Restaurants, Robberies, and Pig Roasts

Fan Feedback, St. Louis Park Food Memories, and Pig Roast Stories

Mike Hammer and Carlos Figueroa open the episode by reading early listener feedback, including a Minneapolis commenter questioning whether Hammer is the real 1984 graduate, which they clarify by distinguishing him from an older Mike Hamer. They discuss how suggestions are expanding their focus beyond their childhood neighborhood and recall St. Louis Park-area staples such as Beaks Pizza (including an all-you-can-eat contest and a late-night cash-register robbery), Lincoln Dell deli, Schlotzky’s, My Pie, Clark’s submarine sandwich, and the McDonald’s by the high school during open campus and smoking-era rules. They share stories about skipping school to make pizza, Rocky Rococo’s heart-shaped pizza while watching Luke and Laura’s wedding, Carlos’s family pig roasts and an epic joint graduation party, plus the Lions Club pancake breakfast and paper route memories. Carlos plugs his Substack and a baseball-law feature, “The Ballpark Barrister.”

00:00 Show Intro and Tease
00:18 Theme Song and Greetings
00:54 Fan Mail and Feedback
01:10 The Mike Hammer Mystery
02:22 Listener Ideas and Expanding Town
03:41 Beaks Pizza Memories
04:47 Pizza Contest with Joe
05:50 Beaks Robbery Story
07:02 Lincoln Del Deli Love
08:41 More Local Eats Roundup
09:14 McDonalds Open Campus Days
10:32 Skipping School for Pizza
11:45 Homemade Crust Hacks
12:03 Open Campus Pizza Runs
12:41 McDonalds and Cafeteria Classics
14:11 Rocky Rococos Memories
16:11 Pig Roast Block Party
18:28 Graduation Party Chaos
20:04 Lions Club Breakfast Talk
21:15 Bennigans and Paper Route Donuts
22:55 Substack Plug and Sign Off

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From Carlos Figueroa

Carlos also shares an update on his upcoming psychological thriller, The Ghost of Lake Osakis, andI write essays on my Substack about institutions, technology, and change.  https://systemsunderpressure.substack.com/s/the-ballpark-barrister

Join the conversation

What St. Louis Park restaurant do you remember most? Drop a comment and tell us which places still live rent-free in your memory.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

And this episode, Art Bench Perspective, we dive into some elicitor feedback. Their ideas, official ideas, we're thankful for. We talk restaurants, robberies, pigros. So what should they do? Colonels? Grab a seat on the bench. How are you doing, Mike Hammer? I'm doing all right. Hello there, Carlos Figure Roma. So we got our first batch of what the buzz sprout calls fan mail. Fan mail call it feedback. And we got some nice feedback. I totally love the podcast, made me laugh. Nice first episode. Can't wait to hear the real untold stories of St. Louis Park. But me being who I am, I want to concentrate on the less than positive because there's a mystery here. I've known you since I was four. I don't think you've changed. I think you're the same guy. You haven't been replaced. But I did get feedback from Minneapolis saying that is not Mike Hammer. That's not the Mike Hammer I graduated with's voice. So it's spelled with one M in there, isn't it? No, he spelt it with two M's. Okay. Well, I do know this, that five, six years older than us, there was a Mike Hamer. H-A-M-E-R, the younger brother Pat Hamer, but Mike Hamer. Yeah. And people would sometimes confuse when they looked at me because he was, let's just say he was like a defensive lineman. Okay. And I wasn't. And you weren't. So I'm going to tell you this. You know, we never mentioned. I'm class of 84, your class of 84. So a listener from Minneapolis, I can guarantee you this is the Mike Hammer that graduated from 1984. I'm willing to stake a bet on it. I don't believe that he has been changed. He didn't do a Peter Brady voice change big time. We appreciate your feedback. We appreciate your comments. Keep them coming. You know what's funny? Some of them, too, like the ideas, the suggestions that are coming in, which is wonderful because yes, we're doing it, but we're trying to spark everybody's memory. Yeah. And some of it is you you talked about this. What we remember in reality are sometimes miles apart or real close, but it's funny some of them that are filling in the blanks for us. You know, and and one of the things that we got, a lot of the Facebook groups commented, and you and I grew up in our little world box. And so we we promised to venture beyond Louisiana Avenue and beyond Minatonka Boulevard to talk about all the St. Louis Park. So there's a lot of great food places we never included. Yeah. Do you want to get into those now? Well, and just to go on our small world, which is funny, well, we moved out of there. Yeah. And either I nor you have moved back. No. It's been kind of. Actually, that's not true. I moved back. I moved back to help my parents for a year back in 2018. All right. But with those memories, those early memories of it, that's why they're so wonderfully triggering for us to go back and deep dive into because even though it was now maybe a third of our life, it was just the best. Well, you know, I mean a great third. Yeah. We imprinted on it. But you know, I I want to start with one restaurant. A restaurant that honestly got mentioned a lot in the comments, and I don't know how we missed it, and that's Beeks Pizza. Beeks Pizza on the corner of Tonacabular and Kokoda, yeah. I think they had moved at the end to somewhere. I don't know. But yeah, that was that was a staple. You know, and I I actually don't remember as a kid pizza being a big deal, maybe frozen pizza, but pizza delivery was not massive when we were in high school. No, to but we had the party pizza from Totino's. We did have the party pizza from Totino's story of the Red Barons. We'll talk about that when we're going to be able to do that. We will talk about that later, maybe on a on a on a Parkbench perspectives after dark. Our hate ashberry days just still a comment from the the common man, but our hate ashberry days triggered a lot of yeah. So and I'm and plenty of the fans or the listeners, I don't know, maybe you listened and you didn't like it, so I won't call you fans as listeners mentioned Beaks, and one of them who did was our classmate up until high school, Joe Riley. And I have to mention Joe in the context of Beaks because as we grew up, our world expanded. And the first big expansion after the merger with Cedar Manor was showing up at Westwood Junior High. Yeah, at the time they were still central, but we were getting now exposed to kids from other neighborhoods. And one of the kids that I met was Joe Riley. Yeah, and I don't know, somebody said, you know, nobody can eat as much pizza as Joe. And I said, Well, challenge accepted, my friends. Because we started going there. Yeah, well, they had the buffet, all you can eat buffet, amongst others. Yeah. But Joe and I, we get all the friends got together and we had a pizza eating contest. And as I recall, Joe, tell me if you think differently. But I recall that I bested you. As a matter of fact, after I bested you, I still was hungry and ate some more pizza. Yeah, the the all you can eat. I think we all sat there and uh kind of like I don't know if they're you're both friends, so we weren't really we were just more pulling for the scenario to play out than we were for someone to win. We're like, when one was slowing down, we're like, you could do it. Come on, I'll get you another piece. But you actually have uh kind of a Beeks after dark story that you were telling me about. I never heard this story before. Sure. I gotta I gotta change the names to protect the NSC. Well, I'm gonna reflect on some of the characters that were there with me. And I want to say it was after maybe a football game or something. And I I believe I was still before or right about somewhere just starting high school. And we went to Beeks late night, late Ashbury and forth. But hey, all of a sudden we're sitting there, and Beeks wasn't that big, and we're at the table, and some dudes ran it with masks on, went to the back, grabbed the cash register, and ran out. They like picked up the cash register and grabbed it, just grabbed it, pulled it out of the wall or whatever, the the cord. And this was while we were in high school? Yeah. We were sitting there kind of looking at it, you know, other going, what what just did that really just happen? Can we still finish our pizza? Or do we not have to pay it because there's no camera's no place to put the camera if they can't make change? I'm just wondering, you know, if for us old guys, like was Alan Funt there, where's can the camera? Yeah, we I I I think maybe somewhere down the line we got some more and tell of what it was, who it was. But one I can't believe we didn't mention Lincoln Dell. I mean, there's nothing more St. Lux Park than Lincoln Dell. Yes, and I and I didn't mention it because we had a lot to talk about, but the Dell over on 100 and Highway 12 tucked in the corner, and then there was another one Highway 7. Yep, yep, and I there was a third one over in Minnetonka for a while. Yeah, and and then there was also just to add, you know, in the deli there was McKee's back in the day. Bernie's deli. Uh Magic could talk about that one. But it yeah, I mean, corned beef on rye. Yeah, I I mean you just uh some of the sandwiches there were oh, you know what thing could just a jump, sorry. No, it's okay. Todd was talking to me about when we talked about salt, yeah. And we had friends there that worked, and sometimes they'd made the meat so thick. Yeah, I mean, this was a dagger when you go and put your mouth around it, you're like trying to push it down. And uh I'm gonna find out which friends work there, but but the Lake of Dell was just Sid talked about it. Yeah, yeah. When you listen to CCO, yeah, Canon Mess. Well, I mean, the thing is it's like, and I'm sorry, but Delhi food is the best food on the planet, you know, and then the desserts, and usually when we were younger, yeah, you had money for food or dessert. Yeah, so you're like the desserts look good, but they're not my budget. I would I'd have to say Lincoln Bell was something I appreciated. I I I gained an appreciation for as I became older. Yep, it wasn't a place that we would go as uh as family stuff, and like you said, as kids, we were trying to put our coins together for a keg cup later or for a dessert. We weren't paying for full full-blown meals. They know how to make sandwiches and deli foods. Absolutely. That was a stellar place. Oh, Joe also brought up across the highway Schlotsky's. Schlotsky's, yes, and what was next to it? He brought up in there in his comment uh another one that was oh my pie. My pie, yes. Well, that was right, well, that wasn't by a jolly troll, right? Well, that was on that on that same side of Highway 12. Yeah. Well, it was still Highway 12, and there was the the boulevard called the Boulevard, yeah. All the interesting bars over there, but and then up by the high school, Clark's submarine said, Yes, used to love their toilet. And and actually, this is the one that I can't believe we missed because we spent probably more time there than anything else I did as McDonald's across the street from the high school. Oh, well, there's a whole episode about McDonald's. I I want to say I don't know if there's any McDonald's. I mean, they're one of their top producers year after year in the States. I gotta tell you, uh, so as a smoker, my high school experience, you know, the the the year before we got there, there could be smoking bathrooms. And then I said now that we have freshmen in the school, we have to have them outside in the parking lot by the the student parking lot, and then after that, they're like, No, you go away, have to go off the school grounds. Then it was like we're gonna give you tickets. So we used to be able to sit at McDonald's to smoke cigarettes, but now they had a cop in there. Yes, I shrink there. Yep, yep. But I know and you couldn't even, I mean, it lines were out the door after football games. McDonald's there was interesting, like I said, I I think they just kept they were one of the top McDonald producers in the country, and it was right. I mean, it was just an open campus. Yeah, exactly. At the time, St. Louis Park had an open campus, you can and we took advantage of that as much as we could, particularly once we got driver's licenses. And they were one of the first ones to offer breakfast. So if you're sitting there after first hour and don't really think you're in trade to go to second hour, and someone says, Yeah, want to go get breakfast at McDonald's? Okay, and I'll do what the uh after. I'm actually gonna I'm gonna tell this story, all right. So Kenny and I are gonna go to school, and for whatever reason, you're just not gonna go that day. There's no mic, we're there, and Kenny and I are walking through the cafeteria, we've arrived at school, and then Kenny goes, You know what would sound really good? A homemade pizza. I'm like, that sounds really good. That sounds better than anything we're possibly gonna learn at school today. Let's leave. And so we went to your house, you're sleeping, your mom's at work. I'm assuming your sister is not there, you know, and Marty's is everybody's where they're supposed to be, except for you and I and Kenny. And then we don't even wake you. You think you come up and you're like, what the hell are you guys doing in our kitchen? We're making a pizza from scratch. I don't think that we knew because I don't know how to make a pizza from scratch now. So when I was 16, I'm fairly certain that we ended up with a big mess and ended up having to throw uh a red baron in the oven. Yeah, we didn't both. I I remember I was after I started the shakiness. We had an idea, we just didn't have the equipment. Equipment. Oh, that's right. I'd forgotten that you and Kenny were shaky's chefs for a while for a cup of coffee. Well, you know, when you think about it, I just need some dough, some sauce, some cheese and any kind of meat on there, and maybe some vegetables. The crust is the hard part. That's the the the friend scratch crust is really you don't know what you're doing, it's gonna be ugly. You don't have a roller, you don't now you just buy a crust and put it on. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Actually, it's not hard. You just get a big enough cutting board. Um you just roll it out, it doesn't have to be perfectly round, but and taking advantage of this open campus, we would oftentimes by junior or senior year set up our lunch so that we'd have our open hour right before or after lunch, so that we could get two hours, and then what we do is we'd leave. No, no, no, we'd we'd leave, we'd go to your house. That back we'd go to your house, we'd stop at Westwood Delhi, we'd buy a red berry pizza, we'd sit in your house, watch all my children a half hour of all my children, because we had to go back to the house. And then we cook the pizza, and then we cooked many pizzas at your house over lunch, and cut them with the hammer pizza cutter was scissors. Cut them with the scissors. Why don't you get a pizza cutter? Because every time I think about it, it's when I'm cutting it with the scissors, and then the thought leaves. You know, it's funny, back to McDonald's. Yeah, it was weird, you know, now with the health conscious McDonald's and where it's at on your I'm gonna be healthy scale, but sometimes you'd go there and you're like, I can't go here for a while. I think I'm gonna be I'm I'm gonna boycott it for like a couple months because there's days when you 30, 40 days in a row, you were at McDonald's. But yeah, the the lunch open campus was cool because we would and honestly, I tell you, it may just be m you know memories, but that rectangle pizza was fire, man. I love that rectangle pizza. I miss it. I haven't had that rectangle pizza in a long time. Two pieces, exactly, yeah, and the the basically the sugar donuts that the the mold that were just covered in someone put sugar, so you had a sugar rush going on until like midway through class and then you'd collapse. Yeah, chemistry. I'd be falling asleep. Still to this day have dreams of looking up at the uh the chart. Yep. It's a chart periodical, yep, and and not remembering any of it, and then trying to get to class because there was a test, and I couldn't get there, and I'd see your car drive by my I it was it's it's a it's a fun dream. That sounds like a nightmare. So no, but just it happened. I'm gonna add another restaurant that is not technically St. Louis Park, but I have some fond memories of it, and that is Rocky Rococo's on Blake Road, cross seven. That just had there's there's pizza in our history where you just know what it is. Yeah, taste test, shaky's pizza, ask anybody that ate enough of it, they would know a shaky's pizza. I would honestly I have to tell you that shaky's pizza is the last time I had real good Canadian bacon. Yes. If you have pizza now with Canadian bacon, it's like uh uh uh an old pizza ham. Exactly, exactly. They they you know, they take an old piece of ham, teach it to play hockey, and say it's Canadian now. Yeah, it's but you know, I have a special Rocky Rococo's memory, and this is, and we're in high school and we we go, it's it's Valentine's Day. And so they took her to Rocky Rococos on Valentine's Day. Not only did I get her heart-shaped pizza, but we watched Luke and Laura's wedding on the big screen, which was what 42 inches at the time? Yeah, well, it was it in my mind it's a big screen, but no, it was not that big a screen back then. But for then it was. Anybody who remembers back in the day, General Hospital, the big it couple was Luke and Laura, and they finally got married. And was that bigger than Diane's and Charles and I do not think it was bigger than Charles and Diane, but for TV soap opera weddings, it was about as big as you can. I didn't watch anyone. My sister did, my sister Michelle. I did a shout out to her. I keep saying my sister, but yeah, you know who she is, but I'm gonna just say her name is Michelle because everybody was my mom wanted to confuse people with uh Michelle and Mike. She really did with the alliteration there with the family, you know, Michelle, Mike, and Marty. She had her three M and M and M's. Yeah. But I do remember Tony in for that because it was just why not? And uh you know he just died. He did Luke just yeah, he did, he did. Was it Giri, Tony Geary? Could be. Luke, we'll go with that, Luke. Concrete, permanent, a pig roaster, and uh, you know, back then he was you know more spry, and so he'd do one or two every year, and then it kind of went away, sadly, as he got older. But those were amazing, and then you know, you had Cuban ladies in the kitchen, and so they gave like enough sides for 500 people combined with the pig, and and that was some good eats and some good fun, and it was fun because Lily White Mike knew what pig was, and I'd go in the kitchen to get the other stuff, yeah, yakima, yucca, or whatever, and and they were explaining that to me, and I'll get into it. Yeah, we used to babysit, maybe we have some stories there about your relatives over there, but yeah, they you know, we were young, so you know, but yeah, they were very motherly mothers who were like, come here, come Michael, come here, take this, this, this, and I'm like, what is it? Just eat it. I'm like, Okay, okay, and some of it was usually most of it was good, yeah. Some of it was like, What the hell am I? And and they didn't do a lot of real hot, spicy stuff. Yeah, no, because back to the Norwegian and me. Yep, yep. Cuban food is not particularly spicy. No, it's great. I actually actually one time in the 90s went on a trip to Miami, see some cousins and uh went to a Cuban restaurant, and it's like, damn, really good food. I'm like, mom. Delicious, it was delicious. And watching, and then did your dad was well, your dad was always funny. Yeah, watching him, and he got into it like he loved being the center of attention, and the one who was doing it because it was special, right? It was very social, and you know, people from all different walks of life and neighbors and friends. And I'll tell a story about a kid we went to high school with, and uh, I won't mention his name, but his dad, my dad knew him for many years through sports. And the dad calls my dad and says, Hey, I hear you had my son there for a pig roast. And my dad goes, Yeah, you know, I asked him, I said, Is it okay with your parents? And I want you to eat anything that's against your religion or anything like that. And he's like, Well, well, I want to talk to you about that, Carlos. I want to know why I wasn't invited. And so, you know, I it's something I really miss, not just because I missed the connection with my dad, but that was just fun. It was just it was just an excuse to have, you know, a couple hundred people over and and then have some beers and tell some stories and eat some food and and a mix of different cultures and everything else. And it was uh some of my best memories. They were great. And that graduation party with the pig roast, you know, epic. We had a band.

SPEAKER_02 18:33

We did have a band, and then we went through seven kegs.

SPEAKER_00 18:36

I don't know how many kegs. I know that there were a lot. There were a lot, and we got the road blocked off. The police department blocked out the road for it. We got a safe permit for a block party. Yeah, one of the neighbors called the police because of the band that hadn't even played yet. But my my cousin Mo, who if those in St. Louis Park would know him as Rice, his band was kind enough. They were gonna play our graduation, but we had to pull the plug due to you know it was very much. Well, it wasn't quite the Beatles on the top of the building, but the authorities made us stop the party. Didn't we didn't they play a little bit unplugged? They might have, I don't know. I a lot going on. There was a lot of people. I mean, it was basically the road was blocked off, 18th Street, and it was all in my house with the food, and then the kegs I think were behind Kenny's house. Yeah, and it was epic. We had, I think we were probably about five or six or seven, I don't know. We had started talking about we should do a joint graduation party all together. And well, you know what kind of happened? It was it was more our parents, yeah, because man and and they were talking, and then me being close to my mom being a single mom, they always kind of like looped her in she with the fifth wheel, yeah. And they're like, How about that? And we're like, how about that? And it just kind of morphed into uh yeah, it was fun. That was uh that was a good time. We just seemed to have easy good times weren't hard to come by. Good times were not hard to come by, no. Another one that I recall was the Lions Club Pancake Breakfast, which was an annual event, and you know, we I think I remember going to it at it was still I think Westwood Junior High. Yes, you know, and be in the lunchroom and you'd go and you'd eat pancakes, and it was it was it once again it was an expanding world, right? It's what you'd you'd basically I'd see all the baseball kids, yeah, and you went there because your parents went there, yeah. You didn't know why you're going there, and you're like, I I I do pancakes, let's do it. I I'm completely ignorant, I do not know anything about Lions Club. Don't they collect glasses? Like there's a place that does like glasses, like old glasses to give to the poor or something like that. Lions club. I you know when the the year in college when we went to the college world series and the Lions Club in the area was our sponsor, okay. It's it was interesting, but wasn't there there was a there was a team in Little League too that was lion or Babe Ruth that was Lions? Yeah, the Lions, yep. So just a bunch of deal goods. You know what it sets the the in the Buffalo Club Okay But they're not the ones that are clowns, right? No, no, the Shriners. All right, all right. Just want to just want to talk to Lionel and Smitty about the uh we gotta hear about the Shriners because I gotta, you know, I gotta tell them that clowns don't make me nervous. The little go-karts they go to all those city parades and drive their go-karts and but another restaurant for us. There's so many to to choose from. It's almost like Pepper. We get a little bit older, Benegin's with the C through this dance floor. Yep. Benegins was big. It was a it was that was like a a place to go to dance. Whatever upstairs. Every once in a while, my grandma would bring us to the Oak Room downtown Dayton's. Oh, yeah. That was that was sophisticated. That happened in in Ice Hope. We get there. We it was good on Sunday morning. We time it because we had two routes and we combined them on Sunday to do it together. Me and Kenny and you come once in a while. And we timed it so we got to that end of the paper out when the We were opening and the donuts were coming out, and we'd bring them a free paper because there was always extra in the box, yeah. Whatever. And we would give a paper and eat glaze donuts till uh we were sick of sugar and went home, and I think they probably went back to bed. Because we would get out Sunday mornings, 4:35 in the morning, he let an 11, 12, 13 year olds out. Yeah, yeah, you know, it was well. I think it would have been on one of our kind of our initial conversations that never made it onto the show, but the whole concept you'd send an 11-year-old to collect door to door for people that paid their bill. I was like, who thought that through? Who's that? Paper boy, yeah, you owe a buck twenty for your paper. Yeah, I'm putting into this bag of cash I have because I'll drunk. Here, I'm gonna give you the little stamp basket showing that you paid that one. Yeah, this is my bang of cash. And Carlos, what you got going on? Well, you know, I continue to do some writing on Substack, systemsunderpressure at Substack.com. And I started a new section now that it's baseball season called the Ballpark Barrister. We're gonna be talking about some legal issues and how it affects our favorite game, and we'll be talking about that more in the future. I think that's all we have. Hammer and Carl's out.

SPEAKER_02 23:19

Watching all the world go by now, underneath the hazy sky now. Got my ticket for the long ride. Yeah, from my park bench perspective, got that wide eyed view on life. My park bench perspective, helping me to win the fight.