ERUPTIVE NOISE

Three to five minutes after the cop car drove off, having been parked there for quite a while to make sure the youth didn't start something, the explosions started. They had been waiting. Within ten minutes the intersection was packed with onlookers. Who were very largely not Chinese. A few years ago a robot-taxi had been set on fire there in celebration by a white skateboarder and possibly they were hoping for something similar. I had arrived an hour before the bookseller got down to Chinatown, at which time the hullabaloo had barely abated. Chinese New Year in San Francisco can be raucous.

That hour spent smoking my pipe was excellent.
Despite the thug-like young people.
And their giddiness.

See, there is an awning which protects me from the rain. Which had frequently come bucketing down throughout the day and into the night. Cold inclement weather.

An A-shirt under my T-shirt, over which a thick plaid shirt, a heavy woolen garment, a winter coat suitable for the far north, plus a scarf and gloves. If you do not disturb the pockets of warm stale air inside your cocoon it's reasonably warm. Quite bearable.

Remove a glove occasionally to utilize a pipe tamper.

My friend arrived in due course, having avoided being blown up by the riotous anarchists, and we headed to the burger place. While passing the karaoke joint we could see that it was crowded, which almost always means it's unbearable because of women singing shrilly and off-key. So we gave it a miss and headed over to bail-out bar where Tat Yee (a fellow pipe-smoker) was in conversation with Nick, who runs coffee out of some place nearby.
I greeted both gentlemen, introduced my companion, and we grabbed seats.

At times there would be another explosion from outside. Punctuation. After the Guiness and halfway through his Jameson's a woman who had been drinking coffee martinis and vodka with Red Bull animatedly engaged the bookseller in loud pointless rapid-fire conversation. Consequently we left earlier than usual. I did not get to drink my second cup of tea.
Home before midnight.

It's forty one or forty two degrees out there. Beastly.
And pouring down again.


Tomorrow will be a good day for my apartment mate, who is sick, to call in sick. Or perhaps go in and make sure they know she's sick so that she can do so the next day.
When she might feel better.



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