WHITE PEOPLE, KINDLY STAY OUT OF CHINATOWN! THANK YOU!

So far the San Francisco Department of Public Health has put several affordable eateries in Chinatown out of business. More are undoubtedly shortlisted. One might suspect them of being stuck-up officious Filipinos employing that well-known racism against the Chinese, or puritanical white xenophobes from Arizona or the Deep South. Or even, heaven forfend, corrupt city employees trying to solicit bribes.

I would not be at all surprised to discover that there are city employees enthusiastically making use of their position and English ability to squeeze people who do not speak English, who are just trying to make an honest living in an increasingly unfriendly cultural environment. Corruption is endemic when the victims are neither able to fight back nor willing to stand up and tell the bureaucrats to go piss up a rope.

But more than likely, they're simply among the more easily impressed readers of Yelp and other venom-spewing social media sites. Or they wish, desperately, to cater to the e-yuppies who are taking over and ruining San Francisco. Clueless, unimaginative, and self-impressed.
Some of whom actually are bigoted Filipinos.
Or disapproving white folk from Arizona.
And other southern-mentality zones.
As well as the East Coast.

Consider these doozies lifted from Yelp of several of my favourite food places in Chinatown:


"The service is terrible... very rude... very little meat ... did not look clean... get the hell out... mediocre... a funny flavor... horrible... avoid... outdated like everyone else here... way overrated... total disappointment."

[All of that describes a place where despite the crowded conditions I have never been disappointed. If I eat there too often, I'll probably die fat and happy far too soon. 
It's underrated.]


"Cold and bland... super disappointing... expect to not be understood if you don't speak whatever Chinese dialect... the worst food I've ever had... it wasn't even edible... random parts of the pig... very unpleasant... no meat in it at all... an absolutely awful aftertaste... not enough meat."

[I've eaten there several times. I don't even recognize it in any of this. I've never had a dissatisfying experience there at all, and it's always crowded with happy people. 
BTW: they speak Cantonese, Mandarin, and English.]


"I like Jollibee fried chicken better... the rice was okay... the kitchen is very dirty... when I got home, I had the runs... it was covered in batter.... mostly bone and fat... about the most tasteless I've ever had... a dirty cheap Chinese place."

[Jollibee, in case you didn't know, is a Filipino joint, run by Filippinos, for Filipinos. The place described in unflattering terms is ten times better than Jollibee. 
Damned Filipinos. Please stay in Daly City.]


"Bland and oily... bad service... rude and mean... saturated in oil... lacking in substance... service was so bad... a nightmare... Do they know how it's served in Hong Kong? Not impressed... a rather fugly looking mess... even unhealthier than HK. They don't give a shit...totally unprofessional crap... there are far tastier, magnificent HK edibles elsewhere."

[The white person who went to Hong Kong thinks far too much of himself. He's probably big, spongy, and overfed. And a computer programmer. As well as one hell of a superficialist.]


"Service doesn't exist at this place... they should at least be lukewarm and still crispy... dirty and dirty.... hate this place... I will never come back here... dirty floors, sticky tables, stinky restrooms... congealed mess... how bad could it be... grits!"

[Were they even talking about the same place? Maybe instead they described some restaurant in Pittsburgh or Detroit, or heaven help us New York. They probably weren't sufficiently fawned over by the hard-working staff.]


"Far from good... clueless... minimal English... nothing else ordered was palatable... extremely oily... stay away from the seafood... sketchy... a real let down... you can't expect a whole lot coming from Chinatown."

[Okay. I can accept that you have no clue. Everything there is more than palatable, and quite delicious. Which I know from experience. The seafood is very fresh. I expect a lot from them, they always deliver.]


"Greasy, too much dough and very little filling. Also not very clean."

[Some dude from Illinois -- they know from food there? Hoo hah!]


And it goes on and on. I have to ask, how many white tourists does it really take to buy a can of coca cola? All five of you? You take up space, have no clue that you're blocking everyone else, and that you are asking all kinds of stupid questions about stuff you have NO intention of eating anyhow is a monumental waste of the counter-lady's time and patience. The only upside is that she might learn some more English from exposure to you.

Why is it, that ten of you beef-fed Midwestern lardasses can make more noise and waste more of the staff's time than several times that number of neighborhood people? Then bellyache a storm about something totally unimportant and immaterial? Are you lot habitually loathsome?
Or just so full of yourselves?

Look, fast-food burger joints were invented specifically for your exqui dining pleasure. The menu is simple enough that even children can understand it, and you really really can have it your way. The only intellectually stressful decision you'll have to make is whether you want fries with that.
Go for the fries; you deserve a break today.

You want cheap, I get that. But your expectations are unrealistic. Whole Foods and Trader Joe level ingredients cost money. These folks know their customers, and if they started charging for the best cuts of meat and fancy imported European ingredients, they'd go out of business. They're catering to an audience which is NOT living high off the hog. And which actually likes a bit of animal fat, offal, gluten, and cholesterol.


This afternoon I was so looking forward to bowl of congee and a yautiu, only to discover that the bastards have closed the place down till further notice. Either the European tourists, the buggery Midwesterners, or the e-trash yuppies alerted the San Francisco Department of Public Health.
Whose socially-impaired and quite possibly corrupt as all git-out pencil pushers saw a splendid opportunity to show nice white San Franciscans that, by golly, they really cared.

The folks who run that restaurant work their netherends off.
That's an entirely family now without income.
Who still have rent to pay.

The people who eat there regularly want a good solid meal at a price they can afford. Me too. Their fried oil stick was the best on Stockton Street.
Yeah, the coffee is scheisse. But I don't go there for that.


In conclusion, will all of you pretentious pricks who expect Cordon Bleu food and service kindly go elsewhere. That isn't what you will get in a largely working-class neighborhood, which is now vastly more densely populated than ever before, due to rising rents and decreasing business opportunities. There are plenty of places where you can eat something exotic and have smiling patient waiters and waitresses attend to your every wish.
They're called 'Thai Restaurants'.


AFTER WORD

A regular reader left a wistfull comment underneath a post recently:

"Years ago this was a place to come for astute political commentary. Now, with slight variations its more about what you had for supper on any given day."

Yeah, I know, and I'm sorry. I've given up on political commentary. Between the far-right asshats and the dangerously loony leftwing, it just ain't worth it any more. I am no longer moved to indignation, but simply ignore the gun-nuts, radical Teabaggers, ignorant sods, and pretty much everybody who wants to save the whales, hug random trees, or ban plastic bags.
Let us eat the whales. We'll take the leftovers home.
In a convenient (and free) plastic bag.
Bon appétit.


Lunch sucked, by the way.



Please note: the "white people" referenced in the title of this post are not those for whom it is merely a happenstance of identity, but specifically those folks in which it is a glaring character defect. Much like veganism, spirituality, gun-nut, teabaggery, and other offensively defensive ethnicities and subcultures.
Please feel free to object
Whatever.




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