IT'S LOUDER NOW

The best, and the worst, that could be said is that at least it wasn't "Sweet Caroline". Which is probably one of the most repulsive ballads to be howled at a karaoke place. But at that hour the bookseller and I were the only white people there, and hell will freeze over before we ever do that.
In fact, we don't sing at all at the karaoke place.
We don't go there for the music.


Every week, for many years, we meet for drinkies. Hamburger place, then an establishment with beer, after which to what is now a karaoke lounge for a nightcap. We're older now, and the person behind the counter is sane.
It didn't used to be like that; another person worked on our night, who was stark raving loopy (after a decade plus of too much Tequila), and wouldn't have understood if we refused to "have another one".

"G'waan, one mo', evibody happy!"

That's an order, dammit.

大家都開心！

I have to wonder what her reaction would have been if I informed her that due to necessary and beneficial medication I prefer not to touch alcohol anymore. She would have been irrational, and quite upset.

So! Mixed soda at the burger joint, Earl Grey tea at the beer place, and a nice refreshing glass of hot water while listening to people caterwauling.
Everything sounds worse if sung in Mandarin.



THERE IS ART IN THE ALLEY

Earlier we had from our vantage point at the beer place observed high drama in the alley. One recumbent gentleman there trying to adjust his arse, another one unfolding a Saudi flag, followed by the German flag, and a third stumbling, weaving, then falling against the wall and bleeding while dazed, which may have been caused by booze and marijuana together.
Instead of bonking his head.

Emergency services were called, and took him in, bandaging his head and placing him on a gurney. He probably pissed himself in the ambulance. The arse man spent the entire while either looking for fleas or picking invisible lint out of his crotch and rear end. Flag dude went off to get a canned drink.
Someone slopped a bucket of hot soapy water over the blood puddle on the pavement. Flag dude threw his blanket over the wet area and reclined on it.
Then arse man stood up to drop his pants and re-hitch his underwear.
Sat down again, threw an empty can at the lamp post.
After which he fell asleep.


Visually, the alley was more interesting than the karaoke lounge.


North Beach used to be a very different place. Brighter, cleaner, more joyous, and much, much less like the film-sets for a play by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol. Something pretentious, meaningful, and filled with doistorychne slavyanskaya ekzistentsyal angst.

Murderous love, drunken peasants, vile cossacks.


At the beer place someone was writing in her journal, quite oblivious to the real world happening all around her.


The burger joint is still good. Sober well-behaved individuals, some with interesting hair, enjoying good artery clogging food under bright lights and speaking a variety of languages.




==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================