PIZZA, BEER, BURGER, and FRIES.
PIZZA, BEER, BURGER and FRIES
Four young men arrived one June morning at Penilworth tube station.Two Italians and two Poles. Pushing open the doors to the street they noticed a sheet of paper stuck to the glass. The first four weeks of June/July, it said, was carnival time – this would mean people off work and less use of exits so the tube company had repairs scheduled to the north exit. The exit was to be closed for the week …..from Monday to Friday.
They looked at the sheet taped to the door, the English words making only very little sense to the two young Italians.
What’s it say? Haven’t got me glasses. He looked into Beer’s eyes for an answer
My English reading nota so gooda but wait a minute, Oh no, next weeka we gotta get off at the other tube exit, the south exit, the paper says.
Pizza complained - Oh what a pain in the neck , we’ll have to walk all the way through the carnival crowds to get to work. I donta lika working in dosa biga crowdsa.
The two Poles also read the taped sheet and guessed that their exit was ok and their work would not be interrupted.
Penilworth tube station near Brixton is in a small theatre district where costumed actors could be seen taking a break from rehearsals of Pirates of the Caribbean or Puss in Boots. Penilworth had two exits about 200 metres apart and around the corner from each other. You couldn’t see one exit from the other. Every day these four men arrived by tube and collected their costumes from the nearby theatrical outfitter’s shop. Their foreign sounding names were too hard for the shop staff to handle , so they were just called by the food they dressed as.
Their working day began something like this. The door bell tinkled and two Italian voices called out
Buongiorno Bert, you got me foamy bubbles frothed up?
Yeah its fixed after yesterday’s windy weather, Beer.
Quando me cheese isa gonna be repainted?
Don’t worry Pizza, its ready now.
Bert knew these guys were always up for a laugh. Take for example Pizza. Bert had sometimes seen him and his wife at parties. Pizza’s natural Italian sense of humour was one reason his wife loved him. In front of others the wife would deliberately and playfully ask him What did you do at work today? It was a well-practised routine He would always reply You know. I was pizza again all day long. It was yesterday I was a beer, remember? And everybody laughed. His pal the big Beer In response would say his funny lines (in exaggerated heavy Italian accent ) like You geta Too mucha of me, darlin, and you vill loose yura heada
Likewise at parties or bars where yuppies boasting about their job might say I’m in blue chips… I’m in computer software. Burger would often say (in his Polish accent) I’m a big cheese in hamboorgers. One yuppie might say incredulously YOU have investments In fast food? Then came the reply - No I mean I am literally the cheese in hamboorger every day. Down at the club in Little Warsaw, the Poles were also popular natural comics with Burger using his favourite party lines like Lookin for trouble? I’m boorger. Just cll me big mac - you wanna piece of me? And his pal Fries would add You want fries or flies on your boorger? Hahaha
Standing all day long outside each of these two exits was a pair of these young men dressed for advertising purposes as gigantic food items sold in those nearby fast food restaurants . It was poorly paid work but all they had to do was simply be there outside the stations to offer vouchers for reduced prices of food and drinks to passers-by exiting the tube. The huge piece of Pizza and his pal the big glass of foaming Beer were Italian and were at the north exit.
The man-sized Burger with a huge sesame seed top hat, and his pal the enormous Fries were Polish and were at the south exit. Now that the north exit with Pizza and Beer had been closed , they had almost no customers to take their vouchers, only a few passers by: and they stayed a whole day practically alone giving out no vouchers for their restaurant.
Were gonna be in trouble witha da boss said Pizza gloomily.
That evening their boss ordered them to move for the next few days round to the south exit, from which the crowds were still pouring. They had never been to the south exit before and they weren’t sure about the best spot to stand doing their advertising,
As soon as Pizza and Beer appeared at the south exit there was going to be friction. It developed slowly but then rapidly worsened. Burger and Fries shouted in Italian at Pizza and Beer to move away from “their” pitch. Beer and Pizza tried to explain in fluent Polish that they had no choice as their boss had told them to move there. None of the four spoke both languages and each pair thought the other pair was making some insulting remarks and using offensive language.
In an effort to back up his remarks, Pizza lumbered over and deliberately bumped heavily into Fries and then tried to pull away some of Fries’s actual gigantic potato strips. Fries pushed him back roughly and lunged to get a grip on some of Pizza’s pepperoni-covered head to try and move him away. The amused crowd of passers by began to laugh and chant, maybe thinking it was part of an advertising stunt.
Pizza pizza ! ! they cried enthusiastically.
The next thing to happen was that Burger closed in struggle with Beer, so there were now four of them wrestling in enormous clumsy food suits
Big Mac Big Mac !! was the new chant.
The struggle was ludicrous because they were wearing inflated costumes and were too fat to actually get any grip…Their food costumes were mostly made of padding and rubber, difficult to even get into and out of, and the arms were restricted. Only their hands were exposed in order to give their vouchers away. So, in the tussle, they couldn’t get into a real fight with punches or kicks. Taking the suits off would take too long, so and they wrestled slowly and awkwardly. When they fell down they could not easily get up again, and struggled to roll over like beetles on their backs. Burger’s sesame hat began to fall off and dangle over his face so he pulled it clear off his head and and dropped it on the road as they tumbled and rolled about. Forming a circle around the four food giants, the laughing crowd gradually began to throw money into the hat lying on the ground, shouting in encouragement.
More!! More!! they yelled, Grab his fries, knock his froth off !
After a half hour of intermittent pushing and shoving and struggling to regain their feet and some small measure of dignity, the protagonists settled down. They contented themselves with just grumbles and threats in Italian or Polish, and full-body bouncing bouts. This continued on and off throughout the day until 6:30 when their shifts finished. Then Burger collected his sesame hat and was pleased and surprise to see that there was about twenty pounds in it.
Burger and Fries went back to their restaurant to change out of costume and then went home feeling it was not all a lost day. They mentiond nothing about the twenty pounds to their boss. Likewise Pizza nd Beer checked in at their own restaurant giving in the vouchers remaining. Each boss perceived the event as being good for vouchers/advertising and encouraged his two protagonists to continue the “fights” daily if possible. Having drawn the same conclusion, each boss instructed his champions
I want you to continue with these fights daily even if you gotta fake it
So next day, the same thing happened. An initial struggle of shoving and pushing quickly evolved into a colourful exchange of curses in Polish and Italian. But they gave up serious struggling much sooner than the previous day and waddled about , entertaining the kids instead, as the money rolled into the hat. In gesture-aided Italian and Polish they managed to agree to split the money at day’s end. They tacitly realised that money was going to appear much faster whenever they struggled, so they began to learn to fake it. As they tussled, some giant styrofoam fries got scattered across the steps at the tube exit, and masses of rubbery foaming beer-froth in sponge were blowing around the ground. Children began to gather up the fries and beer froth. All good for advertising business.
I starting to lika working ina des crowdsa muttered Pizza loudly, changing his opinion for cash in hand.
All seemed ok but, as each day’s performance ended, Pizza noticed that Burger went across the road each evening immediately after the show to chat with a certain fruit-seller girl on the other side of the street. To Pizza’s annoyance, each evening Burger met her and they would go off together.
Jealousy developed because Pizza had had his eye on her too and and the next day during the lunchtime break he approached her to chat her up in Polish-Italian. Watching this, Burger got the wrong impression and thought Pizza was insulting her. He waddled across the road to intervene. With his poor English he couldn’t really understand. So they began to fight, again only pushing and shoving due to their ridiculous cumbersome costumes . Again the crowd thought it was part of the show.
After much finger pointing and jabbering in mutually unintelligible tongues they cleared up the problem . It started to dawn on Pizza that the girl was the sister of Burger who was simply accompanying her home each evening through the boisterous carnival crowds. Burger now began to accept the obvious interest o f Pizza in his sister. The three gradually settled into a tricky but manageable relationship. Soon all four food giants became friends. Pizza struck it up successfully with the girl as well as with her brother, Burger.
It was also starting to dawn on the four that the crowd from the tube was not their only audience. In addition to the restaurant advertising work from Monday to Friday. the four pals arranged to start staging regular street shows for the crowds in the evenings and at weekends. And of course they started to collect significant amounts of money in the hat.
The repairs to the tube were eventually completed and , after a week, the north exit was reopened and the two pairs of gigantic foods went back to their separate exits. The “friction” disappeared and the “entertainment” subsided. They became disappointed. The four men all felt that simply working as huge advertisements for the two restaurants was simply not well-enough paid. They wanted to become independent of their bosses of the two restaurants. So they got together one night in the pub. Pizza suggested
Lets quita da restaurant advertising jobs entirely whether outside the tube or elsewhere.. And not just for carnival month but permanently. What do you think?
Fries nodded vigorously - Tak! Iss good idea And we can hire same kinds of costumes from same outfitters shop no problem. Mayb even other costumes? Tak? Everybody grunted their enthused approval, with a new round of drinks.
And we don’ta hav to stick just to justa da tube crowd …what about a kids show??added Beer .
When they thought back to the incidental involvement of kids in their shows so far it was obvious ly a successful idea. So they extended their repertoire with solo dancing antics inside the fat suits and “fights’ with feet flailing and arms totally coming off. Beer and Fries organized ideas on a contest for kids to collect the discarded vouchers - to collect ten and get free pizza etc They also organized teams of kids to help keep their “performance-street” clean and tidy. This ensured public involvement and support and even brought help from the local council.
As summer approached, they had organized a schedule of regular appearances in the park. First, for children, but soon for everybody. And not only as Pizza, Burger, Beer, and Fries. They spread their talents into giant fish and birds, huge bears and giraffes. They rented the local drama group’s playhouse put on some very popular small stage shows on Sundays.
One afternoon the local television news cameras found them. Their performances quickly became popular local tv events. Was this going to be the limit for them or maybe there was no limit??
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