text: I play squash racquets a sport favored by the east coast elites from them Ivy League schools those snooty Britishers and the Pakistani leisure class nnWhy they let me play I will never knownnLast evening we had a little tourney in which a group of us from the Village traveled to the outer reaches of Tempe to play a group from Lifetime FitnessnnIt was a jolly good show ever so much fun and our Village group gave the Lifetime group a bit of a RodgeringnnSo it was with happy hearts and high spirits that we headed down the street to the post tourney repast at Skip Janslet me start by saying that the Lifetime group picked this place and it is almost like they knew they were going to lose and wanted to select a venue that would be the grimiest greasiest grubbiest grossest spot to try to eatthey succeedednnWhere to startI knowthe parking lotnnWhen we arrived the total Kelly Blue Book value of the cars in the parking lot was about we raised that by several orders of magnitude just by driving inthis parking lot has not seen a lot of traffic from the MercedesBMWLexusJaguar crowd and may never againnnAfter I safely parked a block or away I went inside and took in the look and feel of SJcrappy old wood panelingtables and chairs from a circa high school cafeteriaan intriguing mix of flat panel TVs regular TVs and OTB results screens yeah you can bet the ponies herethe sport of Kings in a slightly less than regal atmospherennThey must have pool tablesfaded feltand a whole bunch of people playing pool and frankly looking like they were not enjoying themselvesextremely tight and serious expressions on the faces of the people playing and watchingare not games supposed to be fun I suspect there was gambling going onnnThe smell in SJ can only be described as extreme humanitythe place smelled like it has seen a centurys worth of spilled beer cigarette smoke BO vomit urine spoiled food and every other aroma that humans create for themselvesremarkable given the fact that this place cannot have been here for more than a few yearshow did they do that so quickly nnSJ has menus they have some sort of kitchen they have Jagermeister on tap they have a bunch of beers on tap and they had a buffet or boofay for my friend Ryan C set up for our groupnnIt was supposed to be a Taco BarnnSJ provided a table full of taco fixinsthe centerpiece of which was the taco meat hot trayHoly Crap was that disgusting nnThey told us it was ground beef but I know my beef and I do not think this was itthis was ground creaturepossibly some sort of unfortunate nondistinct animal which happened to be near the kitchen when duty callednnI kid of courseas far as I know this was indeed beefjust not very good beefnnThe hot tray holding the meat looked like a relief map of the Hawaiian Islandssmall mountains of meat rising out of the ocean of brownorange grease that was the real body of the dishnnBut I was starving a banana for breakfast and nothing else so I tried to make a taconnI decided to forgo the slotted spoon that everyone was trying to use to fish some meat out of the soupy brine and use some tongs insteadmy idea was to try to squeeze as much grease out of the concoction as possibleI was sort of successful but in doing so I probably squeezed any flavor out as wellnnI got back to the table and tried a bitenot goodI added several shakes of Cholla and tried another biteand that was thatnnOne of my buddies had decided to forgo the mystery meat tacos and ordered wings from the menu and offered me oneI am not sure what the deal with the wings was but the wing I tried seemed to be boiled no not broiledboiled and then dipped in buffalo saucenot crispy just wetall the way throughnnThen they announced that Karaoke was going to start soonand that was enough for mennAdding amateur singing to this tableau would have just been too muchnnStill it is not all bad newsthe tires and wheels were still on my car when I was ready to leaveI did not become immediately ill although I had kind of a rough morning this morningnnThey say shared adversity can make teams grow together so I think I should thank SJ for making the Village Squash group nearly invincible