DRESSED FOR SUCCESS

One of the best pipe smokes ever while dodging the nuts. From the restaurant down to the Embarcadero Center there was a plurality of them in every block, recognizable in most cases by their habiliments. Now, I am not exactly a fashion plate myself, but I could have been in Paris strutting down the catwalk by comparison. Despite being a slightly rumpled old coot.

That is to say, I don't look like an extra in a mediaeval epic.

Nor, and I stress this, do I look perverted in any way.

I pride myself on not radiating skeeviness.

Rumpled, yes. Disreputable, no.


So even though I have a pipe I do not look like a damned Hobbit. And quite unlike Captain Haddock, I am not a bad-tempered alcoholic. Too trim to be Santa.


Lunch was something somewhat simple and common-place eaten while sitting at a counter in Chinatown: Flat fish chunks with eggplant over rice (茄子龍脷飯 'ke ji lung lein faan), consumed with lots of chili paste, washed down with plenty of tea.
The breakfast, lunch, and dinner of champions.

Happy as a clam I lit up after leaving, away from the door so as not to displease anyone in the restaurant. Puff puff. The loonies appeared once I got into the Financial District, where besides living on the street they might also work. It's been a few years since I had an office job down there, so I don't know what bar they have to reach or what the qualifications are that get people hired down there. Who am I to judge their appearance? That seems so classist and disabling.


Once you cross Montgomery Street, the entire place smells like sewer. Much more so near Battery Street. I guess some people dress accordingly, which is very wise of them.



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