Ethnic Avenue – The Street That Crosses All the Others

I’ve intentionally remained silent on the whole Tiger Woods affair because the fact that he liked white girls named Jamie and Escalades was the most extraordinarily non-surprising news in the universe.

Even as the thing unfolded, and a few things did raise my eyebrow—like the sheer number of mistresses and level of cheapness of the girls—nothing happened that I really didn’t expect. He did the self-flagellation apology tour, more sordid details trickled in (like the text messages), and he signed up for rehab camp–all pretty standard public-infidelity-scandal stuff.

But, finally, some stuff has come out that I didn’t expect:

The women paint Woods as being sexually insatiable as well as extraordinarily cheap…[Mindy] Lawton said he once bought her a Subway chicken-wrap sandwich. [Jamie] Jungers told [Vanity Fair contributing editor Mark] Seal one of the reasons she broke off her affair with Woods was because he refused to help her when she needed financial assistance.

Now, Tiger, that’s disappointing.

All of this, in aggregate, is starting to paint a disturbing picture. You can explain away the cheap-girl thing, by itself, pretty easily—and people have. “Well, if you’re used to having steak all the time, you might crave a Happy Meal here and there,” or, “He went for the low-hanging fruit,” or, “Maybe he just likes that cheap-skank look, recreationally.” Sure, those things are all possible. But the also-patronizing-Subway tells me that Tiger Woods lived two double-lives–not just the one with the wife at home and the harem of cocktail waitresses on the road–but also one of public fanciness and private ghetto-ness.

Get anything on the menu, baby.

Anyone that knows me well knows that I absolutely loathe Subway sandwiches—and with good reason. Subway sandwiches are what I call “condiment sandwiches,” that is, sandwiches that taste mostly like whatever condiments you put on them. The meat, bread, and cheese are really sort of irrelevant, merely conduits for the toppings. Next time you eat at Subway(and I hope that you don’t), order a sandwich with no mayonnaise, no mustard, and no pepperoncinis (a big culprit). That shit will taste like virtually nothing. That applies to nearly all of the cold sandwiches.

The hot sandwiches are a different story, but not any better. What they do is make bad replicas of real hot sandwiches in a microwave. It’s like when you made food out of your Play-Doh as a kid. It may have looked like spaghetti and meatballs, and you could eat it, but it tasted like salty paste (I was told).

You can’t make a real cheesesteak sandwich in a microwave. Period. But that doesn’t stop Subway from trying. That’s like baking a cake in the microwave. You could probably eat it, but it’s going to taste like shit.

I already know what some Subway apologists are going to say: “lately, they’ve incorporated one of those conveyer-belt ovens into their arsenal. The sell toasted sandwiches.” And, while that improves the melting-the-cheese problem, it still doesn’t produce a top-shelf hot sandwich. Heat isn’t the only requirement for a hot sandwich.

Then there’s the whole “fresh-baked bread” gimmick. If you’re ever been around a real bakery, you know that the smell that wafts from Subways’ ovens doesn’t really resemble the smell of real bread baking. Subway baking smells like someone is roasting a beaker of chemicals in the oven. Go and smell and you’ll never think of it the same.

So, when I learned that Tiger Woods takes his mistresses to Subway, I asked myself one key question: does he eat there? If he does, we know what kind of man he is: one that likes taking it low-brow and nasty when no one is looking. All he needs is basic cable, the first woman he sees at the bar, and a five-dollar footlong.

Shame on you Tiger. You’re disgusting.

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