RATTAN CHAIRS AND SMALL TABLES

For years I have been doing everything wrong as far as finding a new companion after the break-up with my long-time girlfriend over a decade ago. Which will continue. It's sheer stubbornness, in a way, but also determination. Instead of going to hip bars and mingling with marketing and sales types, plus junior accountants and law-office staffers, or cruising the vegetable aisle at the Marina Safeway and joining yoga classes, I have been lunching at various chachanteng, swilling milk tea, and snarfing stuff like cheung fan and steamed pork patty with salt fish, then smoking my pipe in quiet alleys for want of an indoor environment where one can enjoy tobacco besides being too Dutch American.

Yes yes, I know that there is one place in SF where one can light up indoors. And they have a fabulous selection of single malts there. But they also have two screens permanently tuned to sports, and they're very loud.

There was a dog barking on the bus recently. I jerked startledly every time it did so.
So imagine what I would do in a sports bar environment.

Especially one which abounds in hip consumerite marketing and sales types.
Plus junior accountants and law-office staffers.

For a number of years I actually did go there, on Saturday evenings when one of the owners didn't really do business but went there instead to smoke a cigar or two, watch the game, and read the Wall Street Journal. There would be four or five other people in the place similarly engaged, but it was relatively calm and peaceful. One of the other owners was behind the counter on Thursdays, a very dry man, and he also tried to keep the noise down.
The last few times I went it was a madhouse.
And I've stopped drinking.

Rather than healthing-up at an exercise club and quitting smoking because it chased women away (as some friends advised), I have largely ceased being a night-owl. No, I haven't withdrawn from society, I just stepped into a more personal space.

Bars were always about conversation. Bars in San Francisco are noisy and crowded and that is impossible. I've gotten out of the very European habit of treating the local watering hole as a public living room. But bakeries are a different matter. Nice snackies, hot beverages, and no sound system or sports screens.

And as far as having to light up outdoors, one can dress for that.
Today, for instance, it will be shirtsleeves. No coat.
A backpack for the pipes and tobacco.



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