BOOMER COMFORTS

Because of the weather, as well as a keen desire to remain comfortable for the rest of the night, I decided to not go out on the weekly pubcrawl yesterday. Fifty degrees and wet.
Yeah, no. Beastly weather! Expect a strongly worded letter to the editor!

Teatime had found me in a downpour after leaving my bank. When I got to the bakery it was merely a drizzle, but the gutters were still overflowing from earlier.

Unsurprisingly, the place was nearly empty.

One curry puff and two cups of tea later I was out under an awning lighting up my pipe. An extraordinarily good smoke. Very fine tobacco, and not a person nearby bellyaching about how I'm ruining their lungs go puff elsewhere you horrid old boomer. The type of person for whom the phrase "go stuff a sock in it" was invented.

So it was a lovely afternoon. Despite blue finger tips because of Raynaud's phenomenon. One which bears repeating during daylight hours when it rains again, assuming that we never reach the freezing point of water here.

There are two Big Ben apple-shaped pipes in my collection, both were bought in the same year two decades ago. They are excellent smokes, and I would be hard put to decide which one is better, the smooth with two-tone staining, or the sandblast pictured above.
They would be splendid with a cup of milk-tea, smoked indoors.

There was a cup of tea. Two of them in fact. One clear pale amber standard restaurant tea, one strong and bracing HK milk tea. But of course the pipe was smoked outside.
Beaky white dude in foul weather, scaring the kiddies.


They treat me well at that bakery. Which I can't quite understand, because I am not a particularly nice person, more of a grumbly old coot. But I guess that as a Cantonese speaker I am in a way more familiar, an ambulatory landmark, so to speak.


Startled two elderly Caucasians on the way in.
They were sheltering from the storm.
Probably lost.



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YELLOW RICE CAKE

Over on a food site someone mentioned a product that a friend brought back from her home town whenever she visited. Now, in relation thereto, I should mention that if I did that it would be cheap cigars, but those are no longer made there (the last manufactury closed in the late nineties), and if it were provincial specialties, perhaps cheese, perhaps some kind of high fat pastry popular during the Middle Ages. The town a few miles westward is luckier in that regard: dark beer.

Seeing as I live in San Francisco now, sourdough.
As well as our notorious superior attitude.

But I digress. Meizhou (梅州 'mui jau') is predominantly Hakka, and one of the local famous food items is 黄粄 ('wong paan). Which is New Year's "cake" (年糕 'nin gou') made of yellow glutinous rice flour, water, and a sweetener. It requires a local type of rice called 大禾米 ('taai wo mai') which is mountain grown, sown in Spring, planted mid Summer, harvested early Winter. Very easy on the digestion.

The word 粄 ('paan'; traditional Hakka snacks and sticky sweets made from glutinous rice) is a relatively new character (meaning that it is actually more than a thousand years old, but it didn't exist during the Spring and Autumn period.). A reconstruction of a possible seal script version of the character would look like this:

RICE FRAGMENTS (米) ON THE LEFT, A HAND HOLDING AN ANGLED OBJECT ON THE RIGHT
(反) WHICH BY ITSELF MEANS 'RETURN', 'REVERSE', AS THE PHONETIC COMPONENT.
A HOMOPHONE AND ANALOGOUS CHARACTER 板 MEANS PLANK OR SLAB.

Like many versions of New Year's cake, it is good pan-fried with chives or garlic sprouts as a savoury dish. Hot sauce may be glopped on top, or liang pan sauce.

凉拌汁
[LIANG PAN SAUCE ('leung pun jap); "cold mix juice"]

4 TBS soy sauce
1 TBS black vinegar
1 TBS chili oil
1 TBS fragrant sesame oil
2 Tsp sugar
1 Thumblength ginger, peeled and minced
2 (or more) garlic cloves, peeled and minced
2 scallions, minced

Whisk together, and drizzle over sliced blanched vegetables, cold cooked noodles, steamed dishes, slow simmered fatty pork slices. Or, in this case, your fried wedges of nin gou.
Also great on boiled noodles with shredded roast chicken.
Chili paste may be added. Which I do.



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THE FASHIONABLE BRAND

Named after a famous shopping street and district in Peking, and marketed mostly in Shanghai , it was the cigarette that gangsters, movie stars, dancing girls, and all the fashionable people smoked: Hata Men Cigarettes.

1930'S ADVERTISING POSTER WITH CHOU HSUEN

I'd love to tell you what they were like, but they aren't available locally, and probably aren't even made anymore. The poster above shows a famous movie star dreamily indulging in a cigarette. I suspect that they must have been Virginia-style leaf, possibly grown in country.

The landmark that gave the district, street, and cigarette its name is also gone. One of the city gates of the capitol, many of which were torn down in the fifties and sixties.
The old Hatamen railway station, I've heard, still stands.

HATA MEN - PEKING CITY GATE

That era, those cigarettes, and the famous stars whose willowy forms graced the advertising posters for them, are now impossibly distant. One would have to be past a hundred to have experienced all that in one's youth.

Smoking the modern brands does not recapture the fragrance.
Jasmine tea and a Camel straight; a faint echo.
Cold weather. Moonlight.



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FRESH AIR

Yesterday was a day for obsessions. If you let me loose on the internet for several hours, what happens is the drill-down search for odd things. I'm fairly certain that's not unusual; my apartment mate spent a large part of the time on the internet too, and consequently I heard squittering and chirping in Vietnamese from a dermatological clinic in Hanoi that deals with skin issues. Which, in that neither of us understand Vietnamese, is somewhere between soothing, and because I know what they are talking about, disquieting.

Pimples, zits, blackheads, cysts, boils, and ingrown hair.
Plus infected follicles. Hard little sacs.
In great detail!


No illustration will be provided, because this is a clean family friendly blog, and even her cute little children's story, which spontaneously erupted from her fertile brian, about little sebaceae dreaming of freedom and yearning, yearning for the open air, will not be retold here.
It is too graphic, and NOT suitable for little kiddies.

Sometime after dark fell I needed a break, and headed out with a pipeful of good tobacco for a smoke. In contrast with the previous night, the neighborhood was quiet, probably because a lot of people were recovering from playing golf with a hangover. Or perhaps doing the traditional new years plunge into the waters of the bay, with a hangover.
Fried breakfasts. With a hangover.

That would be young white people, of course. Local Cantonese people and the not insane like myself do not drink excessively much on New Years Eve, and in consequent have nothing to be hung over about.

Many of us don't see a reason to have another year.
The last one was perfectly fine, really.
Let's do all that again.



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ACCIDENTAL ERASURE

A reader asked if I had any idea which chachantengs might be open on New Years Day. Accidentally I erased that comment instead of approving it for publication, so I have no clue which recent post it was under. But it was obviously sometime this morning.

Profoundly sorry, dear reader.

I believe the V. I. P. (嘉賓閣咖啡餅店) on Broadway between Stockton and Grant is open. Very likely G & Y Bakery Cafe (寵兒茶餐廳 / 宠儿茶餐厅) at Clay and Stockton is too.



嘉賓閣咖啡餅店
VIP COFFEE & CAKES SHOP
671 Broadway
San Francisco, CA 94133.
415-989-7118
舊金山，布律威街671號。


寵兒茶餐廳 (宠儿茶餐厅)
G & Y BAKERY CAFE
881 Clay Street
San Francisco, CA 94108.
415-291-8688
舊金山，企李街881號。



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ALL OBSESSIVE

A reader recently posted a comment, to which I responded as follows: "An old Victorian somewhere in a forest, if not used as a prison, sounds delightful. Provided, of course, that emergency services can get there fast if needed, and a pharmacy is easily reachable, as well as a place where caffeinated beverages may be had. So, an urban forest. Possibly several blocks of redwoods in a cluster near bus lines and a Chinatown."
End self-quote.

You understand of course why there has to be a Chinatown fairly nearby. Oyster sauce, soy sauce, chili paste, star anise, fatty pork, salt fish, noodles, and milk tea.
Plus dried oysters and hair vegetable.
For New Year.

A person needs the fundaments of civilized life. Especially if infesting the attic and dark corners of a dusty abode amid trees. With a stash of pipe tobacco and fine briars.

One imagines that there is also a book room with a few easy chairs (possibly rattan) and one or two ashtrays. No more than that, because that implies a plurality of company, and I am not that social. One or two people. Just one is fine. Another pipe smoker. Female. With her own reading preferences. Who is self-motivated and independent minded, and will often do her own thing, because I will not think for two, heck I can barely think for one, and am not capable of or competent at providing hours of entertainment and stimulation.

No aromatic mixtures. Obviously. Good pipe tobacco does not need fruity top-dressing, nor does it benefit in any way from that. Precisely like good coffee and good tea.

A tobacconist and a book store in the not too distant vicinity is implied.
Sometimes one must explore new things.



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RABBIT RABBIT FOR A NEW YEAR

Rabbit rabbit for a new year in which the human species will make progress! Slow, agonizing progress, to be sure, but progress never the less. This realization comes to me courtesy of my apartment mate, to whom I had recounted seeing a young feller buying a fine cigar to celebrate the new year, and taking a selfie while lighting it up. He flamed half of the cigar while doing so. When he saw me looking quizzical, he explained "for da bitches, man!"

Destroyed half a cheroot while doing that.
But it's all for da bitches, man.
That means something.

My apartment mate objected to the term 'bitches'. Understandable! But one can feel sorry for his horrible social environment, where that word is common, while simultaneously despairing over his torching a cigar so horribly. Those things are expensive! And the civilized animal smokes a pipe, anyway.

But there has been progress. Two centuries ago, most people, especially of his class, were illiterate. Now, at least, slightly more than half of them can spell the word 'bitches'. And many of them will live past forty. Thanks to modern medicine, which has its beginnings in the dark period before leeching and hot irons to expel daemons were discontinued.
There were no torch lighters. People could not take 'selfies'.
Just living was a bitch, man.

Almost at random, I decided to look up porphyria on Wikipedia. The very first paragraph reads as follows: "Porphyria is a group of liver disorders in which substances called porphyrins build up in the body, adversely affecting the skin or nervous system. The types that affect the nervous system are also known as acute porphyria, as symptoms are rapid in onset and short in duration. Symptoms of an attack include abdominal pain, chest pain, vomiting, confusion, constipation, fever, high blood pressure, and high heart rate. The attacks usually last for days to weeks. Complications may include paralysis, low blood sodium levels, and seizures. Attacks may be triggered by alcohol, smoking, hormonal changes, fasting, stress, or certain medications. If the skin is affected, blisters or itching may occur with sunlight exposure."
[End cite]

Please note than many of the words are far more difficult to spell than 'bitches', and refer to more complicated matters as well. Bitch Man would be at a complete loss.

At some point two or three decades hence he may be prescribed a medicine with the following warnings: "If you become pregnant DO NOT TAKE THIS DRUG. May cause DIZZINESS. Prolonged or excessive exposure to direct or artificial sunlight SHOULD BE AVOIDED while taking this medication."

To me, this means that I should not be a woman working in a tanning salon. Okay, can do.
For Bitch Man, all of this may prove insurmountably complex.
My heart bleeds for him.


He might die nicely suntanned. Probably not pregnant, but perhaps, and dare we hope, drunk, stressed and porphyric. As well as constipated and/or paralized.
But no doubt confused; that's inevitable.
He's likely already there.


Happy new year, everyone.
Rabbit rabbit.



NOTE: It's a very waspy custom to say 'rabbit rabbit' on the first day of a new month. Many of us utilize terms like 'rabbit' or 'porphyria' more often than 'bitches', unless we're involved in the kennel industry. Which is all about bitches.


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HEADS THAT ARE SOFT AND SPONGY

That title describes either Marinites OR young turkey vultures like the one in our apartment, named Sydney Fylbert, who insists that no one has fed him today and then fondly smacks his lips in gustatory reminiscence of lunch. My partment shared her meal with him; tofu, asparagus, meaty bits, rice. But he claims he had none. Well, hardly any.
Just the merest glimpse and smell, oh it was delicious!

Not that he had any. He insists that it's the truth.
Smack, smack, smack. Mmmmmmm!

He also had some of my dinner when I came home. Noodles, egg, mustard stalks, and meaty bits. With chili paste, ginger, and diverse spices. Soup stock poured over.

Also, tofu can't be vegetable! It's so yummy!
Asparagus, too, is clearly carrion.
But he hasn't had any.
Ever.

Now, I suspect that tomorrow I will not feed him till later in the day. Because the first order of business tomorrow is finding a place for dumplings or wontons.
Dumplings are traditional new years food.
And delicious!

He'll have to be patient till evening.

I shall not be accompanied by Sydney Fylbert. Reason being that if the locals in Chinatown saw me carrying a turkey vulture around, they'd undoubtedly exclaim "oh, the stinky kwailo finally lost it, quite out of his mind!"

嘩，黐綫嘅臭鬼佬失咗腦了，佢傻傻哋！

Waa, chi sin ge chau kwai lou sat jo nou le, keui so so dei! They've seen enough white guys with marbles lost. They're traumatized enough already, they don't need any more.



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THE GREAT NORTH EAST

To the typical Cantonese person, North East China might as well be on a different planet. They aren't likely to visit, the food is strange and shows a lot of resemblance to English Cuisine (in that both are indigestible and might actually be inedible), and the natives talk funny, eat too much, and smell odd. Seeing as I will not be heading there anytime soon, or ever, I am in much the same boat. But their Mandarin is clear and intelligible. And the few natives of Liaoning I have met are all very nice. You know, normal people.

Plus they eat more rice than many other Northerners, and they do great pork dishes. As well as dumplings. So it sounds like a place I could visit, except I'd have to dress for it.
It snows there.

As a Dutch American, and having lived in Northern Europe, I am familiar with snow. Also, in my first year back in the States I visited kinfolk in Calgary for Christmas, and if you've seen the movie Cool Runnings when they first set foot into the Canadian winter, precisely so.
I have only visited Calgary once. For Christmas.
I am familiar with snow.
You can have it.

Two Shenyangers I have met are pipe smokers. I'm guessing that they don't rely on a heater in the garage to make that bearable during the cold season. So the plaintive messages from poor shmoes in the Midwest near the Canadian border during winter don't mean bupkes to them. "Hello, my wife won't allow me to smoke my pipe inside, I have to do that in the shed and the heater is on its last legs, how do you guys stand it?" Or sometimes it's the wind chill on the porch. Even the collapsing easy chair placed in the root cellar for daddy's comfort when cast out of the living quarters for smoking.

From the viewpoint of a resident of Shenyang, Ohio could just as well be on a different planet. Nothing in that cry above computes. Living in California, I know how they feel.

"Hello, my wife won't allow me to smoke my pipe inside, I have to do that in the garage and the heater is on its last legs, how do you guys stand it?"

Yeah, um, I live in a decent climate, dude.
No clue what you're on about.



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BARELY MORE THAN A DRIZZLE-MAGEDDON!

It rained a little bit yesterday. For about twelve hours. Fairly intensely from noon till nightfall. Californians don't drive well in the rain. I expect that there were families on the road terrified that it was the end times. Loudly exclaiming "saints preserve us", or "whut in tarnation is happenin', mah" as their jalopies crashed and burned in mud puddles.
Mud puddles! Oh, the humanity!

None of that was visible on the freeway during my return journey. I believe the highway patrol used snowploughs from other jurisdictions to clear the corpses and the wrecks.

Fortunately I had gotten the electric reindeer back into his box before it really came bucketing down. The animal will be on the lawn again next year for the holiday season. Baleful. Sparkly. Glowing. A daemonic presence on the grass. Accursed beast.

Today was the day we took down the decorations at work. Necessary, because the various santas looked evil and no doubt were haunting the nightmares of the senile old farts in the backroom. The boss really gets into the spirit of things. Hence decorations everywhere, including the bathroom cabinets. Don't go inside, Saint Nick is looking at you!
He sees what you're doing, and he's making a list.

It's a good thing I don't drive, because I don't trust my fellow citizens here on the freeway even when it's dry. We're the state that invented road rage. Not drunk driving, that's more of a Southern thing -- endemic in Texas and Kentucky -- and rednecks hanging out of pickup truck windows yelling "yee haw" and waving hunting rifles is, I believe, a common traffic hazard in Mississippi and Alabama. They're crazy and inbred there, and 'yeehaw' is very probably the extent of their intellectual accomplishments.

When it's raining, Californians tend to overthink things.
Their driving suffers in consequence.


Rain here makes people do strange things. A bar tender I know complained on social media about the droves of people who panicked and stayed away. There was too much sobriety in his establishment, what with all the absentee alcoholics on a Friday night.

"You're not gonna let a little rain stop you from coming, are ya?"

Well, evidently, they will and they are.
Chickens.



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I BELIEVE THEY TAKE U. S. DOLLARS THERE

Percentage-wise, Chinese Americans are the single largest ethno-cultural group in San Francisco. Far larger than Dutch Americans, my own group. We're probably down near the bottom, along with African Americans, drug dealers, and Republicans. Oakland, with a smaller proportion of Chinese Americans, is damned well a hellhole, and Berkeley right next door could be better -- if it had fewer radicals, spoiled brat white kids, and riotous anarchists of whatever ethno-cultural strömung -- but it does have a sound tax base because of its make-up.

As you've probably guessed, I reside in the North East sector of SF. A few blocks away from the demilitarized zone, and far enough from the Tenderloin and the barbaric hinterland that stretches all the way south. Which has headhunters, cannibals, armed drug dealers, and hippie dissidents who would cut your throat as lief as looking at you.
That's rebel-held territory where I seldom go.

I haven't been to the Mission District in years. Nor Valencia Street. Too many artists and people who think of themselves as free-thinkers. It's the wrong part of town.
They are wrong about so many things.

Basically, it's a suburb of Mad Max's Australia, with bacon dogs instead of spaghetti sandwiches or meat pies avec le sauce tomate et la vegemite.
No crocodiles, but perhaps a few biker gangs.


I should mount an expedition to the place sometime. Recruit bearers, get all my shots.
If I'm not back in a month, firebomb the damned place.

Gemstones. Gemstones are mined there.
King Solomon's mines.



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THE STUFF IN THE SHADOWS

Lunch time was rainy. So there were fewer people at the chachanteng than normal, and it was pleasantly peaceful. Afterward I stood a while under a nearby awning with my pipe before heading over to Stockton Street. Which was not crowded. The rain rather put a damper on people's out door activity. But it was crowded at the dried seafood place.

A middle-aged Caucasian man stands under awnings of shuttered stores smoking a pipe in Chinatown without exciting comment. A younger woman might severely lift some eyebrows.
I feel sorry for the female pipesmoker, who has to hide beyond the edge of vision.


Many of my fellow pipesmokers claim that this weather is perfect for pipe smoking. They love nothing better than lighting up and looking out over the autumnal view. Yes, but you are male, as am I. And you're remembering being able to smoke indoors. At the very least, you have an awning. A younger female pipesmoker has to think in terms of a tarpaulin, somewhere away from foot traffic. Like the middle of a city park, for instance, and even then she'll be bothered by non-smoking harridans telling her that she's totally ruining their day (they're in the middle of a downpour, for heavens sakes!), and a crazed street person will stick his head under the edge and demand "got a cigarette?". Or steal the tarp.

Heavy rain coat, stout umbrella, deserted alley, portico of an empty building.
If she perseveres, she deserves hazard pay.

THERE'S A TARPAULIN SOMEWHERE IN THE MIDDLE DISTANCE

I have no such problem. But I sympathize. I fondly imagine that all over the city there are ladies hiding their indulgence from their kinfolk doing their best to remain invisible.
And I promise that if I encounter one, I will treat her to coffee.
Or any hot beverage of her choosing.


When I got to the bakery I was surprised to find so few people there. Dawdled an hour before heading out into the rain with another pipeful. That egg tart was dee-licious! Nice cup of milk tea. I'm guessing nonsmokers are soft, and easily scared by a little moisture. Even tourists visiting the city. Neither of the two elderly gentleman I expected to see showed up.

Maybe they were busy sheltering a woman pipesmoker.
Chivalry in action.



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SOMETHING DIFFERENT

It was a short nap. Slightly less than three hours. Soon after returning home from several hours out.

Strange dream. I was a younger woman, fairly petite, good looking and well dressed, with a lovely shade of crimson lipstick, attending an event near Union Square, but not wearing the appropriate footgear. It's surprising how fast you can walk in woolly socks! And I needed to get home, because I had forgotten my handbag which had my wallet and credit cards inside with which I could buy comfy loafers because in this weather with those wet pavements in this city with sloping streets especially, anything high-heeled would be unwise. My heavens, this lipstick accentuates my lips nicely! No wonder that old lawyer is leering at me.

Get away, you perv! I'm wearing woolly socks!

I'm still baffled as to how I ended up accidentally in the company of my boss, who had just gotten out of the hospital for something minor, and two other gentlemen -- Mr. Porchhanger and Mr. Boseman -- in a different place entirely. All of us were sober and well-behaved, so don't worry. Nothing skeevy likely to happen in any case, and there was a chaperone.

You know, I'm quite decent-looking when I make an effort.
Besides, bad lighting softens the lines.

As you know, I am not a woman, but something otherwise. I have a thing for women, though. Some of them. They can be quite nice. Indeed.

There had been a woman on the bus with kissy lips, but she carried a big formless fluffy handbag and I remember thinking that that was the silliest thing I had seen, and her companion had a ditzbrain vacuous look .....


See, what caused the peculiar dream was probably a small cup of strong coffee, espresso level, just before lying down, as well as Amlodipine Besylate. Because I didn't want to sleep too long. Just enough to warm up and relax the feet.


My dress was a dark colour suitable for evening wear. But sensible. Simple.
No, I don't remember what my bra and panties were like.
Being male, this should have interested me.
But I'm sure it was normal.
I am not weird.



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FARMING KALE IN THE HINTERLANDS

It's been an hour and a half since that dumbass started using a powerhose on the building across the block. There ought to be a law. I can't even hear my turkey vulture! And no, I don't care that the grime of centuries is finally being cleaned off. Probably in preparation for a a new ugly paint job and eventual sale of the property to investors, and conversion.
Outsider landlord companies in SF should be lined up and shot.

Especially if they inconvenience me.


By the way, the stupidest comment on Facebook today was "Autism is a Jewish invention of this reign of the antichrist. You are completely normal." Which tells you that the writer is a Christian, Republican, and believes in family values like pogroms, segregation, and lynching. So probably from one of the shithole states: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

PERFECT PLACE FOR A STRIP MINE!

It's not that I despair over my fellow Americans, but I do despise a lot of them.

But I don't know. Maybe the author of "autism is a Jewish invention of this reign of the antichrist" is a timid young virgin in Mill Valley who believes in ancient aliens, or an ultra liberal potsmoking hippie of no specific gender living in a commune in Sonoma.
An anti-vaxxer with off-kilter dietary preferences, either way.

Could be the idiot across the block with the power hose.
There's just no telling.


"Autism is a Jewish invention of this reign of the antichrist. You are completely normal."


In any case I'm blaming the vegans. A brain needs protein or it starts feeding on itself. All those morons rioting at the Capitol building were because of the vegans, the pro-terrorist thugs in Union Square and Yale too, and gluten-phobic mobs pouring ketchup on fur also.
If you deny this, you are probably part of the conspiracy.
They've gotten to you man. You've changed!


Good lord, now there's a chainsaw!
Damned communist.



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THOSE AREN'T THE RIGHT NUMBERS!

Well, the holiday is finally over, but unfortunately some of these hosebags haven't gotten the memo. When we first passed the karaoke venue on the way to the burger joint, it was nearly empty. Which would have been quite ideal if that had held till we got there, but in the hour and half interval in between -- comestibles, cerveza, hot tea -- it had filled up, and the screeching rendition of 'Landslide' was audible from a block away.

Sometimes I feel like Herbert's dad.
And I long for Swamp Castle.
No electricity.


Ah, those good old days, son, when if you wanted the telephone, which was rotary back then, you'd throw rocks at the housekeeper to use it. You youngsters have probably never even seen a rotary phone or sprained your index fingers. Simple pleasures!
Sometimes you had to employ your toes instead.
Thumbs hadn't been invented.

Good lord, the city is filled with vacuous twits!
What is this world coming to?

There are more hoboes sleeping on the pavement in Chinatown and North Beach now. This season has not been kind to the crazies. Earlier I had heard a gentleman having a loud conversation with an invisible person. He got around a bit, first ahead of me, then behind, ahead again, down the block (where he stopped to slapfight other invisibles), and finally around the corner where he probably frightened the tourists outside a restaurant.

That's normal. It's traditional San Francisco.



NEITHER HERE NOR THERE

Also normal: The Christmas afternoon clerk at a corner market (Polk & Clay Liquor) thinking he could pull a fast one on the stupid gringo (me) then being rude and abusive when caught, shouting "f*ck you mother f*cker I never want to see you here again". Which he won't.
No, I shan't complain to the proprietor. For all I know, that's his cousin.
Or his catamite. Probably both.



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TOURISTS, SUBURBANITES, FOREIGNERS

Chinatown is awash with outsiders today. Almost like these people have nothing else to do. All of them seem flabby and disquietingly irridescent, reflecting their bad dietary habits. And highlighting how repulsive some of them are. Caucasians, Filippinos, Subcontinentials, Latinos, Slavs, and Scandinavians. Ah, those codfish-fed Northerners!
Cousins to folks in Wisconsin and Minnesota.

The deity must like Minnesota, he made so much of it.


Not enough elderly Cantos, too many tourists, suburbanites, and foreigners.

A veritable forest of ambulatory squid.

While I dislike all those other mentioned groups infesting Chinatown, I like squid. Life would be so much better if they were squid, squishing about, with their large silvery eyes staring around them blankly.

Both of the place to which I went were devoid of outsiders. My barber, and a restaurant which does not appeal to Caucasians, Filippinos, Subcontinentials, Latinos, Slavs, or Scandinavians.

So other than having to dodge the aimles ambulatories from point A to point B, and after eating while smoking a pipe, it was pleasant. Cold. But distinctly enjoyable.

The weather has become more arctic. Double sock time.
The well insulated foot is a happy foot.
It is both here and there.


咖喱牛腩飯，奶茶。



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A HUBBUB IN THE QUAD

In the seventies a young man walked into a pipe shop in Boston and purchased a handsome piece of smoking equipment. One imagines that he was a college student, and wore a tweed coat, as was still thought of as properly academic in that day. Possibly he experimented with one or two fine tobacco mixtures from that shop before giving up on that handsome pipe, or graduated to a P.H.D. and properly intellectual French cigarettes.
The problem being, with that particular piece of smoking equipment, a stinger in it that made the draw much harder, and passing a pipe cleaner through it totally impossible. It was consequently hardly used when I found it, and didn't need much reaming at all.
But it took a bit of effort to remove that stinger from the tenon.

One-size fits-all factory stingers are a bitch.

The shape and a few other details tell me it was produced by Comoy, probably in the sixties or early seventies, though the stamping says L. J. Peretti, 'Rodney'. It also has 'made in London England' on the bottom of the shank.

L. J. Peretti was founded in Boston in 1870. It still exists, I believe.
Comoy made pipes for a large number of tobacconists.
Good pipes, though nothing special.

Comoy largely stopped doing pipestore pipes in the mid-seventies. At one point every decent shop in the United States had Comoy pipes with the shop name stamped into the wood. Recognizable shapes. You could map out pipesmoking in America by their briars.

The reason I mentioned French cigarettes is because they were overwhelmingly smoked in university towns by people in academia or the arts. And literate types. Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley reeked of them. They were harsh, full bodied, pungent, and the perfect thing to huff while writing the great American novel, your thesis, or reading Ulysses by James Joyce, which showed that you had the chops.

This pipe is a great smoke. I shall enjoy it while I'm in Chinatown today. Which I must be, because my apartment mate is at home and I cannot smoke here.
It is jaunty, and youngmannish.



NOTE: If you read Sylvia Plath you probably smoked English Ovals, if Nabokov, fine Turkish cigarettes. But Gauloises and Gitanes went perfectly with that cheap foreign liqueur you swilled with your equally high-minded young companions.
Or cappuccinos at the Med with Sartre.




APPENDIX: L. J. PERETTI

In 1870 Libero Joseph Peretti from Lugano started the Peretti Cuban Cigar Company. Within a few decades they were also selling their own pipe tobacco mixtures, which by the middle of the twentieth century were well-known and highly regarded. A retired engineer smokes their English / Balkan blends, which are excellent. Recently Nick had one of their flake tobaccos, which I very much enjoyed.

From the L. J. Peretti website:

AMPERSAND FLAKE: A semi-broken flake connecting the qualities of Bob Peretti's original artisanal Old Virginia Flake with a subtle hint of sweetness for today's pipe smoker. Medium in strength, with an excellent room note.

Other flakes which look particularly interesting are the 150th Flake, Boston Slices, London Flake, and No. 8 Slice. It is not unlikely that these will cross my horizon sometime soon.



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INFORMATION THAT WILL NOT SAVE YOUR LIFE

My apartment mate speculates about situations in the dermatology videos she is currently watching. It was bad enough when she was Amber Heard and Johnny Depp obsessed, but this is almost intolerable. She wishes I were severely afflicted so that she could experiment. And she fondly remembers my evil twin skippy (a sebaceous cyst) that went all wanky and necessitated a visit to a dermatologist. Is that area acting up yet / again? No, no it isn't. Stay away with that prong. Desist, crazed laboratory woman! I shall not tolerate any poking!

People far down on the spectrum either have rich inner lives, OR obsessively learn about things to the point where they are either tediously repetitive or absolutely dangerous. Ask me sometime about India, Malayo-Polynesian languages, Asian food, pipes and pipe tobacco, or fruit bats (chiroptera pteropodidea, NOT the indie rock band). For instance.

No, woman, I am NOT going to look up the potential uses of rare champagne as sacramental wine at mass while you watch pimple popping youtubes, I am not that interested and do not need to know, as the idea of wasting good plonk on random drooges is not part of my plan!
Just open another browser tab and do your own research.
Flip back and forth between windows.

In between exclamations about sebum and purulent drainage, she makes little bird sounds.
I am not like that early in the morning. Some minor grunting perhaps while I prepare my first cup of coffee and fill my pipe, then I silently stumble out into the arctic blast of a wintry dawn for a walk and a smoke, while the juices start flowing and the hydraulics of limbs and joints wake painfully up. Mornings were not made for pustules and papules.


Mornings, as every Dutch American male knows, and the people who live in the same digs should realize, is meant for hot coffee, scratching, a first smoke of the day in a favourite briar (perhaps a fine Virginia Perique blend), and quietly contemplating man's inhumanity to man, the urge pet dogs have to poo when the world is dark and asleep, and the peculiarity of Cantonese American women who have queer obsessions.

That walk with my pipe is, in fact, what I shall be doing in a few minutes. When I come back, perhaps the pimple video watching session will be over. She's taken the day off, so I must be outside at various times to smoke, and will probably head over to Chinatown for Hong Kong milk tea, a snack, and people who are not fascinated by keratin and sebum.
Well, they could be, but thank heavens they don't talk about it.
And you'll understand that I haven't asked.




GLOSSARY

Cyst: 囊腫 ('nong jung').
Free fatty acids: 游離脂肪酸 ('yau lei ji fong suen').
Lipidosis: 脂沉積 ('ji cham jik').
Papule: 丘疹 ('yau chan').
Pimple: 粉刺 ('fan cik').
Pimple, pus-blister, boil: 癤 ('jit').
Pustule: 膿皰 ('nung paau').
Sebum: 皮脂 ('pei ji').
Squalene: 鯊烯 ('saa hei').
Triglycerides: 三酸甘油酯 ('saam suen gam yau ji').
Wax esters: 蠟酯 ('laap ji').



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