Ames’ dining scene has been a topic not often touched on by ISU media. Aside from residence hall food, burgers and pizza, food from outside the home can be a rarity for the poor student. Recently, though, Jimmy John’s Gourmet Sandwiches and Smiles Inc. in Campustown have been making headlines.

Jimmy John’s moved next to the long-time Ames stand in September. Now Jimmy John’s says gyro customers have been loitering near its doors and using its bathrooms. The gyro stand should be held to the same standard, they say, and should have a bathroom.

While stumbling home from the bars one night, I decided to see if Jimmy John’s was right. I waited in the cold line for my favorite weekend nightcap: a lightly singed gyro. Before I began parading my golden-brown gyro inside nearby buildings — something gyro eaters are apparently known to do — I looked for the vendor’s facilities, found them and did my thing.

As it turns out, the only toilet facility available was the tip jar. Things really hit the fan when I tried to drop a deuce. So, I guess the gyro vendor really doesn’t have a restroom. Of course, neither does a candy machine, nor a watering fountain. None of these places have seats, so it doesn’t make sense that they would be targeted as a “restaurant.”

Unless people have a gyro in their hand, I wouldn’t even call them customers, and I can’t imagine many people going to the bathroom while still holding on to their food. Having been to the stand many times, there aren’t many people who wait around while they eat. I haven’t got much beef with Jimmy John’s, though, it’s just sad to see a chain restaurant attacking a local vendor. I think we could use a new enemy on the corner of Welch Avenue and Chamberlain Street to keep our mind off the dispute.

Luckily, we’ve got one to latch onto: the ATM. Within mere feet of both Jimmy John’s and the gyro vendor is a machine that spews one of the most unclean, filthiest materials you can find. Money passes from unwashed hand to unwashed hand and from back pocket to back pocket.

When people walk into Jimmy John’s with a pocketful of change, they’re bringing in a world of disease. I think the sub shop should recognize the real problem.

The business shares the corner with a bacteria-filled box of capitalistic death, and it’s worried about an gyro stand that got its start the same way Jimmy John’s did in 1983. I wonder if Jimmy John’s had a bathroom when it was running out of a converted garage near East Illinois University.

The gyro stand isn’t even there on weekdays, and the ATM machine is pumping out money all the time. I’d say a lot more customers of the ATM vendor walk into Jimmy John’s, and it doesn’t have a bathroom either. We know the enemy, and its name is money. Help the Ames dining scene and stay away from it — especially if it came from the gyro tip jar.

Jeff Mitchell is a senior in journalism and mass communication from Urbandale.