IT'S DIM SUM TIME FOR YOU!

Chinatown, intersection of Washington and Grant Avenue. Pipe with tobacco, and a cup of wonderful milk-tea. Late afternoon sunlight. Wonderful.
I lean against the ledge outside old telephone exchange, which is now an office of East-West Bank (中美銀行).

The tobacco is a six-year old Virginia, the milk-tea isn't as good as the purveyors have previously made, but nevertheless stellar.

The ladies working the corner are doing their very utmost. To a large extent, they must think us white people barking mad. They're handing out fliers and menus for a restaurant that serves Szechuan food, staffed entirely by Cantonese, but patronized solely by tourists. It still has the old sign (新杏香) mounted on the corner of the building, but the two newer names (one in English, a different one in Chinese) make no reference to "New Apricot Fragrance".
The beautiful colour pictures of their dishes next to the door make clear that local people should not even think of casually dining there.
They are very nice photos. The food looks spectacular.
But far too many dried chilies.



The old gentleman handing out menus for the restaurant on the other side of the street has a bemused expression on his face. It's late in the day, Chinatown is closing up for the evening, and he is still informing passers-by that they are serving "dim sum, very good". You will kindly remember that dim sum is customarily eaten only between very early morning and early afternoon. It's breakfast food, a way to wake up, a mid-morning snack frenzy, or a brunch for the entire family.
Tourists do not have the same feeding patterns.

And most tourists do not have sufficient knowledge (or taste) to judge the quality of the dim sum anyhow, so one rather suspects that it may not actually be quite up to local standards.

Many of the tourists also dress funny and smell "unusual", in addition to establishing ownership of the sidewalk in large lumbering groups, that stop suddenly for one of them to scratch an itch on her enormous thigh. If it weren't for uncle here threatening them with menus, and the ladies across the street thrusting fliers at them, they might never move out of the way,
and would not know where to go.

Brazilians, Germans, Midwesterners, Italians, Norwegians.
And others, who are less identifiable.
Still rather icky.



I've should remember to simply walk home if it is early evening. The number one California bus, which heads up Sacramento Street, was packed with extremely unpleasant drudges from the law-offices in the Embarcadero Center. Contrary to their own belief, the cell-phone yuppie generation is not fabulous. Not by a very wide margin.

The combination of aged Virginia pipe tobacco, hot milk-tea, and energetic commercial enterprise at Washington and Grant Avenue, however, was pretty dang close to heaven.
Perhaps I should get there earlier.

Have TWO cups of milk-tea.



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