Jeff Burkhart

“What's the difference between the regular potato salad and the deviled potato salad?” I asked the clerk behind the deli counter.

“The snozzberries taste like snozzberries,” said Willy Wonka about his flavored wallpaper in both the 1964 children's book “Charlie and the Chocolate

The dreamy, dulcet dinner jazz tinkled throughout the lounge. A slowly revolving overhead fan kept the humidity at bay as best it could. It was a losing battle in terms of both temperature and moisture. Beneath that fan, the couple did what couples do in a lounge. They lounged. And they glistened. But mostly they courted.

I felt like a cowboy in an old Western. I believe the word is “parched.” After a seven-hour drive from the Bay Area, we rolled into North Hollywood in the early evening. Being both hungry and thirsty, we pulled up to a little pho restaurant. Noodles and beer were in my immediate future — only they weren't.

When you stand where I stand, you're called on to do many things. Sometimes a bartender is a listener, and sometimes they're a talker, because not everyone wants the same things. And it's far easier for us to change rather than to expect that in others. Therapist, mixologist, arbitrator and muse — I've been them all.

It shouldn't have been difficult. We were all there for the exact same reason. We often like to think of ourselves as unique individualists, but really we aren't that different.

It seems like every other week another long-established restaurant or bar is closing. But finally, there's good news. Larkspur's venerable local dive bar, the Silver Peso, is back! And if the crowd on the Fourth of July weekend was any indication, things are better than ever.

The flip-flop-wearing foursome was underdressed even by our standards. And in America, that's saying quite a lot.

“Eureka!” is California's state motto. In Greek, that means “I have found it.” And in 1963, our state legislature thought that phrase summed up the

Stately, plump, the giant steak came out from the back kitchen. The platter bore a bowl of chimichurri sauce and was crossed lengthwise by a large steak knife.