I've only been to a Sambo's Restaurant once in my life. It happened somewhere in Northern California.
It was an entirely weird experience in that the restaurant had all of its kind of kitschy marketing language as if it were something everybody knew. Like the McDougal's restaurant in Eddie Murphy's Coming to America.
The occasion was that we were up to visit my grandfather, Pa, who regularly played with his band at the Concord Jazz Festival. As a family, San Francisco was our vacation town. Just being there and staying in a hotel was a very cool thing for our young and populous family of seven. We always stayed at the Lombard Street Hotel, a moderately fabulous place whose great attraction was its external, glass elevator. We stayed on the third and top floor and looked out over the Bay from the balcony, a wondrous sight.
As you might imagine, we were too broke to get seven tickets to the Jazz Festival. But on our way home to LA, we drove down by Concord to have lunch with Pa and ended up at the Sambo's in the area.
The fact that my parents must have thought the coast was clear made some impression. I mean how could any self respecting black family go to a Sambo's Restaurant? Yeah I know there was no little black sambo as the mascot, instead an Indian looking kid and his pet tiger. Still, there must have been some part of me that walked in with that attitude, like, you white people better not say anything rude to me. While I don't remember much about the place besides the incongruity of its whole appeal, I certainly remember the attitude. I know when you get that, there is nothing whitefolks can do. The more ingratiating and sweet they act, the more you resent it as condescension. The more snappy they get with you, the more you just know they must hate your guts. The more indifferent they are to you, the more invisible you feel. When you get this attitude, they can't win, they can't break even and they can't get out of the game. And so I see in retrospect that it wasn't what Sambo's made whitefolks do, it was what Sambo's made me feel. My problem, not Sambo's.
Of course I probably saw that then too even as a kid, because although I understand, I never really held a grudge against the place. They never did me wrong. But somehow I think I must have patted myself on the back for surviving lunch at Sambo's, with my grandfather, a New Orleans Jazz musician whose concerts I couldn't afford to attend.
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