A PLEASANT ODEUR OF SMOLDERING LEAVES

A breakfast of fried Italian sausage with chopped cucumber on buttered toast is, perhaps, not the most nutritious start of the day. So it's a good thing that I did not eat until several hours after I got up, when the coffee had been 'digested'. As well as a healthy pipe-full of some marvelously smelly tobacco.
Reviewed two volumes while thus occupied.
After which I took a very long bath.

Yes, of course by myself!

Do you really think anyone else could stand to be around me, when I'm reeking of Latakia, Turkish leaf, and pungent flue-cured tobaccos?!?

Well, other than a fellow pipe-smoker, of course.

Or an extremely unusual woman. One with very particular tastes, and an insane amount of boldness and determination.


After soaking I needed more caffeine. Following which I decided that the full-flavoured life absolutely required a zesty sandwich with unhealthy stuffing.


POST-PRANDIAL AMBLE

One more bowl of that very autumnal blend while strolling over the back-end of Nob Hill, where the cablecars rise on Washington, around the Clay Street side of the tall apartment buildings where the ginkgo trees are shedding golden leaves, then down Jackson to Hyde, where another cablecar passed me at the curve.
There's a small restaurant there which would be nice to invite someone to sometime, especially after seeing a couple inside happily sharing several orders of potstickers with hot sauce. Two people, with similar condimental tastes, scarfing down dumplings...... A very intimate moment, almost like being present in their home, despite their being very much in public. They scarcely said a word, communicating almost entirely with their eyes.
And their co-ordinated chopsticks.


有利飯店 U-LEE RESTAURANT

A very nice Chinese eatery at 1468 Hyde Street at the corner of Jackson, that does some splendid food indeed. Remarkably, many of their customers are white, which normally indicates a certain level of slapdash and sweet-sour. Very small, with seating for no more than maybe two dozen people if every seat is occupied.
Spare, not overly decorated. Yet their cooking is consistently good, and they do some purely marvelous potstickers.

It can get crowded by seven o'clock.

The menu has an extensive selection of standard Chinese restaurant dishes, as well as things that Chinese people like. Their chow fun is rather darned good, the long-beans and chicken is very very nice, the eggplant is superb.....

[NOTE: standard Chinese restaurant dishes nowadays refers to kung pao whatevers, Mongolian whatevers, General Tso's whatevers, Walnut whatevers, and several other constructs of a long-forgotten Hunanese - Szechuanese derivation. Stuff with which most Cantonese people are not particularly impressed. And the family that runs this restaurant are Cantonese. Evenso, they treat these white folk favourites with respect, and take deserved pride in their cooking. So whether your tastes are mundane, or eccentric and adventurous, you will certainly find plenty here to make you happy.]

Perfect for couples, if dining early.

And great potstickers.

Really great.


A RANT TO FINISH

It's nearly tea-time now.  Perhaps I need another bowl of robust woman-repellent?  Except it's getting close to the hour when my apartment mate returns, and because she has a slight fever, her sense of smell is more acute than normal.
So I should start airing out the place right around now.

Smoking my pipe in the kitchen is more than a little dreary.
It doesn't inculcate a home-like feeling.
Quite un-gezellig.

There are no places nearby where one can dawdle over a pot of Assam with a pipe and a book. For one thing, this is America, so nobody even understands tea. 
For another, this is California, where the blasted wheatgerm-snarfing earthmother types have so thoroughly poisoned the discourse about tobacco that smokers are treated like lepers. And chased outside with curses and operatic screaming.

I'm somewhat baffled at the venom those watery-spined do-gooders have towards tobacco, when lighting up a joint in public is considered politically correct - the poor pothead needs it medicinally!
Medical pot: possibly the biggest con-job since proposition thirteen.
Pot is responsible for more societal ills than liquor.
Lordy but Californians can be fools.

Personally, I cannot stand the smell of marijuana.
Degustibus disputandem.
Freaks.



I'll probably dump some pipes and tobacco into my bag and wander across the hill to Chinatown to have a snack. With one or two cups of milk-tea.
After which I'll light up, and head over to the Occidental.

No potheads or earthmothers there.

No-one who smells.



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