They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Here’s a picture of me, Anthony Bourdain and Eric Ripert at the Warner Theater in D.C. and the story of how I came to meet these guys that night in 2010.
I’ve never been much on celebrity heroes. I’ve always thought it was a little strange that people will idolize a musician or an actor because it always feels to me like they are idolizing a character, not a person. Most rock stars and movie stars are playing a role and are very different when they are off camera, so to me it’s a bit like looking up to a character in a book like Atticus Finch or Tom Joad. On the other hand, there are people you come across at times in your life when you really need a hero and maybe their songs or their movies are the things that keep you going. Anthony Bourdain was that person for me.
After spending my twenties guiding multi-week tours of the U.S. all summer and spending my winters traveling the world, I finally gave in to the pressure to “grow up” and “get a real job”. Coupled with that was my desire to help out in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans which is how I found myself wearing a tie and teaching junior high school math. The times were tough as was the job itself, but it was the dramatic lifestyle change that affected me the most. After so many years on the road, I was all of a sudden faced with rent and bills and trying to make the most of my weekends. I’m not going to lie, “the real world” wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. I found myself struggling from paycheck to paycheck and from one week to the next. Going from my tour guide salary to a teacher’s salary seemed like a big jump, but after all of my bills it really didn’t leave much and I ended up getting a second job working three nights a week waiting tables. It was all a bit much.
One thing I did have for the first time in many years was cable television. I’ve never been big on TV, but after a long day of work, I now understood why people plop down in front of the tube to unwind for a while. Immersed as I was in the situation I was in, I didn’t need to watch the news or anything sad or violent so the Travel Channel became my escape. I will never forget flipping over to the Travel Channel one day and seeing something completely different. What I saw was not some tropical island where wealthy bikini-clad models sipped daiquiris by the pool, but rather scenes from Southeast Asia, a place near and dear to me, and a soothing voiceover telling about real places with real problems.
That was the first time I saw No Reservations and the first time I had ever seen or heard of Anthony Bourdain. When I needed an escape most in my life, I got one through this show. He went to places I had been or places I wanted to go. He ate at street stalls and drank in dive bars with real people. He smoked and poked fun at himself and generally just seemed to be having a good time while he was seeing the world and learning about it from the people who lived there.
No Reservations became my guilty pleasure. I watched reruns whenever I could and set aside my Monday nights to catch the new episode each week. It became a ritual – I would cook a nice meal and be sure it was ready right in time for the show to begin. No Reservations made the start to my week a little easier and gave me something to look forward to, which I desperately needed at the time. My girlfriend gave me his books Kitchen Confidential and A Cook’s Tour for Christmas, and I devoured them. Having spent many years in the restaurant industry, I could really relate to what he was writing about and it made me like him even more. While I slogged through my days and weeks at school, Tony gave me the escape I needed. It was probably also this show that helped me understand that my place was out there in the world, not cooped up inside somewhere, not even somewhere as cool as New Orleans.
When I left The Big Easy, I went back to guiding tours for the summer. That fall, I applied to teach in Japan for a year and while I was waiting to hear back from them I took a job teaching here in D.C. This turned into a tough time in my life. My girlfriend left me for someone else and my grandmother broke her hip and became really sick. I was sad and alone most of the time and really disliked the school I was teaching in and was hardly sleeping at night. It was a really hard couple of months. It was around that time that I started a “bucket list” which seemed like a reasonable thing to do. Unfortunately I could only come up with two items at the time. First I wanted to see Counting Crows play my favorite song Mrs. Potter’s Lullaby live in concert, and second I wanted to meet Anthony Bourdain.
Both of these items seemed like a stretch, but they gave me something to think and dream about. I’m pretty good at finding a way when I set my mind on something. Counting Crows was on tour at the time and I got tickets to see them somewhere in Virginia and then the next night in Baltimore. They played the song both nights and in Baltimore I even ended up hanging out with their opening band after the show. That turned out to be pretty easy.
Then I found that Tony was doing a speaking tour, and he was actually coming to the Warner Theater here in D.C. to do a talk with his friend Eric Ripert. It was a cool format, with a local reporter asking them questions while the three of them sat on couches around a coffee table and it felt like we were sitting in someone’s living room. I had gotten some sort of V.I.P. ticket which gave me backstage access after the event for a Meet and Greet with Tony and Eric. I had never been to such a thing before, but hey, this was the last item on my bucket list. It turned out to be pretty lame to be honest. There was a cash bar and the two of them sat at a table while a line of people waited to get photos and autographs. If there’s one thing I really hate, it’s standing in line, so I had a few beers and wandered around and figured sooner or later I’d get in line when it was shorter. What else did I have to do?
By the time that actually happened, I had had more than a few beers and they were starting to close everything down. I was at the very end of the line. When I got to their table, I realized I had nothing for them to sign because it was just the meeting that was important. I unfolded my ticket and got them to sign that, we chatted for a minute and we took this photo together. Tony seemed pretty much like he does on TV, and told Eric, referring to me, that it was usually the drunkest guy in the room who had the most fun. That made me smile for weeks. I treasure this photo because it was a huge highlight in a really stressful stretch in my life. Soon after it happened I got my acceptance letter to work in Japan where I would spend the next two years of my life. That would be another tough stretch, but No Reservations would help me get through that too. But that’s another story for another day.
It broke my heart two years ago last week when I heard that Tony had taken his own life in his hotel room in France. It was even more sad that it was Eric Ripert who found him. I’ve dealt with my own depression through much of my life and have spent plenty of time discussing depression with others. One simply never knows how much someone else is struggling and what they’re struggling with. Tragically in the end I don’t think Tony knew how much he was loved or how many people he had affected. Without Tony and his books and shows, my life would probably be very different than it is now. He gave me the courage to do things my way and tell it like I see it. He changed the travel genre forever with his shows, taking people to some of the deepest, darkest corners of the planet. But most of all he made me smile and gave me something to look forward to during the toughest years of my life.
I had always hoped that I would write an epic travel book someday which would lead to my own travel show taking people to small-town America. Somehow through this I’d get to hang out with Tony and we could laugh about that night and this picture which he would obviously never remember but it meant so much to me. It makes me sad to know that that meeting will never happen.
Tony was one of the very few heroes I’ve had in my life. He was flawed and different and those were part of what I liked about him. This one time I met him, though I was at the very back of the line, he still managed a smile and some kind and appreciative words. It’s a day I’ll always remember. We all need days like that.
