here is our great employee andrew wearing danny’s new t-shirt design… it says satchel’s pizza / gainesville FL on the bottom right but that part is hidden here… notice almond in the background, patiently waiting for me to finish my photo so he can carry plates up front. i love this picture.

soooo, i actually went out tonight, along with everyone i ever knew in gainesville, and saw some live music and partied with the best of them. somewhere tonight the subject came up of our pending closing and it was pointed out to me that i said in a previous post that for the first time i had thought about selling the place. so THAT is where the rumor probably started… from the horses mouth… but mostly i was just saying that i had become so stressed that the thought came into my mind, not that i would actually act on it. no. in fact, i don’t think i would ever sell the place. my heart and soul is there. how could i sell it like bananas? no. i just let the stress get so bad that the thought came to me, i shouldn’t have even mentioned it. anyway, the whole rumor could be from this here blog. someone else pointed out that i operate as if no one is reading it but there is someone out there keeping up.

this weekend is sure to be a crazy one for g’ville. the FEST is happening. i was at the palomino bar, had some chips and salsa at boca fiesta, stopped in at the top, and ended up at the atlantic. now that, my friends, is a rare occasion for me. i might never go to so many places in one night and live to tell about it. i was feeling crazy and trying to work on my street cred. i don’t think i succeeded but had a pretty good time nonetheless. i swear i saw every single person i ever knew and a few i recognized but forgot. i love gainesville. it is a wonderful small town with incredible charm. happy halloween.

i’m supposed to be showing you photos of the great new t-shirts but since i don’t have those in front of me, and because they are having no trouble selling, and because i am in the middle of changing computers AND desks… i will show you this picture instead:

my son is really into scorpions these days…

there is a rumor going around that we are closing. i first heard wind of it today when i picked up my computer from the shop, and the repair guy said he heard it last night. then tonight at work a customer, a hairdresser, said he heard it from a client today… weird. we aren’t closing. in fact, we aren’t even close to closing. if we slowed down to 10 customers a day and i was the only guy in there, we’d still be open. if i died from stress tomorrow, i’m sure the employees could keep the place running just fine. so, i hate to squash a perfectly interesting rumor, but no, we aren’t closing.

wish i had time to chat but i have about 47 things to do.

so, i should have pictures for you but the truth is, i’m lazy. i have a camera, i have shirts to photograph, i have lots of things i could tell you… but i only came on here to say this: if all goes according to plan, we will have the gator game on TV on the stage in Lightnin’ Salvage tomorrow night. i know i know, why has it taken us 6 1/2 years to finally get cable TV down there? what is our problem anyway? are we communists? TV haters? football haters? we’ve got the best team in America, why not have a gator football party to go with that pizza and cold beer?
honestly i don’t really know the answer…. i sit around wondering why tim tebow hasn’t tried the best pizza in gainesville when that man has been living here for 4 years? well, he could ask me why i don’t put on gator games at my restaurant when we’ve got the best team in america? and i would stutter and stammer my way around in the “answer darkness.” the only thing i could possibly think up is that i figured you all had some place else to go…. dumb answer. i mean, why not be at lightnin’ salvage?
anyway, enough with excuses. i am sorry and starting today we will be showing gator games in our lounge , specifically the gator football games and possibly also gator basketball games when they don’t conflict with our live music schedule. i’m schlepping a TV from home up there for the game. cox put cable in yesterday.

i want to tell you i will be there, bud in hand, rooting for my team, but i have an old friend in town who has invited me over to his vacation rental to watch the game, and since he has kids and can’t be out with the whole family that late, i’ll have to miss the first ever LSETV gator game extravaganza BUT, i will most likely be at every LSE gator game event after today. starting tomorrow.

but you don’t care about seeing me anyway, you want to see tim tebow on the flat screen vizio and we will set it up for you. bring your own popcorn, pizza available until 10pm.

as fogerty says, i’m “workin’ on a buildin’”

a guy like me wonders, “how can a nice place like dr. fergie’s close down? … why were all these nice signs just hanging about?”

the new lightnin’ salvage t-shirts just hit the shelves tonight. drawn entirely by my 4 year old daughter. a drawing she did of a cat, (a lion like cat). with 5 legs. and no nose.

new bright pink roller skating pizza slice ladies only satchel’s shirts hit the shelves a couple days ago. very limited edition.

and the retro camp style 70′s t-shirt design is coming out next week. 4 colors, designed by danny, says “satchel’s pizza / gainesville florida”.

re-cap: cada cats, lauren’s logo, and danny’s still livin’ in 1979…
photos and updates to follow.

a customer tonight emailed me an idea that helped me shift my perspective on the soda issues i’ve been having… basically, relying so heavily on this product in my day to day operations, and wishing there was some alternative solution… she offered some great ideas and sited at least 19 links to articles or areas of further study on the subject. 19 links… amazing really. is it possible to run a pizza joint without coke or pepsi? i don’t want to comment too heavily on this idea, as we have a current “relationship” with pepsi and “talks” with coke, and i don’t want to tip my hand or make hasty decisions. but we have managed to run a successful business without accepting credit cards and that is pretty impressive. so, why not imagine the unimaginable? common grounds won’t deal with burkhart…. no bud products there. they seem to be on top of their game despite that decision. these days anything is possible. we don’t have to operate like everyone else. i’ll admit the idea to NOT cut our take-out pies at night flopped. that was a genius idea of mine that failed. i mean, maybe it had some success somewhere for somebody, but in retrospect i imagine i made a lot of people mad. for what? for some inflated idea i had about keeping the pies a bit crispier. i probably kept it up for years, and finally realized it was a bad idea. so, things like that keep me humble. but also scare me a bit when it comes to rocking the boat too hard.

my best friend from high school, mike, is a professor at university of miami. he also plays a mean bass and likes to write and perform music. currently he’s in a band called the mysterytones (aka M-tones). we had them up to play at the grand opening of LSE and they rocked out their funk-deelicious sounds like it was the david letterman show or something. mike and i joke for years about how much we love our home town of jacksonville, (aka JAX) and how we love Bono (U2 was peaking in 1986 yes?) and how funky and awesome the M-tones must really be. here’s an inside look at some excerpts from recent correspondence:

satch: 2 possible dates for m-tones
Saturday, December 19th or Friday, January 29th ?????
mike: Cool. Lemme see what’s up for those 2 dates.
~M
mike again: What night of the week are those? Saturday?
satch: Dude, ever hear of #1. Reading the email
#2 a calendar?
mike: Isn’t that just like a typical restaurant owner–disrespecting the
talent.
~M
satch: M-Tones baby. Rockin’ on the LSE tip…. Takin’ a trip…. Doin’
back flips. Listen, as we rip…. One time we’re the M-tones.
believe me, we respect the talent man. We need some hot miami funk to
wake us up from our stupor up here in hick-town.
mike: Bono Loves a Good Funk Beat. Bono should have gotten that Nobel last
week. Maybe they read the card wrong. Obama–Bono–close.

i don’t know. it was funny to me. may not translate to the gentle reader.
the photos were taken about 4 years ago by john orth, of a fruit stand south of here someplace called DR. Fergie’s. i forget the location. i had been there once before. John took these because he saw the place had closed down and the colorful signs were all about. what a cool fruit stand it was as you can tell from just these few shots.

and to think, i never even got to tell you how good civilization is and about the holopaw show at boca fiesta saturday night, and i was supposed to talk about lsetv and the cada cats, and there’s lauren’s shirts and zack’s kombucha … some other time my friends.

i had some good ideas for the banner but in the end it was the racist joke the guy told me that had me not buying the airplane ad…. i’m sorry, but if the first time i meet you you tell me a racist joke, chances are pretty good, you won’t be getting my money, even if you have an airplane that can pull a banner.
i don’t know whether to celebrate or panic, business goes from slow as a turtle to fast as a cat from one day to the next. we all get into poke along mode and then wham, we are busy. then back to poke along mode. the truth is that business for us is down about 8% from last year, although it seems that that number is still rising, i’m very pleased with our business and it’s service to the community. i am ready for whatever direction we go, but as we “settle in” to our skin now as an established local place, i think we will learn to roll with the punches and react to the situations that come.
i have an idea for a kid’s book entitled: water milk juice vs. coffee soda beer. when can i find the time to write it though? my current draft is way too simple and short. i find myself telling you about it and then deleting my thoughts.

okay, so i’m not doing the banner, but what i wanted to do was the old plane pulling… “SATCHEL IS MY CO-PILOT” but that one got the ax from mom, plus mr. d renfroe was concerned that tebow could miss the humor and that would be really bad. and there were other good ideas that emerged but it was basically the racist joke that killed the deal.

i compromised after writing the title tonight and had a can of amstel light, left over from some long ago party we had. i figured, amstel light from a can is almost like water, right? i could tell you 3 more good things but i gotta go do something else. remind me to tell you about the gator games on lsetv….. say whaaaaaaaaa?

remind me to tell you about the cada cats too….

to send a message on a banner behind a plane to fly over the stadium this weekend during the homecoming game… why should that be a difficult decision? well, it’s the message that is the hard part. i have a list of ideas here, not sure if any of them are sufficient for the task. i know you want to read my choices but no such luck for you. i’ll give word tomorrow if i decide to do it. actually i’m leaning now towards not doing it, because i either advertise, even in a sneaky way, or i pontificate with a message of inspiration without mention of my business…. hmmm

the image here is from (top) my 4 year old daughter, and (bottom) my 7 year old son.
they did this last week on their own, copying the text on my shirt. my boy,7, started and my girl, 4 copied him. genius prodigy graphic artists for sure.
the only reason i can even blog tonite is “acupuncture.”

otherwise i would be laid out hurting from stress and energy depletion. but two sessions of acupuncture has me blogging and happy and even having a good slow friday at work. a normal slow friday might depress me but tonight i cooked the pies and was happy. usually i make pies but tonight i chose to cook and realized how much i love to watch the crust rise, how much i love the smell of dough how much i love to approve of every pie before it goes out, and how much i love owning a pizzeria.
mellow mushroom closed 2 days ago. i remember how i went to leonardo’s when news broke that mellow mushroom was coming a block away, and i pleaded with the managers there to tighten up their game and get ready for a top notch pizzeria to be new neighbors… i remember how i was met with skepticism, how the leo’s staff questioned, “who is this guy coming in here telling us how to operate?” and i remember steve solomon telling me to talk to the leo’s staff about it, how he asked me to go in there and do what i could to prepare them for this new chain pizzeria coming a block away. whatever advice i gave them went in one ear and out the other. and seems that was fine since mellow mushroom came and went in a heartbeat compared to leonardo’s pizza.

we were slow this friday night but we ain’t closing our doors. i’m sorry for the closing but glad we are still up and running….
sad for the new jobless, the owner, the empty location…

i cooked the pies tonight and i was glad to check each one as it went out. every pie tonight was close to perfect, except for the steak and cheese calzone add roasted red peppers, where the pizza maker forgot to add the roasted reds and we had to heat them in a skillet and stuff them into the calzone to save face… i wonder if they noticed or cared.

the acupuncture i had today brought me back from 10% to 90%. i didn’t know it could be that powerful. thanks to dragon rises acupuncture school and clinic. thanks for chinese medicine. western medicine blows compared to eastern medicine. thank you jesus. jesus is where west and east meet. i’ll explain that later

so this was day 2 with our pepsi machine down. pepsi showed up with this ryder truck carrying our part (which would fit in a vw backseat) and then not only didn’t pull up in the parking spot, but locked their keys in the truck. now, i walk up at 5:40pm, anticipating the party of 50 coming in at 6pm, and this truck is basically blocking 70% of our parking lot and the 2 guys are working at getting in with a coat hanger… i say loudly, ” Did you call a locksmith?” and the somewhat frustrated reply, “i’m working on it” and i say ” are you a locksmith?” and he says “no.” and so i take some photos and call the locksmith. 30 minutes later the truck is gone, our pepsi machine is still down and they show back up to fix it. “too late now guys, it’s dinner rush and there’s a line to the door.” and so, we go through day 2 without a pepsi machine because no one is capable of having spare parts for us at pepsi. i meet with coke at 10am, but i must admit i am skeptical. pepsi has 2 water boosters, a remote carbonator, and 50 feet of stainless tube running through our ice machine to try and keep up with the demand we have. will coke do all this? probably not. anyway, i lost it. when i saw these guys blocking out my dinner rush and trying in vain to open the truck themselves, i lost it. i probably came about as close to a heart attack as i ever was.

last week when i wrote i was having a pretty bad time. things have gotten slowly and barely better. the best news is that i had continued conversations with ex-employees about their grievances, and feel as if resolution was achieved. the burning electrical smell we had friday came again today, and we eventually found the pepsi machine the culprit. we’ve had so many problems with our pepsi machine that last time it went down i got a promise from my contact there that they would have all the spare parts for our machine on the shelf. it took months of prodding and finally i was informed that the spare parts had arrived. turns out that was a complete fabrication. because now the machine is having problems and the parts have to be overnighted from the manufacturer. i called coke again. it’s a problem for me, pepsi tries hard but can’t deliver for me. coke never tried or delivered for me. we spent $17,000 with pepsi last year. they can promise me parts and then cave on that promise. coke never returned my contact last time i called them and i can only wonder if things will be better now than they were when i started with them. i’ve thought about getting rid of them both for blue sky or some other soda, but for now i will see how pepsi handles tomorrow. they promise the parts will come and get installed. i’m not holding my breath. the hardest part of my professional career has been dealing with coke and pepsi. the most stressful part of my job has been trying to get a soda machine which runs well, and a company that can back it up. we’ve had at least 3 different pepsi machines in the past 5 years. i didn’t need the stress today, i was trying to take the day off because i worked straight through my weekend and i desperately need a day off, but my phone rang before 8am, and i was at work for hours… the cooler that was fixed saturday was broken again this morning, the booster seats i ordered came with only 1 strap instead of 2. the parents want to strap the booster to the chair and the kid to the booster, that’s 2 straps, so why did these come with 1? i returned them. i had ordered them a month ago.

we have a digital camera for work. somehow the cord that hooks it up to the computer got lost. i wasn’t having a lot of luck finding the cord online so i ended up buying a card reader that would read the image card from the camera. it took weeks to get here and it does not work.
a customer wrote to us from cleveland and their family had to move from gainesville and is really wanting some satchel’s pizza. i had to let them down because we don;t ship the pizza.
saturday night we had a pizza returned for being burnt and another table told me they had just eaten the best pizza of their life.
and were i not so tired i would tell you more, but the photos here are of the mural being painted on the back fence. that’s where the new walk-o-junk will be. these pics are taken with a different camera… the pics on the work camera have new employee pictures that i am waiting to get to the website. i may end up just re-taking those pics with my camera. blah blah blah blah blah

tuesday night i was pleasantly surprised to see sue bell show up with her belly dance camp. sue and co. danced through the restaurant and put on a nice show in lightnin’ salvage. sue is a true gypsy. it was a great treat for my otherwise boring tuesday night.

we’ve been slow. i’ve been manic and losing my mind and overloaded and overwhelmed, and the restaurant has been slow. this week, i basically came close to the nervous breakdown that is always just in front of me. the brand new mixer broke, the breaker for the pepsi machine had to get replaced because it kept blowing. then two others breakers blew and there was a burning electrical smell, not good. i plugged in a mixer and watched the plug sizzle and smoke this week. my wife said the lights in our house dimmed severely a couple times. it’s as if my mental and physical state was melting wires and causing black-outs this week. it was a hard and strange week. i burnt out. i depleted my reserves. i was checked out. then i got some acupuncture today and i’ve recovered a bit. the treatment actually brought me back from the dead. it gave me a sense of balance and a little stamina to get through a friday night without losing it. i just have too much going on. there is a reason that most stoves only have 4 burners. can you imagine trying to cook on 15 burners at once? it’s too much. it’s a mess of my own making. i am trying to slow down, to get some perspective, to lighten up. but it’s hard. i walked in satchel’s last night in time to hear the guy at the register say, “don’t charge me for the salad because we never got the salad…” why must i walk in to this statement after the day and week i had? the pizza cooler was down and that had us using other coolers and waiting for the parts…. 3 UF students were doing projects this week and needed to meet with me, interview me. one journalism student, one photo journalist, and one with a video camera making a video for a class… my son is in high gear and needing my constant help with forts and homework and spelling and writing and inventing… my restaurant is slow and i’m there 14 hour days trying to make sure it’s running smoothly. there’s the 2 guys who came back from a 6 week tour in europe and i was waiting for them to cover some shifts and come to find out they hate me and think i treated them wrongly and have all sorts of interesting evidence of how i wronged them. the one pizza maker averaged $17.50 an hour at 30 hours a week for the month before he left on tour. i offered him 3 nights a week upon return to find out i was disrespectful to him in the past and if i can’t pay him more money he is “not interested at all” in coming back to work. this was a guy who i thought loved the job, a guy i thought was making more than he’d ever made in a gainesville restaurant, a guy who climbed to the top fairly quickly… but a guy that needed lots of nights off to play in his band.
so, yes, i was upset that i turned out to be such a bad guy. upset that $17.50 an hour wasn’t enough for this fellow to come back to work after 6 weeks off touring europe with his band, and the other guy, who was one of my all time favorite employees, never even had the decency to call me back with a yes or no to my offer for work, after i asked him politely to let me know one way or the other. i asked him to text me an answer and heard nothing.
i could go on but it’s too late. it’s just changed from friday night to saturday morning and i have lots of new things to do. one customer told me tonight that he just returned from chicago and had the 3 best pizzas there and that we have them beat by a mile. another customer told me he just returned from italy and our pizza is way better than anything he had over there. another guy had just graduated today as a firefighter and he was having such a good time. the 3 women sitting in the van at closing were first time customers and ordered a deep dish that was rocking their world. i got to talk to lots of really happy customers tonight which, along with the acupuncture, is bringing me back to life. this was the first week i think i ever actually thought about selling the place. about opening something with 10 seats and 3 employees where i couldn’t get so overwhelmed. i’ll never sell satchel’s, i know that, but the thought came into my head this week because i was so overworked and perplexed by it all. i’ve told you some of it, but not the half of it. running a restaurant is hard. i never knew it would be so hard.