I’m All Lost In, #101: The veggie sandwich at Mr. West Café; cancelling my Hulu subscription; “I Go Wild” by the Three O’Clock.
I’m All Lost In…
the 3 things I’m obsessing about THIS week.
#101
1) The Garden Veggie Sandwich at Mr. West Café
Famished after an odyssey of bus re-routes to get to a rock show on Friday night (Iroiro, Parini, and the Ononos on the back patio at Slim’s Last Chance off East Marginal Way ), I first went to the somewhat nearby Georgetown Liquor Company, a death metal adjacent pub where I devoured the horseradish and vegan roast beef sandwich. It came on a french roll with horseradish aioli, lettuce, tomato, red onions, and pepperoncini.
It was an excellent week of sandwiches.
On Friday morning—and Thursday morning—I went to Post Pike [I’m All Lost In, #61, 12/14/24] for one of my Seattle favorites: their vegan breakfast bagel sandwich layered with hummus, tomato, and pickled onions. I add cucumbers and spinach too.
On Tuesday night, to address some post-rock-show on-edibles munchies, (I saw Arc de Soleil at the Showbox at the Market) I extravagantly took a Lyft back home to Capitol Hill and went straight to the Bait Shop for their (not vegan) beer battered cod sandwich with lettuce, tomato, and tartar sauce; the Bait Shop is one of the only late night options in my neighborhood [I’m All Lost In, #74, 3/15/25.]
On Sunday night, to cope with the weekend-is-over clouds of doom, I fended off Monday by walking over to the cozy Pine Box. I had their vegan pulled jackfruit sandwich with hot buffalo sauce, jalapenos, and red cabbage. [I’m All Lost In, #69, 2/8/25.]
With all these top-quality local sandwiches setting a high bar, it became evident just how fabulous the week’s standout sandwich, Mr. West Café’s “Garden Veggie,” actually was. This vegan powerhouse is piled high with good-for-yous: sprouts, eggplant, tomato, cucumber, and a deep scoop of avocado. They serve it on fresh multigrain bread slathered with a non-dairy, garlic-heavy secret sauce: Middle Eastern toum.
As opposed to all the dive bars on this week’s sandwich parade, Mr. West Café is a bright, spacious, and mod space, with a genteel yet casual air. It’s California here.
I first started going to Mr. West in that lost and retroactively liminal era, late 2019, early 2020. Making Mr. West even more interstitial: It’s located at the vague cusp of Downtown just west of I-5 on a literally oblique corner where three diagonally flowing streets—Olive, Stewart, and 8th— collide. This elusive spot also marked a midway point between my then-GF’s downtown condo and my Capitol Hill apartment. Perhaps it’s the psychological effect of all this blurry geography and history, but in recent year’s I’ve either forgotten Mr. West existed, thought it had closed, or forgotten how to get there.
Fortuitously, while visiting New York City earlier this month, I landed at a quietly classy brunch spot near my hotel called Citizens of Soho. This easy, airy restaurant surfaced memories of Mr. West. It was fate.
I had lunch at Mr. West twice this week where I discovered my new favorite Seattle sandwich. I ordered the "Garden Veggie” on both visits.
2) Cancel Your Subscriptions to Oligarchy Media
America doesn’t exist anymore—official government retribution against stand-up comedians wasn’t part of James Madison’s elevator pitch.
But capitalism still exists. In fact, the perverse version of capitalism that controls American culture—six mega-corporations own 90% of American media, for example—facilitated the U.S. government’s authoritarian subterfuge of free speech this week as FCC Chair Brendan Carr gave ABC word to kneecap their late-night talk show host, Jimmy Kimmel.
It’s now time to use capitalism. Protest the Trump era’s free speech blackout by boycotting his corporate accomplices.
In response to the FCC’s embrace of cancel culture, I cancelled my Hulu subscription this week. It’ll take hundreds and thousands of us, but I’m hardly the only one who’s angry and calling for a boycott.
3. “I Go Wild” by Paisley Underground Experts The 3 O’Clock
When I was a D.C.-area teenager (and on into my first years of college) I was into music I called “Smash Jangle.” It’s probably not a coincidence that the king of smash jangle, Tommy Keene, was a D.C.-area local who gigged frequently at the 9:30 Club, D.C.’s unkempt venue for cool music.
Unbeknownst to me, there was actually a term for this retro-mid-’60s strain of Byrds-meets-garage-rock pop. College radio called it “Paisley Underground.” Murky REM was too sui generis to fit neatly into the paisley nomenclature—which is probably why they distinguished themselves as the one band to emerge from that neo-patchouli era as rock stars. But REM’'s early, dark yet somehow jangly records do represent a more artistically sophisticated version of the sound I’m talking about.
Most “Paisley Underground” bands were a bit too literal in their psychedelicized bubble gum rock arrangements, but there was a comfort in the generic imitation-’60s sound that allowed me to say: This is me!
One such band who mixed swirling effects box electric guitars with ringing acoustics and Little Lord Fauntleroy vocals was The Three O'Clock. The summer after freshman year of college, communing with their 1984 album Sixteen Tambourines on the floor of my friend Keith’s apartment, I was flabbergasted at how this band read my mind.
In the early 1980s, the Three O’Clock channeled mid-1960s psych bands like Moby Grape.
The Three O’Clock had an earlier 1982 EP called Baroque Hoedown that was even more clairvoyant about smash jangle than Sixteen Tambourines. It featured tunes like “Marjorie Tells Me” and “With a Canteloupe Girlfriend” telegraphing the beads and electric guitars. I’d forgotten all about the Three O’Clock until this week when KEXP’s psychedelic show—Astral Plane, Wednesday nights, 7pm -10pm with DJ Jewel—played a psych banger from Baroque Hoedown called “I Go Wild.” Far out. I traveled back in time to Keith’s hardwood apartment floor.