Again, for the sake of education, I’d like to share another pitch that went nowhere. The road to hell might be paved with good intentions, but the tiny successes of the writing life sit atop a pile of well-intended ideas that got rejected, forgotten, bypassed for other ideas, or flat out failed. It’s not the failures that bother me so much as the good ideas that got away. Some of this stuff you come up with over the years just sounds so awesome, you wonder how could any editor pass it up? Or worse, how you, as the writer, could not adequately develop it? If the published stories that you’re most proud of are stars, then the sky in which they hang are the stories that didn’t happen. They’re the blackness. Maybe that metaphor itself is a failure.
A few years ago, I had an idea that I ran past a local editor. It was for a semi-regular column called “Brunch Line,” which would consist entirely of “conversations with Portlanders waiting in line for brunch.” When I pitched it, I said I was just thinking out loud, and I was, but I kept returning to this idea of a short, pithy column of straight Q&As with people standing outside restaurants on Sunday morning, in all kinds of weather, waiting to eat. Brunch is common, but the lengths Portlanders go to partake are extreme. Portland’s devotion to brunch borders on religious, so the ritual of it all fascinated me.
As much as I love eating slowly with a bunch of friends, waiting for brunch never made sense to me. First off, I don’t like falling into a food coma so early in the day. Second, breakfast is mostly some form of eggs, grease, and starch, and I can cook all of that more easily and cheaply at home myself, without a line in the rain. I don’t even have to put on clothes. This made me want to understand the brunch phenomenon. I also wanted to give readers a look at themselves. All those people stuck there killing time were sitting ducks for a curious journalist, and those people were the publication’s readers.
While developing the pitch, I sketched an intro for myself but didn’t send it:
Walk down most any street in central Portland, Oregon on a Sunday morning, and you’ll have to push your way through throngs of people lined up outside restaurants waiting for brunch. They stand there. In the rain. Smoking and looking pissed. Some scoot aside at your approach. Others don’t budge. They stand like cement columns, staring at cell phones or into space, annoyed and wearing distant expressions, unwilling to make room for you. In Portland, brunch is popular sport. People sometimes wait for hours to eat. It’s a pastime. Who are these people? And what the fuck are they thinking standing in the rain for an hour waiting for a meal that takes twenty minutes to eat? In “Brunch Line,” I would like to travel around Portland on Sunday mornings, talking to people in line, to find out.
First, I’d establish the basics: Who are they? Why do they do this? Do they value eating this much? What’s next on the agenda for today after brunch? What goes through their minds while they wait in line?
Then I’d ask various questions:
What did you do the night before? (Out late? Hungover? Dragging?)
How long have you been waiting?
How hungry were you when you got here? How hungry are you now?
Are you dying for coffee?
Have you thought about leaving?
Are you feeling murderous?
What do you think about the phrase “low blood-sugar”?
What is the value of patience?
It’s raining. Where’s you umbrella?
Or: it’s raining. You’re wearing flip-flops. Aren’t you cold?
Are you a visitor or local?
What have you heard about this restaurant?
Tell me about your one-night stand last night
Other questions that came to mind had to do with food culture:
Why is brunch so popular?
Are you a foodie? What’s a foodie, anyway?
Are you an obsessive eater? Or an emotional eater? Do you fixate on food? (I do.)
How’d you find this place? Do you read Yelp reviews, or professional restaurant reviews? Lets write a Yelp reviews for this line right now.
Why this and not dimsum?
Why is there no Thai brunch? Or Indian brunch?
Other questions had to do with enduring the wait:
What’s the longest you’ve ever waited for brunch?
What’s too long? Like, what would the host have to say to make you turn away?
How do you find inner peace when stressed? Do you meditate?
What happens when you have to pee?
Do you plan your meal while you wait? Dream of your food? Study the menu? Think about work? Sex? The hot staff? Escaping the line?
Do you ever tweet your frustration?
Ever wish you smoked to pass the time? (Or did you smoke legal weed before coming?)
Do you ever see people you know in line?
How about people you don’t want to see, like ex’s or annoying coworkers or one-night-stands?
Have you considered busking for change while you wait, to help cover your cost?
How cold are your extremities?
What’s the most unusual thing you’ve ever eaten?
Have you ever left a place after brunch and thought, “That shit wasn’t worth the wait?”
“Not sure if the <publication name redacted> would be interested in that,” I wrote in my pitch, “and if you are what you could pay, but I wanted to check it out. If not, I’d go rogue and figure out some outlet for it.”
One editor liked the idea, but the assigning editor never responded, and I moved on. Every time I saw people lined up for brunch after that, I felt a pang in my fried-egg-loving heart and thought, “What a missed opportunity.” Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe the fun of the column would have quickly grown stale. Years later, once Portland got so gentrified and mainstream that the foodies went elsewhere and the brunch thing quieted, the columns’ conversations would have at least stood as a document of a particular place in time. Historical value isn’t something that would convince most commercial editors to commission something, but some of them might have been grateful for the document in hindsight.