INDECENT BEVERAGES

And at the end of the walk, a cup of tea. Surely somewhere along Stockton Street some place already has hot Hong Kong Milk Tea ready for the early bird? That being a man walking with a briar pipe, rather than some sloodge with a French Bull. Because once you get beyond the gingko trees at the top, and the place where the elderly Indo woman works, there are far fewer monsters at this hour, in early Autumn, before the rains, but when sweaters are already needed for that first smoke. I've already had the coffee that fuelled my heading out.

A cup of strong milk tea will reward me, and when I get home, more coffee to be fully zipped up and ready to actually start the day.

Ideally, of course, I could "simultane" all of that; coffee, tea, coffee, and aged red cake in the Comoy 186 with the spectacular old wood. But even though many of the Cantonese here smoke like blast furnaces, it is not possible inside commercial establishments to do so, and everybody steps outside to skulk like a Caucasian addict. Because that is the custom.

Years ago, before Hong Kong Milk Tea was offered at the places in C'town, smoking inside was common, but the coffee was appalling, and I remember it with a certain distaste. It took Americans a long time to get beyond watery muck, and all of the Chinatown bakery-coffee shops had that canteen style coffee maker that does a bathtub-load of darkish dishwater. Industrial-institutional cum military style. A few of them still have that.

Mid-fifties. Slightly windy. Humid.

The quality of the wake-up caffeinated beverages in this part of the United States has vastly improved. It is no longer necessary to limit one's cups to a few places in North Beach where Italians and Bohemians maintained civilized standards in the face of all-American mediocrity. Which still abounds, of course, but there are alternatives to Starbucks.

Americans now also drink "chai", but trust me, that's actually just hot milky slop flavoured with a little cinnamon. And clove. Properly made it has far, far less of that, but green cardamom, ginger, and fennel instead. And stronger on the tea leaves too.

You can look it up. American chai is garbage.


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When I returned home my apartment mate was already up. I could hear her arguing with the turkey-vulture in her room, as well as the teddy bear reading him the riot act.
Bird, it is still too early to stir up hornets nests!



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