detect the faintest hint of a  “carry out” at the farthest ends of “the deck”. These requests would invariably come when your hands were full and your momentum was carrying you in the exact opposite direction but hey you just dropped what you were doing and did the carry out….that was the gig. When there were 4 and I think once in a great while (I may be wrong here about numbers) 5 busboy’s on the floor  and they were all hustler’s, the room ran like a well oiled machine. You worked your tail off but it was rewarding when you knew you had kicked ass and “run the room”. I think that is one of the main factors the made working at the Trident so unique. Instead of just going through the motions and waiting for that pay check at some funky greasy spoon, you actually strived to make it easier on the waitresses & bar crew (this is my opinion of course). Of course I’d be full of BS if I claimed that I looked forward to going to work at the “Dent” everyday I was scheduled but I never felt that it was boring or useless. And I think the diversity of the staff was what kept things interesting. All walks of life, with lots of different takes on the whole scene. And low and behold if you were an artist….of any type you were openly accepted and even encouraged to pursue your art. I never felt I had to conceal the fact that I was carving out a life as a musician and that the “Dent” was just a stepping stone for a lot of us. So if you “got hot” as the saying went and did your job everything was cool. Though every now and then there would be someone who would test the strength of that institution but that was fairly rare.  

                                            You want me to what?       

      Bussing was not without it’s hazards though. There were a lot of “events” that occurred on my watch but there are but 4 that really stand out in my mind. One: Picture a summer Sunday brunch with beautiful weather……place is packed, we’re slammin’ and all of a sudden a manager beckons me over to the phone booth (popular rendezvous spot for secret conversations…among other things) and in a slightly shaken whisper announces “I need you to go look for a bomb”…….Well, you can imagine the multitude of questions running through my head not the least of which was “you want me to what?!?” which I asked in no such whisper. But when asked again I had grasped the situation and like a trained robot went off and looked for what I thought a bomb might look like (visualize Wiley Coyote here).  As I was walking around all the places I thought someone could possibly put such a device the police had been summoned and the restaurant cleared and no bomb found by either yours truly or the police. This happened one more time in the same year I think which made it obvious that it was some disgruntled former employee calling in these threats to wreak havoc during the rush. Not funny.

           Two: One year, I forget what triggered the idea, it was decided that someone had too “streak” through the restaurant at the height of the rush. I think it was the opening day of yacht season and possibly to compliment our annual topless woman in an Indian headdress buzzing the deck on a very expensive looking yacht. Anyway I’m not sure how it came about but Eric Shuggar was to be the “streaker”. The plan was for him to bolt from behind the cashiers box  run to about mid room, execute some complimentary pirouettes & and exit to the bench at mid deck where myself and I think two other streaking assistants were waiting to toss old Eric off the deck into the bay. This was all fine and very trendy until I realized that I hadn’t really thought about how we were gonna grab a naked dude with enough grip in a place where we wouldn’t hurt either him or his pride, to “toss him up and over the bench … clearing the deck railing and the flag poles that stuck out every few feet or so. As he came racing out and towards us I just kept saying to myself…”self, if ever there was a time for you to be extremely accurate this is it”……..and so into the drink, went Eric… maybe not as gracefully as he could have but to our relief all hand prints were accounted for on his back and lower legs and his voice retained the lower register…….whew! 

     Three:  There were just everyday type hazards associated with this type of work as well. Cuts, burns, etc,. and even if you’re as careful as can be there will be something that gets ya sooner or later. One of the most feared hazards were the ever present “black holes”. These were small pools of water on the floor from spills or plants draining, any number of causes. Because the floor was wood and coated with an incredibly hard thick plastic finish you couldn’t always detect them. One fine summer day I happened to find one of these little buggers as I was coming out of the kitchen doing the “One handed goblet tray balancing while running act” passing just in front of a packed dinning table. Of course it it was the height of the rush….and I did not see the large, multi pronged “black hole” directly in my path. The table referenced here is one of two very large tables capable of seating at least 10… anyway, down I went. It was so fast that I didn’t remember the trip down, just that one moment I was cruisin’ the next I was on the floor with my right arm buried in a pile of broken glass. The goblets I was carrying were big heavy glass mugs on stems. I think you could only get 12 on a tray but they were heavy so when you were carrying them to any specific place, you wanted to pick ‘em up transport and deliver in as few moves as possible…..which I did…just minus the third or delivery phase. The sound was as though a bomb had gone off. It literally froze the room. You could hear a pin drop and I’ll never forget the look on the faces of my direct audience seated ring side. Picture this: the audience reaction to the number at the end of the first act in Mel Brooks “The Producers” called “Spring Time for Hitler” same look, but some were terrified because apparently it looked by the way I was holding my arm when I got up, as though it were broken and I was bleeding pretty good from all the chards of glass stuck in my forearm.       
 
END OF THE FIRST HALF 

 I’ll never forget my final shift as a Trident busboy. I had already advanced to the “espresso bar” & been there for almost a year (I think) and was still doin’ some bus shifts when the “Dent” had to close for repairs to the deck or more importantly the pilings that held the whole place up. This was December of 1975 I think and there was a closing party that they need people work. Well nobody wanted to work that shift of course because there was just too much partyin’ to be had. I don’t remember if I volunteered or they asked me to bus but I wound up working that night which in and of itself was odd because I usually only worked days due to my musical commitments. Now that I think of it I believe it was the bar crew that asked specifically for me to bus. I had always hustled extra hard for the bar guys because the better you took care of them the faster they got the drink orders out and the happier the waitresses were. I would appreciate that myself I would come to learn a few years down the line. Anyway, long story short, it was mayhem. The place was absolutely packed. Busier and more crowded than I certainly had ever witnessed. We were just slammin’ all night long..no let up (until it was over)  The kitchen & bar staff were trying to empty the place of inventory and it was pretty evident they were going to be successful. The trick was getting to the areas where the stock was when all access across the floor was blocked by increasingly well lubricated party goer’s.    

Story Evan Palmerston - Photos Jiro/Melvin