Perhaps grumpy old dingos like myself should avoid public places until this whole thing is over. I find myself, on a regular basis, cursing the people who don't mask OR cover their noses on the bus, or on the public street within ten feet of me. Given that there are now well over two thousand fresh deaths and nearly a million new cases everyday, one would think that out of sheer desperation -- forget consideration or a sense of shared social responsiblity -- these schmucks would do the right thing. For once.
Yes, no, ain't gonna happen.
The cursing, you understand, is not out loud. Because I do not want to get arrested for assault and battery, nor get into a close-proximity altercation with a random vector of filth and disease.
In comparison with Caucasians, the Chinese American population of San Francisco comes off much better, especially in Chinatown, where if you see a person without a mask covering their mouth and nose in public it's almost certainly a white person, from a place where masks are imperfectly understood, like Twin Peaks, Cow Hollow, Noe Valley, Vallejo, or Mississippi.
I hate tourists especially during this pandemic.
Okay, now that the griping is out of the way, I had a splendid afternoon. Fish and rice for lunch, with milk tea and hot sauce, followed by a pipe around the corner where the white folks rarely go. From one side I could hear 'Oh Come All Ye Faithful' playing in a shop -- which is probably the whitest song there is, other than the Little Drummer Boy -- and from another side the dulcet tones of a crazy street person ranting angrily in an alleyway. Up ahead, a delightful munchkin skipped along, her pearlescent neon backpack bouncing.
The bum was indistinguishable from a tourist; no mask.
The moppet wore her mask. Properly.
Preschool age.
Christmas songs are ghastly after the twenty fourth, besides often being schmaltzy and evocative of heartbroken tears and snot.
The Venn diagram of Caucasian, health-careless, and crazy guy in Kerouac Alley has enormous overlap.
Grocery shopped, upped transit card, dodged my fellow whities.
Afternoon tea at a local bakery.
Followed by another smoke.
On the whole, I would far rather smoke my pipe near adorable little Chinese kids than white tourists from the rest of the country. Given a choice. And if I have to be near humans at all. One group is well behaved and considerate, and wear their masks. The other smells bad, dresses funny, eats too much, is loud and obnoxious, and can't figure out how to wear a mask.
It's a question of manners and mores.
Common sense.
Did I say I had stopped griping?
I lied.
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