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I tried McDonald's, but the playground area smelled like rotten feet and the men sitting around the jungle gym made me sick because I couldn't help but think they were child predators.

Payless got played out real quick after spending most of my lunch breaks there simply because it's either that or the cheesey Fashion Stop store, where the plus size section has surprisingly cuter clothes. There's only so many times you can check to see if an ugly pair of shoes you don't really like went on sale.

So I choose to eat my salad (no, I'm not skinny, I just eat salad to make up for eating a jar of Nutella at night) at Burger King No. 5180. With all the freaks in and out of this Los Angeles location, the clerks at the register could care less about little old me using their establishment as my personal cafeteria.

On this particular blistering Monday I sit down at my usual table way in the back by the window where the man behind me is breathing heavily into his cell phone. I'm not sure if he's having phone sex or just trying to be discreet, but I don't want to make eye contact with him so I avoid looking too far into the matter.

The regulars are polishing off their burgers and fries: a 40-something black man with a big salt and pepper 'fro who sports Adidas track pants and sips on a cup of hot tea with 15 teabags seeping inside no matter how hot it is outside; a Latino man who wears an army green Fidel hat and reads the Spanish version of Epicenter: Why Current Rumblings in the Middle East Will Change Your Future by Joel Rosenberg while advertising a portrait he painted of a woman from an attached photograph (I guess he's waiting for someone to ask him if he'll paint a portrait of them); and the usual rowdy group of boys who wear creased khakis and black T-shirts and probably get harassed by cops daily.

It's a writer's haven really. I mean, how inspiring can a freakin' Starbucks be? Or worse, the local coffeehouse where hipsters work out of on Mac laptops? I'm way more impelled to write real talk when surrounded by regular, everyday folks from the 'hood as opposed to rich kids frontin' like they're starving artists.