Ecuadorian standoff

It's a strange thing to have your waitress lock the restaurant's only door, stand before it with her arms crossed and demand money before anyone is allowed to leave.

But that's what happened, on a beautiful 1996 afternoon in Ecuador.

We were in the cevicheria for the encebollado -- an oniony tomato broth with white fish, served with a basket of salty popcorn to throw in with everything else for texture. We were in Quito on a budget, this was an unbelievable find. A big brothy soul-warming bowl for about a dollar. We had only been in the country for a few weeks, but already the staff, including the waitress with the scowl, knew who we were.

And as much as we loved the place for the food, this day had been far better than that. When we walked in for lunch, instead of a few tables lining the walls, today most of the tables were pushed together in the middle, bottles of beer everywhere, while an amazing group of young men passed around acoustic guitars and sang amazingly well.

(Later that day, we saw the same guys starring in a TV commercial for Nestle crunch bars. No kidding.)

Which was why they had attracted such a big crowd of laughers, supporters and drinkers pulling up chairs.

Initially we sat at a different table and ordered soup and beer. But before long it was all just too fun, and they made room for us in the music zone. We stayed for hours. We heard some were in a rock band called Tercer Mundo. They had played with legendary figures like Mercedes Sosa and Silvio Rodriguez. And they knew how to play any song in the world.

I remember them nicely helping me understand some things that had baffled me -- the words to some popular South American songs for instance, and Ecuador's obsession with the Eagles' "Hotel California." ("It's about Satanism," one of the best singers explained. "Ecuadorians love Satanism." Then he started to qualify that, but gave up. Through the beer, that was enough.)

Beer. There were glasses all over the table, and they were constantly getting empty again. There was a constant need for more beer, which in Ecuador at that time was typically a huge, cold bottle of San Miguel.

At one point somebody asked me: "Henry, beer?"

I said I was good, and he laughed. "No para tomar," he said, "para poner." As in, he wasn't asking me to drink more beer. He was asking me to buy more beer.

And we bought plenty, until the crowd started to thin out, the fun was winding down, so we settled up and paid for the soup and the beer we had ordered.

Then, the trouble with the waitress. And here we were, ready to leave but unable to ... confused.

What emerged was that of all the beer and popcorn and ceviche and encebollado that had been served in the restaurant that day, almost none of it had been paid for.

Thank the heavens for our separate bill. The waitress quickly acknowledged that "Los Americanos" had already paid. In theory, she probably would have let us out, but we had been part of the party crew all day.

As for all the other drinks ... well there was a famous rock band, maybe they could pay. But where were they? Gone. It had been hard to know who was in the band and who was just singing and playing along. But now it was clear. Those three guys had ditched and paid for nothing, but for whatever value you could assign to the music they left behind.

The restaurant was on the hook for all the food and drink, and this waitress was having none of that.

As much as we would have been happy to contribute further, it's worth noting that the reason we were in Ecuador at all was because a friend told us you could live there for six months with $1,000, and that's more or less what we were in the middle of doing. Lunch and a few beers had emptied our pockets.

The waitress' problem was that tough though she may have been, it was entirely possible there was just not enough cash in the crowd to even come close to paying the remaining bill in full. One minute, then two. Not a single sucre had appeared, and she had not moved an inch from that door. It was like being in a class with an irate teacher, only with the added worry that someone in the crowd might have a weapon.

And here was the thing: Everyone in the room was indignant, and rightly so. The restaurant had prices and needed to be paid. The drinkers had been sold on the idea they were, for one day of their lives, partying with rock stars. But they had been abandoned in one key aspect of that. Some others had hardly drunk anything, or had paid for what they consumed.

Everybody felt a little victimized, and nobody really felt that bill was their responsibility.

And that last sentence is why I'm telling you about all this on an NBA blog. It seems to me that there's more than a little of that going in right now in the CBA talks. NBA players have more than done their jobs. They have made the league as popular as it has ever been, even without the media magic of Michael Jordan in uniform. And on top of that, they have already offered to play for hundreds of millions less per season than they used to. The owners, meanwhile, say that's a nice gesture, but it's simply insufficient to make the league run well.

So long as everyone is fired up about what's fair, there is never going to be a solution. It's a real impasse. It'll only end with somebody heroically valuing resolution more than fairness.

Finally, the quietest guy in the room did something very bold. Like all of us, he was wearing worn-out clothes and beat-up sneakers. It was hard to imagine he had a lot of money. But he did have a big, gold (or at least gold-colored) watch. He slipped it off his wrist, and, without a word, handed it to the waitress.

It was the best offer she was going to get, and it was clearly a huge deal to him. She accepted the watch, and we all left.

Source: http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/post/_/id/32573/ecuadorian-standoff

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