At Denny's, free food, long lines THE ECONOMY IN TURMOIL

A group of students from Wallenberg High School dig in to their free "Grand Slam" breakfasts at the Denny's restaurant on Mission St. in San Francisco. A group of students from Wallenberg High School dig in to their free "Grand Slam" breakfasts at the Denny's restaurant on Mission St. in San Francisco. Photo: Kim Komenich, The Chronicle Photo: Kim Komenich, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 8 Caption Close At Denny's, free food, long lines 1 / 8 Back to Gallery

Times being what they are, a free plate of bacon and eggs is a thing to behold.

On Tuesday, it was worth more than $5.99. It was worth standing on a sidewalk for nearly two hours.

When you're laid off, said a lot of people who were laid off, there are worse ways to spend the day than waiting in line for a free $5.99 plate of bacon and eggs.

So it was that thousands of people showed up around the Bay Area and elsewhere to claim their share of the largesse from Denny's restaurants, which was giving away its Grand Slam breakfast to all comers.

The promotion was promulgated the way many monumental events are decreed these days, via a Super Bowl commercial. By Tuesday morning, the word had spread like hotcakes. In downtown San Francisco, the line stretched from the front door on Mission Street, between Fourth and Fifth streets, to the corner of Fourth and up the block.

Nearby merchants complained. Three cops stood by. The restaurant manager ordered that a new line should be formed in the Jessie Street alley, and people in the second line thought they were in the first line, and a lot of frustrated people got more scrambled than their eggs.

Looked like a soup line

Paris Winslow of San Francisco said he was standing in line because he couldn't find work anymore. His last job, he said, was holding signs on street corners advertising going-out-of-business sales, but all those businesses have gone out of business, and now a free plate of bacon and eggs looks pretty good.

"The economy is getting kind of scary," Winslow said. "This line looks like those pictures of soup kitchen lines during the Depression."

All around him stood hungry people with dogs, hungry people pushing supermarket carts, hungry people with blankets and hungry people with open-toed shoes that hadn't originally come that way.

Store manager Javier Martinez stood at the end of the first line and directed people to the second line. He conferred with his waiters and clerks by cell phone, he tried to make nice with his ticked-off neighbors, and he sought to mollify the three cops who were telling him to keep the sidewalk clear.

"Denny's should have planned this better," one officer told Martinez. "You tell people that something's free these days, and they're going to show up. It was predictable."

Time with a book

Customer Doug Kirschhoch spent his time in line reading a science fiction novel about an alien battle on the planet Leeshore. He got through three chapters.

"Pretty good book," he said. "I knew I'd be waiting in line, and so I'm trying to spend the time usefully."

Inside the restaurant, the servers' hands were full, and their pockets were empty. Tips were almost nonexistent, as 15 percent of nothing is nothing.

"Nobody's leaving anything," said one waiter, who identified himself as Raymundo. "And some people are not so nice."

The trouble, Raymundo said, was that only the Grand Slam breakfast - bacon, eggs, pancakes, sausage - was free. Not the coffee or the orange juice and certainly not the steak.

"One man ordered the T-bone, and I told him it wasn't included, and he said, 'F- you,' " Raymundo said. "That's the kind of day it's been."

Water was free, and most people had that. Also free was ketchup, and the ketchup was flowing on many plates like blood on the battlefields of Leeshore.

The over-easy eggs were going down easy at other Denny's, too. At the one outside Serramonte mall in Daly City, the manager was taking names at the front door, and three security guards were trying to keep order. Waiting diners paced the parking lot and threw footballs.

Sharing an iPod

Would-be breakfasters Arias Davis and Tia Hill, both students at San Francisco State University, sat on a low brick wall by the parking lot and read their political science textbooks while they waited. They shared an iPod, listening with one earbud apiece.

Stephen Weller waited with his dog, Emmett. Weller, a contractor, said he has been out of work for six months.

"I came all the way from San Francisco for a free $6 meal," he said. "Isn't that pathetic? A year ago, I never would have done this. These days I'm willing to put my ego on the back burner."

At 1:15 p.m., the manager said she would, regretfully, be able to pencil no more names onto the waiting list, which was already running three pages.

"The promotion only goes until 2 o'clock," she said. "I have at least two hours worth of people waiting right now."

Chilled diners

The South Carolina-based restaurant chain said it figured it might wind up giving away as many as 2 million meals at its 1,541 restaurants nationwide. There were lines reported in the snow in Pennsylvania and in early morning hours in Buffalo, N.Y., where the low temperature was 23 degrees.

"We've had waits up to three hours but no problems," said spokeswoman Cori Rice.

To ward off sidewalk mutinies, restaurant managers were giving out rain checks for free meals to anyone who didn't get in by the 2 p.m. deadline. With the cash-strapped state of California issuing IOUs to its creditors these days, at least a Denny's rain check was a security backed by actual bacon.