There are times when I am glad that I do not look like I would understand Chinese.
It gives me a chance to hear things.
I recognize many of the people who get on the bus at my stop in the morning, as I have seen them often enough. Well over half of them are Cantonese heading down to Chinatown, and before nine o'clock parents will escort their children, especially if the small people in question are still kindergarten age. Several mothers get on at my stop.
It's probably scary for the kids, as often they will be hemmed in by huge adults as we all jam up at the front while the legal secretaries and very important yuppie functionaries of downtown firms luxuriate in the back of the bus.
Sometimes I'm surprised that none of them panic.
I found a seat all the way in the back this time, along with a father escorting his small daughter. I may have seen her before - cute moppet with a bouncy ponytail and lively eyes - but not him. He was a new quantity.
There were no other Cantonese in the back, and the little girl spoke softly with her dad.
Why, she wanted to know, was he taking her? Why him? And why now? That's what mommy always did, and him doing so was just not right. What was happening?
Well, mommy has to go to work, she has a job.
Don't you work, she asked her dad.
Used to. Till last week.
She wanted to know why he wasn't working anymore, what was wrong with him?
As she asked, I wondered how he would explain that the economy has tanked. Would he tell her that jobs are scarce? That sometimes even with the best of intentions, life just isn't fair?
He avoided the question by simply stating that the kongsi no longer had money. He would probably be working again, elsewhere, but in the meantime, she could go to school a little later, and he would take her.
Hai kam do ge le wo - that's all.
"Mommies are supposed to take kids to school! It's their job!"
He insisted that daddies can do that too, there was no rigid rule.
It was better for him to take her now, and sometimes the daddy get's to do things that usually mommy does.
Much more convenient (方便 fong pien).
This clearly baffled the child. Things are VERY wrong with the world when people don't stick to their own thing. Convenience does NOT enter into it.
Change is often disturbing, and at that age kids are accustomed to more rigid gender roles.
She wanted to know if he would still stay the daddy, even if he did things he was NOT meant to do?
Of course he would. Taking his daughter to school would not change that.
Even though men are not supposed to do such things.
Sometime a man simply does what he does.
Even if he isn't working?
Especially then.
一個好男人
I don't think she bought it. Her brow furrowed, and she fell silent, looking straight ahead.
But perhaps she tried to understand that despite her father deliberately upsetting the apple-cart, and rebelling against his properly assigned role, it was something he needed to do.
She looked very serious for the next three or four blocks.
As we got within a block of the school, she worriedly asked if he would be a good man.
He fervently assured her he would.
She led him off the bus at Clay and Powell Street.
It looked like she had new confidence in him.
He might not be doing everything right.
But he was still dad, so there!
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Friday, November 18, 2011
Thursday, November 17, 2011
OCCUPY WALL STREET WEST IN THE SAN FRANCISCO FINANCIAL DISTRICT
Wednesday a horde of unemployable morons marched through the downtown with revolutionary signs. This was the "Occupy CAL" contingent from Berkeley, who are peevish; previously some people across the Bay refused to listen to them, and that upset them no end. They insisted that we pay attention, and called us any number of names when we indicated we might have better things to do.
There were earnest entreaties that we intercourse ourselves.
Undoubtedly there were also a number of rational and reasonable people who sincerely want societal change in that mob, but the majority of marchers were spoiled brats with a sense of entitlement.
FOLLOWS AN E-MAIL FROM A READER WHO WAS LESS THAN PLEASED TO BE CONFRONTED WITH THE BRAIN-DEAD NIHILISM OF THE AVERAGE BERKELEY UNIVERSITY STUDENT
These young people are the scum of the earth. As are their A.N.S.W.E.R. handlers, and the opportunists who took advantage of their gullibility.
That is the only conclusion I can draw after getting into several arguments with belligerent young bloatards. If cutting funds for education was one of the things that they were protesting against, they've already lost the argument. Their behaviour proves that education failed them at least ten years ago, when most of them were in grammar school. Any further education would be wasted on them.
Marching through the Financial District picking fights with anyone who actually has a job may be "revolutionary", but what it inspires is NOT solidarity, but a deep desire to kick some of them in the balls.
Teargas, it turns out, is a blessing.
Here in downtown San Francisco we have NOT been blessed.
Our offense against the revolutionary storm troopers from Berkeley and Oakland is that we work in the Financial District. The vast majority of us are not members of the "one percent", just folks making a living. But that is enough to tar us.
In the clearly expressed world-view of the ninety nine percenters, worthwhile individuals do not hold down jobs, but doss down in squalid encampments with their revolutionary comrades, plotting the wholesale despoliation of banks, financial institutions, and anything that smacks of middle-class values.
Many of us have also bathed recently.
That, too, is a grievous sin, a black mark.
Given the behaviour I've seen today, I fervently hope that riot-squads all over the country start cracking skulls. There are ignorant savages out there who need naught more than a night stick in their spleens, teargas in their lungs, and good blast with a water cannon. Quite probably, several of them have parents who ARE part of the "one percent". They also deserve that.
Most of you suburbanite scum have produced thoroughly rotten children, who are of NO use to anybody.
The pampering they enjoyed during the Bush years has turned them into rude self-righteous pests.
But truth be told, that rot started years ago during Reagan, when you folks went to college.
The arrogance, and lack of manners, morals, and values of your children reflect upon you.
Their empty Red-Guardism is because you indulged your own shallownesses all your lives.
.....
If you see any Berkeleyites in your neighborhood, call pest-control.
Do not take your baseball bat to the little poltroons.
That's what the health department is for.
Only shoot if threatened.
Damn' hippies.
[END CITE]
There were also several practical suggestions involving incendiary devices and fire-arms. As well as machetes.
While I will not encourage violence against the marchers - many of whom were obviously no more than patsies for the filth that infests Oakland and Berkeley, as well as artistic types from our own Mission District and the Valencia Street corridor (Avalos' territory), I will say that his zany suggestion to fire-bomb the encampement down at Justin Herman has a totally insane appeal.
The fantasy of burning down the foul tents and their filthy drug-crazed denizens, along with the Marxists and Che Guevara fanclub, resonates.
Massive and final cleansing of ambulant garbage.
More than I can comfortably admit.
But please don't.
As a die-hard liberal, I am uncomfortable with the concept.
I keep telling myself that violence is not the answer.
But I am not quite so convinced of that now.
I work here. And I resent those folks.
Please shut down Shattuck.
Riot in Berkeley.
Instead.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
There were earnest entreaties that we intercourse ourselves.
Undoubtedly there were also a number of rational and reasonable people who sincerely want societal change in that mob, but the majority of marchers were spoiled brats with a sense of entitlement.
FOLLOWS AN E-MAIL FROM A READER WHO WAS LESS THAN PLEASED TO BE CONFRONTED WITH THE BRAIN-DEAD NIHILISM OF THE AVERAGE BERKELEY UNIVERSITY STUDENT
These young people are the scum of the earth. As are their A.N.S.W.E.R. handlers, and the opportunists who took advantage of their gullibility.
That is the only conclusion I can draw after getting into several arguments with belligerent young bloatards. If cutting funds for education was one of the things that they were protesting against, they've already lost the argument. Their behaviour proves that education failed them at least ten years ago, when most of them were in grammar school. Any further education would be wasted on them.
Marching through the Financial District picking fights with anyone who actually has a job may be "revolutionary", but what it inspires is NOT solidarity, but a deep desire to kick some of them in the balls.
Teargas, it turns out, is a blessing.
Here in downtown San Francisco we have NOT been blessed.
Our offense against the revolutionary storm troopers from Berkeley and Oakland is that we work in the Financial District. The vast majority of us are not members of the "one percent", just folks making a living. But that is enough to tar us.
In the clearly expressed world-view of the ninety nine percenters, worthwhile individuals do not hold down jobs, but doss down in squalid encampments with their revolutionary comrades, plotting the wholesale despoliation of banks, financial institutions, and anything that smacks of middle-class values.
Many of us have also bathed recently.
That, too, is a grievous sin, a black mark.
Given the behaviour I've seen today, I fervently hope that riot-squads all over the country start cracking skulls. There are ignorant savages out there who need naught more than a night stick in their spleens, teargas in their lungs, and good blast with a water cannon. Quite probably, several of them have parents who ARE part of the "one percent". They also deserve that.
Most of you suburbanite scum have produced thoroughly rotten children, who are of NO use to anybody.
The pampering they enjoyed during the Bush years has turned them into rude self-righteous pests.
But truth be told, that rot started years ago during Reagan, when you folks went to college.
The arrogance, and lack of manners, morals, and values of your children reflect upon you.
Their empty Red-Guardism is because you indulged your own shallownesses all your lives.
.....
If you see any Berkeleyites in your neighborhood, call pest-control.
Do not take your baseball bat to the little poltroons.
That's what the health department is for.
Only shoot if threatened.
Damn' hippies.
[END CITE]
There were also several practical suggestions involving incendiary devices and fire-arms. As well as machetes.
While I will not encourage violence against the marchers - many of whom were obviously no more than patsies for the filth that infests Oakland and Berkeley, as well as artistic types from our own Mission District and the Valencia Street corridor (Avalos' territory), I will say that his zany suggestion to fire-bomb the encampement down at Justin Herman has a totally insane appeal.
The fantasy of burning down the foul tents and their filthy drug-crazed denizens, along with the Marxists and Che Guevara fanclub, resonates.
Massive and final cleansing of ambulant garbage.
More than I can comfortably admit.
But please don't.
As a die-hard liberal, I am uncomfortable with the concept.
I keep telling myself that violence is not the answer.
But I am not quite so convinced of that now.
I work here. And I resent those folks.
Please shut down Shattuck.
Riot in Berkeley.
Instead.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
THOUGHTS ON SHARING A BLANKY
All cigar smokers agree: dog-people are nicer than people-people. By which they apparently mean that it is better to socialize with folks who have a dog on a leash than with anyone who keeps another person on a leash.
That seems to be the gist of it.
I was standing at the wall having a quiet pipe-full near the cigar smokers. Normally I stay out of their conversation, as I do not have much to contribute to discussions of sports or investment banking. Neither of those subjects are part of my world.
I may look like a member of the one percent, but that's primarily attitude.
I just lack the intemperate anger and nihilism of the ninety nine.
Oh wait... sports are a ninety nine percent thing too.
What I'm saying is, I have no idea how the conversation turned to dogs. But leashed dogs are far less embarrassing than people. Especially when you take the ten-inch spike heels into account, and perhaps nothing else on than fishnet stockings and a collar. That is ALWAYS an issue in San Francisco, where we only have one or two warm months out of every twelve.
Goosebumps, no matter how velvety the skin, are NEVER attractive.
Whenever I see goose-bumps I always feel like enveloping the afflicted party in a nice warm blanky. I've only got a few of those, not enough to go around. And one has to be selective about sharing a nice warm blanky.
Ten-inch heels might rip the blanky. Admittedly, ten-inch heels and fishnets probably look stunningly hot hot hot yowza, but the studded collars and leashes are a discordant note.
And given a choice, I would want the person inside the blanky to be petite and feminine, rather than over six feet tall and butch.
Small misses can be gorgeous in heels and fishnets. Large men, not so much.
That's just a personal observation, I'm NOT being judgmental!
Oh, and discard the spiked collar and the leash.
As well as the hairy flab and paunch.
That ain't my thing either.
I am selective.
Yes.
It's that pipe-smoker personality, you see.
Calm, contemplative, with good taste and discretion.
We have the blanky, but we're not sharing it with just anyone.
I enjoy my mid-day pipe-smoking break.
Often the cigar smokers say such interesting things.
They're truly in another world, and they lead such unusual lives.
Note: All remarks about collars do NOT apply to pearls. A pearl collar is in excellent taste, and even it is the only garment, there is NO possible objection.
If you're NOT wearing pearls, a terry cloth robe with those fishnets and stilletos is advised.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
That seems to be the gist of it.
I was standing at the wall having a quiet pipe-full near the cigar smokers. Normally I stay out of their conversation, as I do not have much to contribute to discussions of sports or investment banking. Neither of those subjects are part of my world.
I may look like a member of the one percent, but that's primarily attitude.
I just lack the intemperate anger and nihilism of the ninety nine.
Oh wait... sports are a ninety nine percent thing too.
What I'm saying is, I have no idea how the conversation turned to dogs. But leashed dogs are far less embarrassing than people. Especially when you take the ten-inch spike heels into account, and perhaps nothing else on than fishnet stockings and a collar. That is ALWAYS an issue in San Francisco, where we only have one or two warm months out of every twelve.
Goosebumps, no matter how velvety the skin, are NEVER attractive.
Whenever I see goose-bumps I always feel like enveloping the afflicted party in a nice warm blanky. I've only got a few of those, not enough to go around. And one has to be selective about sharing a nice warm blanky.
Ten-inch heels might rip the blanky. Admittedly, ten-inch heels and fishnets probably look stunningly hot hot hot yowza, but the studded collars and leashes are a discordant note.
And given a choice, I would want the person inside the blanky to be petite and feminine, rather than over six feet tall and butch.
Small misses can be gorgeous in heels and fishnets. Large men, not so much.
That's just a personal observation, I'm NOT being judgmental!
Oh, and discard the spiked collar and the leash.
As well as the hairy flab and paunch.
That ain't my thing either.
I am selective.
Yes.
It's that pipe-smoker personality, you see.
Calm, contemplative, with good taste and discretion.
We have the blanky, but we're not sharing it with just anyone.
I enjoy my mid-day pipe-smoking break.
Often the cigar smokers say such interesting things.
They're truly in another world, and they lead such unusual lives.
Note: All remarks about collars do NOT apply to pearls. A pearl collar is in excellent taste, and even it is the only garment, there is NO possible objection.
If you're NOT wearing pearls, a terry cloth robe with those fishnets and stilletos is advised.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
IN PRAISE OF PIE
I had pie for dinner the other day. Let me inform you that doing so is not good for a peaceful night's sleep.
But I shouldn't blame the pie. It was good pie, and I like pie.
Pie is a food that speaks of warmth and wholesomeness.
Just don't eat half a pie before bedtime.
It was a real pie. Peach!
Not sausage and anchovies - which is only pie if you're an east-coaster.
That explains why there were no black olives either.
Olives and peaches, yecccchhh!
Honestly!
And everyone knows that unlike east-coast grease-pie, real pie needs to be washed down with coffee. Or milk tea. Not beer.
It may have been the coffee that made me sleep fitfully. Beer simply knocks you out, whereas coffee makes you happy.
If I were a sports-watching man, I would probably be high as a kite after the game - two pots of coffee if you factor in the half-time extravaganza - and alertly bouncing off the walls, rather than sodden insensate like most American men after Sunday football.
There may have been some athletic contest on Sunday, but I do not know.
The pie was NOT connected with a sporting event.
It was just pie, all by its own existential self.
PIE DOES NOT NEED A REASON!
One problem with pie is that after burying my snout in a wedge, I end up with goo all over my whiskers.
I would offer to let someone lick them clean, except that my beard and moustache normally have a faint reek of tobacco and coffee, and that first smell mentioned might conflict with the fresh peach taste she would expect.
Assuming it's a she.
Many young ladies do not associate the sooty saveur of Rattray's Black Mallory (a fine full English mixture) or Rattray's Hal O'The Wynd (excellent ready rubbed red flake) with sweet pie goo. That's unfortunate, as matured tobacco has a faint fruitiness from fermentation, but there it is.
[As an important detail, my moustache also perfumes discretely of cigarillos - one cannot take a half hour pipe break during the working day, on the street outside the office. But cigarillos only take a few minutes. Never cigarettes. Cigarettes are the trashy teenage boys of the tobacco world. It's question of standards and taste.]
Also, very few young ladies have quite the tolerance for a hefty dose of caffeine that grown-up men such as myself possesses; they just can't hack it, it's too much for their delicate systems.
At least that's my theory. It would explain why I seldom see actual young ladies in coffee shops, unless they work there....... behind the counter, staring with open-eyed panic at the vulgar consumer-whores and shrill tattooed heffalumps ordering a grande hazelnut toffee mint brickle cappufrappé.
Young ladies drink milky tea with a modicum of sugar.
Not crap that tastes of hazelnut toffee mint brickle.
Dolled-up steam-drinks are for dolled-up trollops.
Young ladies have MUCH better taste than that.
Ideally, I would have invited a young lady over for some pie. We could've shared a pleasant hot beverage with milk. Tea. Or hot cocao, with whipped cream.
But probably milk tea.
Had I done so, I would NOT have been up smoking Rattray's fine tobacco (both Black Mallory AND Hal O'The Wynd - two bowls each) till shortly after four in the morning.
Instead I'd be licking cream off my chops. Or hers.
I will open up a tin of Esoterica's "And So To Bed" sometime soon - it might induce sleep.
It's a fine mixture, rich with dark Virginia, Maryland, Latakia, and Greek leaf.
Even without a young lady to wean me from caffeine, and eat my pie.
If there WERE a young lady present, she too might appreciate the same tobaccos, whether the fine product from Esoterica Tobacciana mentioned above, OR that lovely Black Mallory by Rattrays.
I would gladly share them with her, and I've got plenty of briars.
We could both smoke the dark stuf.
It's fragrant!
I must make sure to get more pie.
Pie is happiness.
3.14
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
But I shouldn't blame the pie. It was good pie, and I like pie.
Pie is a food that speaks of warmth and wholesomeness.
Just don't eat half a pie before bedtime.
It was a real pie. Peach!
Not sausage and anchovies - which is only pie if you're an east-coaster.
That explains why there were no black olives either.
Olives and peaches, yecccchhh!
Honestly!
And everyone knows that unlike east-coast grease-pie, real pie needs to be washed down with coffee. Or milk tea. Not beer.
It may have been the coffee that made me sleep fitfully. Beer simply knocks you out, whereas coffee makes you happy.
If I were a sports-watching man, I would probably be high as a kite after the game - two pots of coffee if you factor in the half-time extravaganza - and alertly bouncing off the walls, rather than sodden insensate like most American men after Sunday football.
There may have been some athletic contest on Sunday, but I do not know.
The pie was NOT connected with a sporting event.
It was just pie, all by its own existential self.
PIE DOES NOT NEED A REASON!
One problem with pie is that after burying my snout in a wedge, I end up with goo all over my whiskers.
I would offer to let someone lick them clean, except that my beard and moustache normally have a faint reek of tobacco and coffee, and that first smell mentioned might conflict with the fresh peach taste she would expect.
Assuming it's a she.
Many young ladies do not associate the sooty saveur of Rattray's Black Mallory (a fine full English mixture) or Rattray's Hal O'The Wynd (excellent ready rubbed red flake) with sweet pie goo. That's unfortunate, as matured tobacco has a faint fruitiness from fermentation, but there it is.
[As an important detail, my moustache also perfumes discretely of cigarillos - one cannot take a half hour pipe break during the working day, on the street outside the office. But cigarillos only take a few minutes. Never cigarettes. Cigarettes are the trashy teenage boys of the tobacco world. It's question of standards and taste.]
Also, very few young ladies have quite the tolerance for a hefty dose of caffeine that grown-up men such as myself possesses; they just can't hack it, it's too much for their delicate systems.
At least that's my theory. It would explain why I seldom see actual young ladies in coffee shops, unless they work there....... behind the counter, staring with open-eyed panic at the vulgar consumer-whores and shrill tattooed heffalumps ordering a grande hazelnut toffee mint brickle cappufrappé.
Young ladies drink milky tea with a modicum of sugar.
Not crap that tastes of hazelnut toffee mint brickle.
Dolled-up steam-drinks are for dolled-up trollops.
Young ladies have MUCH better taste than that.
Ideally, I would have invited a young lady over for some pie. We could've shared a pleasant hot beverage with milk. Tea. Or hot cocao, with whipped cream.
But probably milk tea.
Had I done so, I would NOT have been up smoking Rattray's fine tobacco (both Black Mallory AND Hal O'The Wynd - two bowls each) till shortly after four in the morning.
Instead I'd be licking cream off my chops. Or hers.
I will open up a tin of Esoterica's "And So To Bed" sometime soon - it might induce sleep.
It's a fine mixture, rich with dark Virginia, Maryland, Latakia, and Greek leaf.
Even without a young lady to wean me from caffeine, and eat my pie.
If there WERE a young lady present, she too might appreciate the same tobaccos, whether the fine product from Esoterica Tobacciana mentioned above, OR that lovely Black Mallory by Rattrays.
I would gladly share them with her, and I've got plenty of briars.
We could both smoke the dark stuf.
It's fragrant!
I must make sure to get more pie.
Pie is happiness.
3.14
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Monday, November 14, 2011
NOB HILL BADGER
Yes. I am the badger. I do not consume "Toad S.O.L Stew".
Someone else can eat that.
I am the badger of Nob Hill.
And have better resources.
It is autumn on Nob Hill. I will pursue the raccoons and possums.
Together we will raid the trash receptacles and throw empty containers against walls, making a furry racket. We will share our fine tobacco, produced by elderly English companies. And enjoy the last bit of mayonaise in a discarded jar.
We have tough digestive organs, we do.
Is that a fresh cigar butt I see?
A yummy duck leg?
Somewhere out there is a small feminine dark-haired person who resembles a raccoon most remarkably. Together we shall chase the pigeons away from our favourite row of garbage cans. Ours!
There is some charsiu in there, I'm sure of it.
In tandem we will amble up Pacific Street, checking out the recycling bins and basement windows. Or stalk pussy cats.
The badger and his co-conspirator.
A small petite raccoon.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Sunday, November 13, 2011
CHINATOWN NOODLE SUNDAY: THE SAN SUN RESTAURANT
There are some things that you cannot eat in public. Unless the person dining with you is a forgiving sort, who puts pleasure above a clean face. Crab is one of those things - we've all at some point in our lives looked up after stuffing ourselves with black bean garlic ginger crab to discover that a mob of stunned Midwestern tourists are surrounding our table, staring at our juicy glistening fingers, faces, forearms.......
Somewhat self-consciously we remove a greasy shred of scallion from our hair, while resolving never to eat at a place so near the tourist route again.
Mmmm, tasty!
Oh hey, there's still some meat in this leg!
A nice big bowl of noodle soup is another one of those things. Given how close it is to taking a bath, you shouldn't enjoy that in public either. At least not without a karmic barrier keeping the folks from Kahoka or Knob Lick far far away.
Part of the problem is that there are times when you wish you had four hands. And I can say with extreme confidence that I am not alone in this, as I remember times when I saw businessmen holding chopsticks and a lit cigarette in one hand, cell-phone and a snifter of Remy Martin in the other hand, while simultaneously continuing two or three conversations and passing a plate of oysters to someone next to them.
Thousand-armed Hindu Godess? Got nothing on multitasking mister Lee. Who probably wishes he had at least three more hands.
I won't deny that I have at times wondered if I could reach out with one of my feet to snag a condiment, as my hands were just too busy.
But they'd probably frown on that in most noodle joints.
There's a line you just don't cross, and just guessing here I'd say that eating with your feet is it.
Still.
An extra set of fingers would've been useful.
I need to practice growing ectoplasmic limbs.
三陽咖啡餐屋
SAN SUN RESTAURANT
Saam-yeung kafei tsan-ok
848 Washington Street, San Francisco, CA 94108.
Between Stockton Street and Grant Avenue.
Sometimes it's a jolly good thing I have no female companion with whom to eat. She would have been horrified at my rapid shifting of digital gears to control the chopsticks, spoon, knife, fork, long ice-drink spoon, condiment saucers, teacup, coffee glass and dripper. Splash, tinkle.
I would never have been able to maintain that studied air of romantic mystery under those circumstances, she'd realize that I am just a greedy food-scarfing normal person, not the loveable super-intelligent gentlemanly badger of her dreams.
Where's the maturity that the omnivorous brock is known for?
The ectoplasmic limbs would likely terrify her too.
I really hate to disappoint young ladies.
They always look so crestfallen.
Oh well. Reality bites.
At least I can use chopsticks with either hand.
Bring on the delicious noodles!
I'm ready for this.
燒猪肉河粉湯
Sui chü yiuk ho fan tong
Roast Pork with River Noodles and Soup.
The river noodles come in a huge bowl of broth with beansprouts (芽菜 nga-choi) and chopped chives (韭菜 gau-choi), scalding hot.
The fire-grilled meat is on a separate plate, garnished with knife, fork, and chopped scallion (青葱).
Thinly sliced charred pork, dipped in soup and then dabbed with condiments, is sheer heaven. The juiciness of the broth-dunked fatty meat with the unctuous deliciousness of red red hot sauce, the occasional crunch of pickled chilies, that marvelous hint of soot complimenting the sweetness of the marinated pig........
That, plus trying to raise a spoonfull of hot broth and a skein of noodles to the mouth at the same time, led to the dance of many hands. Ho-fan (river noodles) are beautiful white soft broad rice stick noodles, slippery slithery smooth, against which the specks of intense green provided by the chives and scallions stand out beautifully, all delightfully contrasting with the sweet fresh crispness of the beansprouts.
The table service at San Sun is a bit casual. But they expect you to have a pretty good idea about what you want, and when your food is ready they'll deliver it with no fuss. If you want to read the newspaper while eating, or play with your cell-phone, that is up to you. Friendly people, but unobtrusive.
There will be no artsy drama student oozing up to your table to aver that their name is Gottfroid they'll be your waiter today, and then reciting the long list of specials with dramatic cadence. If that was what you wanted, you could've gone to a place serving California Cuisine and paid a hell of a lot more for food a hell of a lot less yummy.
And you wouldn't have gotten the 凍咖啡奶 (tung kafei nai - ice coffee with condensed milk) either.
San Sun has the full selection of Vietnamese and Chinese dishes that feature souped or fried noodles: broad rice stick, narrow rice stick, bean thread, egg noodle, or wheat flour, dressed deliciously and appropriately. There's also a good selection of appetizer type thingies, as well as funkadelic cold drinks of the tapioca ball, jelly sliver, and chilled squiggly in syrup variety.
It's all affordable, and the place is comfortable, roomy, and clean.
You could even take your mid-western cousins there.
Judging by the little girls at a far table gleefully tackling something steaming, and the Chinese business man with an electronic device at a nearer table, as well as the passel of chicas happily slurping huge mouthfuls in the corner, this place really has it going on.
There's a bunch of Shanghainese somewhere, I can hear their hissy language.
Seems like everybody was happy with what they ate.
And that's a very good thing.
AFTER THOUGHT
Kearny Street is quite beautiful at twilight on an Autumn Sunday, dark velvet greys and glowing yellow pools of light, with pink streaks in the sky. Hardly any cars, and only a few pedestrians heading back to their hotels or towards Bart. It's peaceful.
Amble slowly, so that you finish smoking before you return to the office. Good tobacco needs time.
The Occidental is now open on Sundays; no brilliance figuring out where you're going later.
If I hadn't been smoking a pipe, I probably would've dropped by the Yummy Bakery on Jackson for a pei-dan-sou.
Maybe next weekend. There's always time.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Somewhat self-consciously we remove a greasy shred of scallion from our hair, while resolving never to eat at a place so near the tourist route again.
Mmmm, tasty!
Oh hey, there's still some meat in this leg!
A nice big bowl of noodle soup is another one of those things. Given how close it is to taking a bath, you shouldn't enjoy that in public either. At least not without a karmic barrier keeping the folks from Kahoka or Knob Lick far far away.
Part of the problem is that there are times when you wish you had four hands. And I can say with extreme confidence that I am not alone in this, as I remember times when I saw businessmen holding chopsticks and a lit cigarette in one hand, cell-phone and a snifter of Remy Martin in the other hand, while simultaneously continuing two or three conversations and passing a plate of oysters to someone next to them.
Thousand-armed Hindu Godess? Got nothing on multitasking mister Lee. Who probably wishes he had at least three more hands.
I won't deny that I have at times wondered if I could reach out with one of my feet to snag a condiment, as my hands were just too busy.
But they'd probably frown on that in most noodle joints.
There's a line you just don't cross, and just guessing here I'd say that eating with your feet is it.
Still.
An extra set of fingers would've been useful.
I need to practice growing ectoplasmic limbs.
三陽咖啡餐屋
SAN SUN RESTAURANT
Saam-yeung kafei tsan-ok
848 Washington Street, San Francisco, CA 94108.
Between Stockton Street and Grant Avenue.
Sometimes it's a jolly good thing I have no female companion with whom to eat. She would have been horrified at my rapid shifting of digital gears to control the chopsticks, spoon, knife, fork, long ice-drink spoon, condiment saucers, teacup, coffee glass and dripper. Splash, tinkle.
I would never have been able to maintain that studied air of romantic mystery under those circumstances, she'd realize that I am just a greedy food-scarfing normal person, not the loveable super-intelligent gentlemanly badger of her dreams.
Where's the maturity that the omnivorous brock is known for?
The ectoplasmic limbs would likely terrify her too.
I really hate to disappoint young ladies.
They always look so crestfallen.
Oh well. Reality bites.
At least I can use chopsticks with either hand.
Bring on the delicious noodles!
I'm ready for this.
燒猪肉河粉湯
Sui chü yiuk ho fan tong
Roast Pork with River Noodles and Soup.
The river noodles come in a huge bowl of broth with beansprouts (芽菜 nga-choi) and chopped chives (韭菜 gau-choi), scalding hot.
The fire-grilled meat is on a separate plate, garnished with knife, fork, and chopped scallion (青葱).
Thinly sliced charred pork, dipped in soup and then dabbed with condiments, is sheer heaven. The juiciness of the broth-dunked fatty meat with the unctuous deliciousness of red red hot sauce, the occasional crunch of pickled chilies, that marvelous hint of soot complimenting the sweetness of the marinated pig........
That, plus trying to raise a spoonfull of hot broth and a skein of noodles to the mouth at the same time, led to the dance of many hands. Ho-fan (river noodles) are beautiful white soft broad rice stick noodles, slippery slithery smooth, against which the specks of intense green provided by the chives and scallions stand out beautifully, all delightfully contrasting with the sweet fresh crispness of the beansprouts.
The table service at San Sun is a bit casual. But they expect you to have a pretty good idea about what you want, and when your food is ready they'll deliver it with no fuss. If you want to read the newspaper while eating, or play with your cell-phone, that is up to you. Friendly people, but unobtrusive.
There will be no artsy drama student oozing up to your table to aver that their name is Gottfroid they'll be your waiter today, and then reciting the long list of specials with dramatic cadence. If that was what you wanted, you could've gone to a place serving California Cuisine and paid a hell of a lot more for food a hell of a lot less yummy.
And you wouldn't have gotten the 凍咖啡奶 (tung kafei nai - ice coffee with condensed milk) either.
San Sun has the full selection of Vietnamese and Chinese dishes that feature souped or fried noodles: broad rice stick, narrow rice stick, bean thread, egg noodle, or wheat flour, dressed deliciously and appropriately. There's also a good selection of appetizer type thingies, as well as funkadelic cold drinks of the tapioca ball, jelly sliver, and chilled squiggly in syrup variety.
It's all affordable, and the place is comfortable, roomy, and clean.
You could even take your mid-western cousins there.
Judging by the little girls at a far table gleefully tackling something steaming, and the Chinese business man with an electronic device at a nearer table, as well as the passel of chicas happily slurping huge mouthfuls in the corner, this place really has it going on.
There's a bunch of Shanghainese somewhere, I can hear their hissy language.
Seems like everybody was happy with what they ate.
And that's a very good thing.
AFTER THOUGHT
Kearny Street is quite beautiful at twilight on an Autumn Sunday, dark velvet greys and glowing yellow pools of light, with pink streaks in the sky. Hardly any cars, and only a few pedestrians heading back to their hotels or towards Bart. It's peaceful.
Amble slowly, so that you finish smoking before you return to the office. Good tobacco needs time.
The Occidental is now open on Sundays; no brilliance figuring out where you're going later.
If I hadn't been smoking a pipe, I probably would've dropped by the Yummy Bakery on Jackson for a pei-dan-sou.
Maybe next weekend. There's always time.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
DELICIOUS NOODLY THINGS - LUNCH ON STOCKTON AND WASHINGTON STREETS
One of the reasons that I like public transit is the opportunity to people-watch. You folks are fascinating!
If I were a space-alien temporarily posted to this planet to observe the local intelligent life, the bus would be the perfect place to collect data.
Prior to plundering earth’s precious resources of course, and hauling off the intelligent young females for breeding purposes.
Mars needs women!
Plus water and Icelandic bee-honey, among other things.
But mostly women.
COMMON COURTESIES 禮數
The California Street bus is particularly good in that regard, as once past Van Ness it picks up a large number of Cantonese on the way to Chinatown. Totally unconsciously they demonstrate levels of conditioning quite unusual nowadays among white people.
There’s a drang to concede seniority and superiority, almost always matched by a strong tendency to acknowledge the gesture but refuse the favour. Sit, sit! And unless the elderly person is truly several years older than the person getting up to offer their seat, they will vehemently refuse.
No no, you sit, you sit – ney tzoh, ney tzoh!
Young women with children will either themselves rise – usually an unsuccessful attempt at manners, as the grey-haired ones will not hear of it unless truly needful – or tell their offspring to stand up. Which provides an object lesson and an example that will subconsciously influence the youngster, and inform his or her conduct throughout their life.
I doubt that many white people have any such conditioning anymore – quite often some perfectly healthy young adult will be too preoccupied with their cell-phone or scratching their testicles to even notice that some tiny old lady is trembling while desperately holding on. Just like they fail to understand that when there is a ton of room in the back of the bus, it might be a good idea to move there, so that the dozen or so folks waiting at the bus stop can also ride.
阿姨, 嗰便可以坐 SIT OVER THERE, AUNTIE
I know I seem a bit puritanical about this, but I really do think that yielding your place to a lady or an old person is the right thing to do. Same goes for holding doors open for others, and saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’.
It really isn’t that hard to be smooth to the people around you.
Pointing out an available seat to the auntie next to you made her life easier, and gave the rest of us a bit more space to stand.
The young fellow planted in front of the empty seat could’ve done the same, but he was far too busy with his i-pod to notice anything, so I can understand the oversight; electronic devices require one’s complete attention.
And it’s reassuring to know that he isn’t an outerspace alien observing us.
If his kind were interplanetary explorers, we’d be in real trouble.
They would NEVER understand that Mars needs women!
Instead, they’d steal our hip hop music.
And open up the Red Planet.
For Starbucks.
OKAY THEN, WE'RE HERE 到了, 大家落車嘅喎
Chinatown is also perfect for people-watching, especially at eating places. Precisely like young white adults with their cell-phones and other electrical toys, Cantonese people are totally pre-occupied when involved with food.
But with one crucial difference: they do not tune out the rest of the world. Instead they regard the passing throngs as a version of dinner theatre, keenly observing everything around them from behind a plate of something really tasty.
I arrived at the dim sum place when the ladies behind the counter where having their own lunch. Which was while the place was jumping, every table occupied. But that's not strange, as seeing other people cheerfully stuffing themselves stimulates the appetite - it's hard work!
Took my tray and sat down at a table where an elderly woman was savouring every silken spoonful of her 皮蛋瘦肉粥 (pei dan sau yiuk jook - century egg and pork curls rice porridge) with slow ecstasy. A friendly nod served as a bon appétit.
By the time I had finished munching, most tables were empty again, so I ordered some of the fresh steamed cilantro sheet noodle (yuen sai cheung fan 芫茜腸粉) which had just come out of the kitchen.
Oh happy opportunism! I got it first!
[Dim sum place: 金華點心快餐 Yummy Dim Sum & Fast Food, 930 Stockton Street, San Francisco, CA 94108.]
Strolled down Washington Street smoking an after-lunch pipe, past the young fellows from the kungfu school catching a ciggy out of sight of their sifu, past the ladies handing out menus for nearby restaurants on the corner of Grant Avenue. Caught the eye of a little girl whose mouth dropped open when she saw the pipe, as well as an elderly gentleman who stared in fascination at the object.
Totally understandable!
It's a handsome pipe, of very high quality - not at all surprising that they recognized that!
Calm and contemplative air-pollution. It's one of the joys of life.
Got to the office shortly before three. The day had started well.
Everyone should have something nice to eat on weekends, it makes the world fresh and bright again.
Don't you agree?
三陽咖啡餐屋 SAAM-YEUNG KAFEI TSAN-OK
I should mention, by the way, that the San Sun Restaurant (三陽咖啡餐屋), which had to move because of the metro line that will be built along Stockton Street, has relocated to where Sun Wah Kue (新華僑餐廳) used to be on the corner of Ross Alley and Washington (between Stockton and Grant).
Many people fondly remember Sun Wah Kue, especially their delicious pies, and diner-style dishes with a Chinatown touch - oxtail cooked with star anise, fried chicken with the best coating ever - and were unhappy when it closed down years ago. It had been a place where generations of Chinatown folks had enjoyed the food.
They'll be pleased to know that the old location now has a bright sunny new tenant with a positive attitude.
It is clean and fresh and inviting, and I anticipate going there for lunch tomorrow.
I will let you know how it is.
[San Sun Restaurant: 848 Washington Street, San Francisco, CA 94108.]
Fine tobacco, nice people, yummy dimsum.
And tomorrow, noodles!
Auntie!
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
If I were a space-alien temporarily posted to this planet to observe the local intelligent life, the bus would be the perfect place to collect data.
Prior to plundering earth’s precious resources of course, and hauling off the intelligent young females for breeding purposes.
Mars needs women!
Plus water and Icelandic bee-honey, among other things.
But mostly women.
COMMON COURTESIES 禮數
The California Street bus is particularly good in that regard, as once past Van Ness it picks up a large number of Cantonese on the way to Chinatown. Totally unconsciously they demonstrate levels of conditioning quite unusual nowadays among white people.
There’s a drang to concede seniority and superiority, almost always matched by a strong tendency to acknowledge the gesture but refuse the favour. Sit, sit! And unless the elderly person is truly several years older than the person getting up to offer their seat, they will vehemently refuse.
No no, you sit, you sit – ney tzoh, ney tzoh!
Young women with children will either themselves rise – usually an unsuccessful attempt at manners, as the grey-haired ones will not hear of it unless truly needful – or tell their offspring to stand up. Which provides an object lesson and an example that will subconsciously influence the youngster, and inform his or her conduct throughout their life.
I doubt that many white people have any such conditioning anymore – quite often some perfectly healthy young adult will be too preoccupied with their cell-phone or scratching their testicles to even notice that some tiny old lady is trembling while desperately holding on. Just like they fail to understand that when there is a ton of room in the back of the bus, it might be a good idea to move there, so that the dozen or so folks waiting at the bus stop can also ride.
阿姨, 嗰便可以坐 SIT OVER THERE, AUNTIE
I know I seem a bit puritanical about this, but I really do think that yielding your place to a lady or an old person is the right thing to do. Same goes for holding doors open for others, and saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’.
It really isn’t that hard to be smooth to the people around you.
Pointing out an available seat to the auntie next to you made her life easier, and gave the rest of us a bit more space to stand.
The young fellow planted in front of the empty seat could’ve done the same, but he was far too busy with his i-pod to notice anything, so I can understand the oversight; electronic devices require one’s complete attention.
And it’s reassuring to know that he isn’t an outerspace alien observing us.
If his kind were interplanetary explorers, we’d be in real trouble.
They would NEVER understand that Mars needs women!
Instead, they’d steal our hip hop music.
And open up the Red Planet.
For Starbucks.
OKAY THEN, WE'RE HERE 到了, 大家落車嘅喎
Chinatown is also perfect for people-watching, especially at eating places. Precisely like young white adults with their cell-phones and other electrical toys, Cantonese people are totally pre-occupied when involved with food.
But with one crucial difference: they do not tune out the rest of the world. Instead they regard the passing throngs as a version of dinner theatre, keenly observing everything around them from behind a plate of something really tasty.
I arrived at the dim sum place when the ladies behind the counter where having their own lunch. Which was while the place was jumping, every table occupied. But that's not strange, as seeing other people cheerfully stuffing themselves stimulates the appetite - it's hard work!
Took my tray and sat down at a table where an elderly woman was savouring every silken spoonful of her 皮蛋瘦肉粥 (pei dan sau yiuk jook - century egg and pork curls rice porridge) with slow ecstasy. A friendly nod served as a bon appétit.
By the time I had finished munching, most tables were empty again, so I ordered some of the fresh steamed cilantro sheet noodle (yuen sai cheung fan 芫茜腸粉) which had just come out of the kitchen.
Oh happy opportunism! I got it first!
[Dim sum place: 金華點心快餐 Yummy Dim Sum & Fast Food, 930 Stockton Street, San Francisco, CA 94108.]
Strolled down Washington Street smoking an after-lunch pipe, past the young fellows from the kungfu school catching a ciggy out of sight of their sifu, past the ladies handing out menus for nearby restaurants on the corner of Grant Avenue. Caught the eye of a little girl whose mouth dropped open when she saw the pipe, as well as an elderly gentleman who stared in fascination at the object.
Totally understandable!
It's a handsome pipe, of very high quality - not at all surprising that they recognized that!
Calm and contemplative air-pollution. It's one of the joys of life.
Got to the office shortly before three. The day had started well.
Everyone should have something nice to eat on weekends, it makes the world fresh and bright again.
Don't you agree?
三陽咖啡餐屋 SAAM-YEUNG KAFEI TSAN-OK
I should mention, by the way, that the San Sun Restaurant (三陽咖啡餐屋), which had to move because of the metro line that will be built along Stockton Street, has relocated to where Sun Wah Kue (新華僑餐廳) used to be on the corner of Ross Alley and Washington (between Stockton and Grant).
Many people fondly remember Sun Wah Kue, especially their delicious pies, and diner-style dishes with a Chinatown touch - oxtail cooked with star anise, fried chicken with the best coating ever - and were unhappy when it closed down years ago. It had been a place where generations of Chinatown folks had enjoyed the food.
They'll be pleased to know that the old location now has a bright sunny new tenant with a positive attitude.
It is clean and fresh and inviting, and I anticipate going there for lunch tomorrow.
I will let you know how it is.
[San Sun Restaurant: 848 Washington Street, San Francisco, CA 94108.]
Fine tobacco, nice people, yummy dimsum.
And tomorrow, noodles!
Auntie!
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Friday, November 11, 2011
SOUR PLUM SOUP 酸梅湯
One of the typical Chinese refreshments which some people greatly cherish is sour plum soup. Versions of it are available bottled or canned, imported from both Taiwan and the mainland, as well as from other places.
In San Francisco you can find it in shops on Clement Street as well as in Chinatown.
I believe it is also available in the Tenderloin.
酸梅湯 SUEN MUI TONG
A tangy sweet drink, it is made by simmering dried crow-plums (wu mui 烏梅 Prunus mume) in water, with sugar, licorice root (kam tsou 甘草 Glycyrrhiza uralensis), and osmanthus flowers (gwai fa 桂花 Osmanthus fragrans), straining the liquor, and chilling it. Because the plums have been dried over fires, there will be a slightly smoky-salty flavour.
It is very popular during the warm season, being both cooling and beneficial to the digestion.
Also quite delicious - it is healthy, yes, but that isn't why you are drinking it.
Since making it at home can be a bit tedious, almost everyone purchases it ready-made. You can also buy a bottle of syrup and dilute it to the right strength yourself. A variation is to put a few salt plums in a glass with soda water, and moosh them up a bit with a spoon. And that, too, is very refreshing.
In Peking, in the olden days, vendors would roam the streets selling sour plum soup during the summer. This was one of the sights that many travelers mentioned whenever they wrote about the capitol. Both Ba Jin (巴金 1904 -2005) and Lao She (老舍 1899 -1966) who lived there for most of their lives made mention of such things when writing about aspects of Peking which have disappeared.
Sour plum soup is very traditional. Better tasting than most canned beverages, and healthier too.
However, some of us also think of it as a fine sexy drink.
TOESIES!
This is because we saw the movie 中國最後一個太監 (Chungkwok tsoei-hau yat go taai kam) and remember one scene particularly.
Irene Wan (温碧霞), who plays the wife of Lai Shi (the last eunuch of the title), is seated, with her feet deeply immersed in a vat of muck, pulping the plums and water which her husband will sell tomorrow. Lai Shi is questioning her, but instead of speaking, she quietly smiles in response.
A smiling beauty knee-deep in goo? Adorable!
It would have been so lovely if they had also shown us what her footsie-wootsies looked like with fruit gloop between the toes.
But that might have caused riots, so it's probably better that they didn't.
Still, a very great pity.
Ever since seeing that movie at the Taai Ming Sing Theatre (大明星戲院) in 1989, I've been much fonder of sour plum soup.
And no, I don't always think of darling feetsies when I drink it.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
In San Francisco you can find it in shops on Clement Street as well as in Chinatown.
I believe it is also available in the Tenderloin.
酸梅湯 SUEN MUI TONG
A tangy sweet drink, it is made by simmering dried crow-plums (wu mui 烏梅 Prunus mume) in water, with sugar, licorice root (kam tsou 甘草 Glycyrrhiza uralensis), and osmanthus flowers (gwai fa 桂花 Osmanthus fragrans), straining the liquor, and chilling it. Because the plums have been dried over fires, there will be a slightly smoky-salty flavour.
It is very popular during the warm season, being both cooling and beneficial to the digestion.
Also quite delicious - it is healthy, yes, but that isn't why you are drinking it.
Since making it at home can be a bit tedious, almost everyone purchases it ready-made. You can also buy a bottle of syrup and dilute it to the right strength yourself. A variation is to put a few salt plums in a glass with soda water, and moosh them up a bit with a spoon. And that, too, is very refreshing.
In Peking, in the olden days, vendors would roam the streets selling sour plum soup during the summer. This was one of the sights that many travelers mentioned whenever they wrote about the capitol. Both Ba Jin (巴金 1904 -2005) and Lao She (老舍 1899 -1966) who lived there for most of their lives made mention of such things when writing about aspects of Peking which have disappeared.
Sour plum soup is very traditional. Better tasting than most canned beverages, and healthier too.
However, some of us also think of it as a fine sexy drink.
TOESIES!
This is because we saw the movie 中國最後一個太監 (Chungkwok tsoei-hau yat go taai kam) and remember one scene particularly.
Irene Wan (温碧霞), who plays the wife of Lai Shi (the last eunuch of the title), is seated, with her feet deeply immersed in a vat of muck, pulping the plums and water which her husband will sell tomorrow. Lai Shi is questioning her, but instead of speaking, she quietly smiles in response.
A smiling beauty knee-deep in goo? Adorable!
It would have been so lovely if they had also shown us what her footsie-wootsies looked like with fruit gloop between the toes.
But that might have caused riots, so it's probably better that they didn't.
Still, a very great pity.
Ever since seeing that movie at the Taai Ming Sing Theatre (大明星戲院) in 1989, I've been much fonder of sour plum soup.
And no, I don't always think of darling feetsies when I drink it.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Thursday, November 10, 2011
BIG HEAP OF TOBACCO UPDATED
For the benefit of readers who are pipe smokers:
Just finished updating the long listing of tobacco posts.
Here: HEAP.
http://atthebackofthehill.blogspot.com/2010/01/big-heap-of-tobacco.html
Note that each post listed has the direct link to that piece, for your future reference.
Everything up to the beginning of November.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Just finished updating the long listing of tobacco posts.
Here: HEAP.
http://atthebackofthehill.blogspot.com/2010/01/big-heap-of-tobacco.html
Note that each post listed has the direct link to that piece, for your future reference.
Everything up to the beginning of November.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
FISHBALL RIVER NOODLE SOUP 魚丸河粉
Had to go down to the courthouse Tuesday because someone thought I would make a great juror. Yeah, me!
Either that or my name showed up on a list.
The list, as it turns out, was wrong. The lawyer for the defense took one look at me and threw me out. Guessing perhaps I wouldn't be so good for her case.
And I really cannot understand why. I was more than willing to give that grotty gun-toting thug client of hers the benefit of doubt. Every chance possible.
Don't want to send an innocent lawbreaker to the big house just 'cause there were witnesses dot dot dot red-handed dot dot dot ...
I mean, he could really be a sweet guy, right?
Right?
Just like the bunch of juvie Vietnamese gangbangers at the banh mi place on Hyde Street a block and half up from Golden Gate in the TL where I went when court broke for lunch.
For all I know they could be regular church-goers.
Good God-fearing boys that help their mothers.
Who am I to judge people on appearances?
Even if they do have pieces sticking out of their windbreakers.
That's a very impressive Ruger, truly!
No concealed heaters here.
Total honesty.
The reason why I chose that place is because the soups and sandwiches (unidentifiable unless you read Vietnamese..... which except for soups and sandwiches I don't) are pretty darn good. It's cheap, nice atmosphere (and clean tables), and NOBODY bothers a bearded middle-aged white dude.
ESPECIALLY if he looks like he might pull a serious textbook on you.
Drop of a hat. He's the type that would do something like that.
Might be 'Intro to Literature'. Or 'Beginning Algebra'.
You don't want trouble. Just step the heck away.
Let the bearded middle-aged white fella eat.
Pray that he doesn't lecture someone.
Turns out I didn't want to eat there at all. Something going on outside, and the entire block smelled of drug-addict vomit. Even the banh mi joint.
Nearly heaved up right there. Good freaking heavens.
The last thing we need is exploding junkies.
Which brings me to the second part of my inspirational talk.
BEST DARN TENDERLOIN LUNCH EVER!
Around the corner, between Hyde and Larkin on Ellis Street. You like noodles?
They got 'em. Lots of noodles.
Fabulous, better than any of the places filled with Hastings law students further down.
HẲI KÝ MÌ GIA
海記麵家
HAI KY NOODLE HOUSE
707 Ellis Street, San Francisco, CA 94109
415-771-2577
[Hoi Kei Min Kaa]
Extensive menu. Room for around sixty people. Bustling, hardly a place to sit.
It was nearly filled with customers, of whom the overwhelming majority were very happy Cantonese.
At no time were there more than three white complected individuals in the place.
But that isn't what made it so good.
The truly exceptional soupstock does.
The waitress pointed me to a table which already had two Cantonese ladies and an infant busily digging into steaming bowls of phở with crunchy beansprouts, basil leaf, and sliced green chili.
After I ordered fishball river noodles soup and drip coffee (ice and condensed milk), I listened in on their conversation. It progressed from animated gossip about so-and-so's husband and someone else's brother to exclamations of increasing ecstasy over the food. Their girlish faces were wreathed in smiles.
It was soup that made two married women look so beautiful.
Childlike feminine joy - it's a memorable appetizer.
What can I say about the fishballs? Well, fishball is fishball. There's not much more to it than that. Broad rice stick noodles, beansprouts, cilantro, all floating in that sumptuous clarified chicken broth. Add a few chopped chili chunks from the jar of fresh pickled Jalapeño, and you've got sheer heaven.
食咗包了, 好满意!
With the exception of the Mexican waitperson who also works there, all the staff are Teochow Chinese, speak Cantonese and Viet, and probably more than enough English to help the visiting lofan and Philippinos.
When I paid, I remarked to the waitress, "嘩, 又平, 又快, 又好味....., 我都唔明白點解冇多啲佬番.....? "
She didn't understand why either.
It's quite affordable, it's fast, the food is good.
The menu is fairly intelligible. If you have questions, ask!
Happily wandered around after lunch smoking a pipefull of flake, till it was time to go back to court and get peremptorily rejected by an attractive attorney.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Either that or my name showed up on a list.
The list, as it turns out, was wrong. The lawyer for the defense took one look at me and threw me out. Guessing perhaps I wouldn't be so good for her case.
And I really cannot understand why. I was more than willing to give that grotty gun-toting thug client of hers the benefit of doubt. Every chance possible.
Don't want to send an innocent lawbreaker to the big house just 'cause there were witnesses dot dot dot red-handed dot dot dot ...
I mean, he could really be a sweet guy, right?
Right?
Just like the bunch of juvie Vietnamese gangbangers at the banh mi place on Hyde Street a block and half up from Golden Gate in the TL where I went when court broke for lunch.
For all I know they could be regular church-goers.
Good God-fearing boys that help their mothers.
Who am I to judge people on appearances?
Even if they do have pieces sticking out of their windbreakers.
That's a very impressive Ruger, truly!
No concealed heaters here.
Total honesty.
The reason why I chose that place is because the soups and sandwiches (unidentifiable unless you read Vietnamese..... which except for soups and sandwiches I don't) are pretty darn good. It's cheap, nice atmosphere (and clean tables), and NOBODY bothers a bearded middle-aged white dude.
ESPECIALLY if he looks like he might pull a serious textbook on you.
Drop of a hat. He's the type that would do something like that.
Might be 'Intro to Literature'. Or 'Beginning Algebra'.
You don't want trouble. Just step the heck away.
Let the bearded middle-aged white fella eat.
Pray that he doesn't lecture someone.
Turns out I didn't want to eat there at all. Something going on outside, and the entire block smelled of drug-addict vomit. Even the banh mi joint.
Nearly heaved up right there. Good freaking heavens.
The last thing we need is exploding junkies.
Which brings me to the second part of my inspirational talk.
BEST DARN TENDERLOIN LUNCH EVER!
Around the corner, between Hyde and Larkin on Ellis Street. You like noodles?
They got 'em. Lots of noodles.
Fabulous, better than any of the places filled with Hastings law students further down.
HẲI KÝ MÌ GIA
海記麵家
HAI KY NOODLE HOUSE
707 Ellis Street, San Francisco, CA 94109
415-771-2577
[Hoi Kei Min Kaa]
Extensive menu. Room for around sixty people. Bustling, hardly a place to sit.
It was nearly filled with customers, of whom the overwhelming majority were very happy Cantonese.
At no time were there more than three white complected individuals in the place.
But that isn't what made it so good.
The truly exceptional soupstock does.
The waitress pointed me to a table which already had two Cantonese ladies and an infant busily digging into steaming bowls of phở with crunchy beansprouts, basil leaf, and sliced green chili.
After I ordered fishball river noodles soup and drip coffee (ice and condensed milk), I listened in on their conversation. It progressed from animated gossip about so-and-so's husband and someone else's brother to exclamations of increasing ecstasy over the food. Their girlish faces were wreathed in smiles.
It was soup that made two married women look so beautiful.
Childlike feminine joy - it's a memorable appetizer.
What can I say about the fishballs? Well, fishball is fishball. There's not much more to it than that. Broad rice stick noodles, beansprouts, cilantro, all floating in that sumptuous clarified chicken broth. Add a few chopped chili chunks from the jar of fresh pickled Jalapeño, and you've got sheer heaven.
食咗包了, 好满意!
With the exception of the Mexican waitperson who also works there, all the staff are Teochow Chinese, speak Cantonese and Viet, and probably more than enough English to help the visiting lofan and Philippinos.
When I paid, I remarked to the waitress, "嘩, 又平, 又快, 又好味....., 我都唔明白點解冇多啲佬番.....? "
She didn't understand why either.
It's quite affordable, it's fast, the food is good.
The menu is fairly intelligible. If you have questions, ask!
Happily wandered around after lunch smoking a pipefull of flake, till it was time to go back to court and get peremptorily rejected by an attractive attorney.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Wednesday, November 09, 2011
THIS WAY TO A FAIRLY POINTLESS GLOAT-POEM ABOUT BALKAN SOBRANIE PIPE TOBACCO ORIGINAL MIXTURE - AS MADE BY J. F. GERMAIN FOR ARANGO CIGAR COMPANY
Gloat, gloat, gloat, gloat, gloat, gloat, gloat, gloat, gloat;
Gloat, gloat, gloat, gloat, gloat, gloat, gloat, gloat;
Gloat, gloat, gloat, gloat, gloat, gloat, gloat;
Gloat, gloat, gloat, gloat, gloat, gloat;
Gloat, gloat, gloat, gloat, gloat;
Gloat, gloat, gloat, gloat;
Gloat, gloat, gloat;
Gloat, gloat;
Gloat.
Well, I did tell you it was a bit pointless, didn't I?
A review of this incarnation of Balkan Sobranie is HERE.
TOBACCO INDEX
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Gloat, gloat, gloat, gloat, gloat, gloat, gloat, gloat;
Gloat, gloat, gloat, gloat, gloat, gloat, gloat;
Gloat, gloat, gloat, gloat, gloat, gloat;
Gloat, gloat, gloat, gloat, gloat;
Gloat, gloat, gloat, gloat;
Gloat, gloat, gloat;
Gloat, gloat;
Gloat.
Well, I did tell you it was a bit pointless, didn't I?
A review of this incarnation of Balkan Sobranie is HERE.
TOBACCO INDEX
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
BEASTS OF NOB HILL - WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE
Every morning while washing I can hear screeching parrots overhead.
It's probably the Telegraph Hill flock, but I think they may be forming a colony in the nearby green area. Lately I've been hearing them behind the apartment in the evening too.
Nob Hill is not only a supportive environment for super rich San Franciscans, at its lower reaches it is also hospitable to more colourful creatures.
Parrots. Crows. Raccoons.
And those of us who qualify as none of the above.
There is in fact a booming raccoon population out there. A veritable mob.
Little furry burglars and con-artists everywhere.
In addition to the over-fed raccoons that live near the Ping Yuen projects, there's also some fat and sassy beasts further up Pacific Street, who are adept at raiding waste disposal containers. They avoid the recycling bins and head straight for trash or compost - that's where the pizza is!
Plus cat doors, basements, and back seats of parked cars. Wouldn't be surprised if they've stolen an infant or two, and are raising them as feral naked children.
It would explain some of the crazy ladies in this neighborhood.
How would YOU like your child to grow up eating garbage and mugging cats?
Better keep the kid away from those fast-food burgers. That's how it starts.
A few years ago I would occasionally sit near the church on Larkin and Clay Streets in the shadow of the trees of an evening to smoke my pipe. That's less appealing now - the pastor, his flock, and the raccoons have all fled, the pigeons and street people have taken over.
The building is abandoned and falling apart.
Even the local crows avoid it.
Not enough roadkill.
Or maybe not any that stays around for very long.
It's probably those feral children.
There are fewer street areas where one can have a quiet smoke than once there were.
If it's not someone trying to bum a fag, it's a snooty transplantee from Bucketknowswhere in the Midwest, objecting vociferously to tobacco near the car or her kid.
Lady, your car won't come to any harm because of nicotine, and far better you should worry about the raccoons stealing your ugly brat.
Besides, your precious poppet is INSIDE the house! How dare you bother me when I'm not even near him?
If raccoons don't snatch your child, I hope crows mistake him for roadkill.
Peck peck peck peck peck - darn, tastes nasty! Like bad hamburgers!
Either that, or the parrots should traumatize the monster.
Fly around his head calling him rude names.
I'll teach them the words.
There are also raccoons up at the top of the hill, living off the fancy hotels and rich people.
Plump, prosperous, and remarkably contented. Where they are, they don't have to work for a living.
Probably a surfeit of discarded pizza.
Plus the occasional cigar.
Sometimes, at night, I'm aware of beady eyes watching my every move.
Fur and feathers everywhere.
Remarkably, almost no cats.
I think they got chased away by the parrots.
Those birds have a tendency to gang up on other animals.
Between them and the crows, the pigeons are having a hard time of it.
I hope that the parrots and the raccoons drive out the non-smokers next; there's far too many carpetbaggers from elsewhere in the country in this neighborhood.
If I have to choose between trust-fund opportunists and yuppies on the one hand, or raccoons, parrots, and crows on the other hand, you know which side I'll take.
Furry thugs and feathered rowdies win hands down.
No animal has ever objected to my habits.
Maybe I can reward them with food.
I will put a burrito outside.
It's better than a baby.
Con salsa picante.
Bon gusto!
Would y'all perhaps like a cigar?
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
It's probably the Telegraph Hill flock, but I think they may be forming a colony in the nearby green area. Lately I've been hearing them behind the apartment in the evening too.
Nob Hill is not only a supportive environment for super rich San Franciscans, at its lower reaches it is also hospitable to more colourful creatures.
Parrots. Crows. Raccoons.
And those of us who qualify as none of the above.
There is in fact a booming raccoon population out there. A veritable mob.
Little furry burglars and con-artists everywhere.
In addition to the over-fed raccoons that live near the Ping Yuen projects, there's also some fat and sassy beasts further up Pacific Street, who are adept at raiding waste disposal containers. They avoid the recycling bins and head straight for trash or compost - that's where the pizza is!
Plus cat doors, basements, and back seats of parked cars. Wouldn't be surprised if they've stolen an infant or two, and are raising them as feral naked children.
It would explain some of the crazy ladies in this neighborhood.
How would YOU like your child to grow up eating garbage and mugging cats?
Better keep the kid away from those fast-food burgers. That's how it starts.
A few years ago I would occasionally sit near the church on Larkin and Clay Streets in the shadow of the trees of an evening to smoke my pipe. That's less appealing now - the pastor, his flock, and the raccoons have all fled, the pigeons and street people have taken over.
The building is abandoned and falling apart.
Even the local crows avoid it.
Not enough roadkill.
Or maybe not any that stays around for very long.
It's probably those feral children.
There are fewer street areas where one can have a quiet smoke than once there were.
If it's not someone trying to bum a fag, it's a snooty transplantee from Bucketknowswhere in the Midwest, objecting vociferously to tobacco near the car or her kid.
Lady, your car won't come to any harm because of nicotine, and far better you should worry about the raccoons stealing your ugly brat.
Besides, your precious poppet is INSIDE the house! How dare you bother me when I'm not even near him?
If raccoons don't snatch your child, I hope crows mistake him for roadkill.
Peck peck peck peck peck - darn, tastes nasty! Like bad hamburgers!
Either that, or the parrots should traumatize the monster.
Fly around his head calling him rude names.
I'll teach them the words.
There are also raccoons up at the top of the hill, living off the fancy hotels and rich people.
Plump, prosperous, and remarkably contented. Where they are, they don't have to work for a living.
Probably a surfeit of discarded pizza.
Plus the occasional cigar.
Sometimes, at night, I'm aware of beady eyes watching my every move.
Fur and feathers everywhere.
Remarkably, almost no cats.
I think they got chased away by the parrots.
Those birds have a tendency to gang up on other animals.
Between them and the crows, the pigeons are having a hard time of it.
I hope that the parrots and the raccoons drive out the non-smokers next; there's far too many carpetbaggers from elsewhere in the country in this neighborhood.
If I have to choose between trust-fund opportunists and yuppies on the one hand, or raccoons, parrots, and crows on the other hand, you know which side I'll take.
Furry thugs and feathered rowdies win hands down.
No animal has ever objected to my habits.
Maybe I can reward them with food.
I will put a burrito outside.
It's better than a baby.
Con salsa picante.
Bon gusto!
Would y'all perhaps like a cigar?
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Tuesday, November 08, 2011
DECENT MEN
I'm afraid that Bob does not understand the female dynamic. Which is a pity, because underneath that thick veneer of crassness and vulgarity he's actually a pretty decent man. Just not consciously.
But clearly the man-woman thing is too complicated for him, all of his involvements are messy.
I've known him for several years. He's had a different girl-friend every time I've seen him.
He likes it that way. His fondest love affairs have always been strictly temporary bondings, rather like a hyena and a zebra carcass.
His current flame is getting clingy and seems to want to keep him, and that's a real problem in his world, albeit far less so than when it happened before with other women.
He's actually quite fond of this one, though he won't come right out and say it. And she is better than many of his previous ladies, especially that blonde six months ago who got him fired from the best restaurant at which he ever worked when she broke up with him. They still talk about that incident.
They never had to call the cops before.
Most of his dates are people you do not want to be seen with in public.
Not only because of their outrageous tits and tattoos.
They don't do very well in daylight.
Behavioural issues.
When he found out I was single after my two decade romance came to an end, he expressed extreme (and unsuitable) envy.
"How lucky can you get, now you can chase tail again!"
'Errrrrrrrrrrrm, what?'
"Tail. Chase tail. Have one-night stands and kiss party girls. Tail!"
TAIL! OR, THE OPERATIC SEX LIFE.
I firmly said that such was the last thing on my mind, and then made the mistake of asking him why he thought superficial flings were a good thing. His answers showed that he was a perfect representative sample of his class and generation.
He's got that eighties attitude: me, me, meatrack, me.
It's all about the physical aspect for him; he loves sex but doesn't want much involvement with the other person, and he cannot understand why I would not think exactly the same.
I should be out there chasing the aforementioned tail before it's too late.
Men should have only one thing on their mind.
It's natural.
SPECULATION ABOUT THE ESSENTIAL CONSIDERATA FOR 'TAIL'
My insistence that there has got to be more than stupendous whompeties in a relationship absolutely baffled him. That in fact sexual compatibility, although an important factor, was but one of many considerations confused him even further.
Sex, to him, is the ONLY logical reason why men and women get together.
He cannot understand why I haven't been frogging like a bunny these past several months; if it were him he'd be dating someone different every week.
Two or three girls at a time.
Surely females are fun?
Whoopee, girls, yay!
Well, yes. They are. If they've got a brain and a sense of humour. Along with mature sensibilities, gentleness, and decency. If they're NICE people.
You have to really like someone to want to grope them.
That counts for both parties.
Ideally, you think she's funny and sweet, and your friends wonder "man, how did HE get so lucky?"
She thinks you're funny and sweet, and wonders "man, how did I get so lucky?"
The perfect person is warm, intelligent, and thoroughly enjoys spending a lazy Sunday afternoon curled up with an exciting book, a nice fuzzy blanky, and a naked man.
Or a cup of tea.
Obviously, there are very few of those.
魚我所欲也, 熊掌亦我所欲也; 二者不可得兼，舍魚而取熊掌者也。
Yu ngoh so-yuk ya, hong-tseung yik ngoh so-yuk ya; yi-tzeh pat ho-tak gim, se yu yi tsui hong-tseung tzeh ya!
"Fish I desire, bear paw too I desire. If I can't have both, I will choose bear paw."
----- Mencius (孟子)
Even more important, there must be a sharing of interests and tastes. It isn't that the two people have to mirror each other, but they really must have that much in common that their differences are exciting details, to be happily discovered over time.
If two people do not stimulate each other, whatever is the point of even getting to know each other?
That last statement got him guffawing. When he discovers too many peculiarities, the relationship is over. He doesn't mind the women in his life being a little eccentric, but conversation has never been their strong suit.
He prefers them a little dim.
And books, he avers, have NO place in the well-ordered bedroom.
...
"Dude, that explains why none of your affairs have lasted more than three months. It also explains the crazy one two years ago who burned all your underwear in the back yard. And surely you remember the one who discovered all of your copies of Penthouse Magazine and glued the glossy pages together while you were out drinking with your buddies?
What about that obsessive psycho who keyed your car?"
That, he explained, was precisely why strictly casual sex with was such a good thing.
No false expectations, no disappointments, and no unpleasant surprises.
His philosophy, bluntly put, was "hump 'em and dump 'em".
My idea that personal qualities such as companionship, wit, and having similar tastes were important, was sheer foolishness, and my "queer obsession" with finding a woman who also loved roast duck and yau choi, to name just two "extremely peculiar" examples, pretty much guaranteed my having a very hard time finding someone to share my life, or even go out for coffee on a Sunday morning with.
Heck, girls would strenuously avoid me.
Picky people don't get laid.
And that's a fact.
Well, he's probably right. But I didn't say that.
Instead, I voiced the hope that none of his flings would be with 'Chainsaw Mary'.
Because that would be the end of it.
So sad. So sad.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
But clearly the man-woman thing is too complicated for him, all of his involvements are messy.
I've known him for several years. He's had a different girl-friend every time I've seen him.
He likes it that way. His fondest love affairs have always been strictly temporary bondings, rather like a hyena and a zebra carcass.
His current flame is getting clingy and seems to want to keep him, and that's a real problem in his world, albeit far less so than when it happened before with other women.
He's actually quite fond of this one, though he won't come right out and say it. And she is better than many of his previous ladies, especially that blonde six months ago who got him fired from the best restaurant at which he ever worked when she broke up with him. They still talk about that incident.
They never had to call the cops before.
Most of his dates are people you do not want to be seen with in public.
Not only because of their outrageous tits and tattoos.
They don't do very well in daylight.
Behavioural issues.
When he found out I was single after my two decade romance came to an end, he expressed extreme (and unsuitable) envy.
"How lucky can you get, now you can chase tail again!"
'Errrrrrrrrrrrm, what?'
"Tail. Chase tail. Have one-night stands and kiss party girls. Tail!"
TAIL! OR, THE OPERATIC SEX LIFE.
I firmly said that such was the last thing on my mind, and then made the mistake of asking him why he thought superficial flings were a good thing. His answers showed that he was a perfect representative sample of his class and generation.
He's got that eighties attitude: me, me, meatrack, me.
It's all about the physical aspect for him; he loves sex but doesn't want much involvement with the other person, and he cannot understand why I would not think exactly the same.
I should be out there chasing the aforementioned tail before it's too late.
Men should have only one thing on their mind.
It's natural.
SPECULATION ABOUT THE ESSENTIAL CONSIDERATA FOR 'TAIL'
My insistence that there has got to be more than stupendous whompeties in a relationship absolutely baffled him. That in fact sexual compatibility, although an important factor, was but one of many considerations confused him even further.
Sex, to him, is the ONLY logical reason why men and women get together.
He cannot understand why I haven't been frogging like a bunny these past several months; if it were him he'd be dating someone different every week.
Two or three girls at a time.
Surely females are fun?
Whoopee, girls, yay!
Well, yes. They are. If they've got a brain and a sense of humour. Along with mature sensibilities, gentleness, and decency. If they're NICE people.
You have to really like someone to want to grope them.
That counts for both parties.
Ideally, you think she's funny and sweet, and your friends wonder "man, how did HE get so lucky?"
She thinks you're funny and sweet, and wonders "man, how did I get so lucky?"
The perfect person is warm, intelligent, and thoroughly enjoys spending a lazy Sunday afternoon curled up with an exciting book, a nice fuzzy blanky, and a naked man.
Or a cup of tea.
Obviously, there are very few of those.
魚我所欲也, 熊掌亦我所欲也; 二者不可得兼，舍魚而取熊掌者也。
Yu ngoh so-yuk ya, hong-tseung yik ngoh so-yuk ya; yi-tzeh pat ho-tak gim, se yu yi tsui hong-tseung tzeh ya!
"Fish I desire, bear paw too I desire. If I can't have both, I will choose bear paw."
----- Mencius (孟子)
Even more important, there must be a sharing of interests and tastes. It isn't that the two people have to mirror each other, but they really must have that much in common that their differences are exciting details, to be happily discovered over time.
If two people do not stimulate each other, whatever is the point of even getting to know each other?
That last statement got him guffawing. When he discovers too many peculiarities, the relationship is over. He doesn't mind the women in his life being a little eccentric, but conversation has never been their strong suit.
He prefers them a little dim.
And books, he avers, have NO place in the well-ordered bedroom.
...
"Dude, that explains why none of your affairs have lasted more than three months. It also explains the crazy one two years ago who burned all your underwear in the back yard. And surely you remember the one who discovered all of your copies of Penthouse Magazine and glued the glossy pages together while you were out drinking with your buddies?
What about that obsessive psycho who keyed your car?"
That, he explained, was precisely why strictly casual sex with was such a good thing.
No false expectations, no disappointments, and no unpleasant surprises.
His philosophy, bluntly put, was "hump 'em and dump 'em".
My idea that personal qualities such as companionship, wit, and having similar tastes were important, was sheer foolishness, and my "queer obsession" with finding a woman who also loved roast duck and yau choi, to name just two "extremely peculiar" examples, pretty much guaranteed my having a very hard time finding someone to share my life, or even go out for coffee on a Sunday morning with.
Heck, girls would strenuously avoid me.
Picky people don't get laid.
And that's a fact.
Well, he's probably right. But I didn't say that.
Instead, I voiced the hope that none of his flings would be with 'Chainsaw Mary'.
Because that would be the end of it.
So sad. So sad.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Monday, November 07, 2011
DISAPPEARING RESTAURANTS ON STOCKTON STREET IN SAN FRANCISCO
You may not have noticed, but Stockton Street has become somewhat poorer. Four good eateries have recently closed down, in order that we may dig a metro line. Their locations are vacant, and the long building at the north end of the block where they were will probably be torn down soon.
You's Dimsum. Little Paris. San Sun. Joy Hing.
Respectively: yummy cheap snackiepoos, Vietnamese sandwiches, oodles of noodles, and superlative hot chicken noodle soup (phở gà).
Plus Vietnamese coffee with ice and condensed milk (cà phê nâu đá) at two of them: Little Paris and Joy Hing.
There will be far less fun on Stockton now that they're gone.
But they have all found new spaces.
得意糕點
YOU'S DIMSUM
Old address: 937 Stockton Street.
New address: 675 Broadway, San Francisco, CA 94133.
Tel. 415-781-6923
小巴黎咖啡室
LITTLE PARIS COFFEE SHOP
Old address: 939 Stockton Street.
New address: 2305 Irving Street, San Francisco, CA 94122.
Tel. 415-681-7666
三陽咖啡餐屋 [麵飯粥粉]
SAN SUN RESTAURANT
Old address: 941 Stockton Street.
New address: 848 Washington Street, San Francisco, CA 94108.
Tel. 415-296-8228
再興黄毛雞粉
JOY HING B.B.Q. NOODLE HOUSE
Old address: 943 Stockton Street.
New address: 710 Kearney Street, San Francisco, CA 94108.
Tel. 415-981-0531
With the exception of Little Paris, they are within easy walking distance of their previous location. And Joy Hing will be a most welcome addition to my lunch or dinner list, as it is now only a stroll away from work. They plan to re-open on November 14.
I'll let you know if there are any delays.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
You's Dimsum. Little Paris. San Sun. Joy Hing.
Respectively: yummy cheap snackiepoos, Vietnamese sandwiches, oodles of noodles, and superlative hot chicken noodle soup (phở gà).
Plus Vietnamese coffee with ice and condensed milk (cà phê nâu đá) at two of them: Little Paris and Joy Hing.
There will be far less fun on Stockton now that they're gone.
But they have all found new spaces.
得意糕點
YOU'S DIMSUM
Old address: 937 Stockton Street.
New address: 675 Broadway, San Francisco, CA 94133.
Tel. 415-781-6923
小巴黎咖啡室
LITTLE PARIS COFFEE SHOP
Old address: 939 Stockton Street.
New address: 2305 Irving Street, San Francisco, CA 94122.
Tel. 415-681-7666
三陽咖啡餐屋 [麵飯粥粉]
SAN SUN RESTAURANT
Old address: 941 Stockton Street.
New address: 848 Washington Street, San Francisco, CA 94108.
Tel. 415-296-8228
再興黄毛雞粉
JOY HING B.B.Q. NOODLE HOUSE
Old address: 943 Stockton Street.
New address: 710 Kearney Street, San Francisco, CA 94108.
Tel. 415-981-0531
With the exception of Little Paris, they are within easy walking distance of their previous location. And Joy Hing will be a most welcome addition to my lunch or dinner list, as it is now only a stroll away from work. They plan to re-open on November 14.
I'll let you know if there are any delays.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Sunday, November 06, 2011
VALKENSWAARD: THE FRAGRANCE OF CIGARS
Saturday evening in a friendly establishment with a glass of whiskey-water is very good.
Unlike the rest of the week, it is a quiet night there.
I like quiet Saturday nights - I lament the lack of female companionship, but as I am totally s.o.l. in that regard, that cannot be helped - but the absence of the rowdiness and drunken merriment that is usual elsewhere in the city is very pleasant.
The Occidental Cigar Bar is our kind of place.
All I really want out of an inn at eventide is the same calm comfort that many Dutch cafés used to have, before they forbade smoking indoors and started catering to alcoholic teenagers, druggies, and drunkards.
That, and the displays of rutting behaviour.
Not having rutted in a while, seeing such is sickening.
A café is a place to relax, smoke contemplatively, and read a bit.
Or take in the world-map on the far wall, showing all the places where 'our' ancestors raped, pillaged, and conquered.
We Dutch used to be the world's incendiarists, now we simply light a pipe in the evening, or have a Java cheroot with a cup of coffee.
The old-style Dutch café is a living room - a public place where you can be a bit more private.
Except, of course, because of Brussels, one now has to behave.
Europeanization enforces clean new living.
No more smoking! And sit up straight!
Be social to the drunken puritans!
[Informational interstice: Java cheroot - Besuki filler, zandblad binder, Sumatra wrapper. Besuki leaf comes from Eastern Java, and has a fine mild fragrance and flavour. It is often used in mixed filler (the main part of the cigar). Zandblad ('Sand Leaf') are the leaves close to the ground, pale and large. Their strength and size make them suitable to hold the guts of a hand-rolled cigar together. Sumatra produces lovely thin and silky leaves with narrow veins, soft and pliable, that form the perfect outter layer; aesthetically pleasing and possessed of a spicy-floral fragrance. A good cigar is a work of art.
Brands to look for: Glorie van Java, Hajenius, De Olifant, Oud Kampen - the last mentioned is probably the only all-handmade smoke left. But the previous three (machine formed, hand finished), are also exceptional products. And there are many others, in a variety of shapes and sizes. The old-fashioned Tuit Knak (short torpedo shape) is harder to make and will cost marginally more than a Halve Corona or a Senorita. ]
VALKENSWAARD, THEN
There was a pleasant café-billard before the end of town. Broad tables covered with rugs, as is common in the Netherlands, with comfortable chairs. In one section of the large tap-room was a pool table, hardly ever used by patrons - that was the generation before us, by the seventies billiards had faded a bit - but mostly there were empty tables around, each with a large glass ashtray that was far too big to casually pocket.
Dark browns, muted carpet purples, small reflected glints of glass.
Like many cafés in that day the owner also sold a selection of cigars: cheaper greenish torpedoes that smelled of clay for the old farmer, Senoritas for the fancy man, and very decent Half-Coronas for the patron with good taste.
One of whom was a elderly woman of spare frame, who smoked them at her table while reading the newspapers.
I spoke with her a few times when I was there, and after a while I knew more about her.
No, I didn't pry.
In an otherwise empty establishment it is polite to say 'goede avond mevrouw' when passing to one's own table with another cup of coffee, or to occasionally borrow a pack of matches. Eventually conversation may happen.
She owned one of the local shops, which she and her husband had bought a few years after being thrown out of Indonesia. Like a fair number of people locally she was in a permanent state of exile, but unlike most such she was not a Northerner temporarily carpetbagging in the South, nor an actual Indo desperately trying to forget the emerald lands forever lost.
She had been born in Eindhoven, and had family in Valkenswaard - that was why she and her husband had returned after Soekarno's revolution.
They had met shortly after the war during the bersiap ("be on guard") period. She had been a nurse sent out in 1945, he was an engineer who survived the Japanese railway project in Pakan Baroe and escaped into the jungle a few months before end of the war.
She had known his uncle and aunt who lived in Eindhoven in the thirties, that was one of the things they had in common.
Both of them had lost relatives during the war, in Holland and in the Indies.
It seemed natural for them to get married.
What didn't seem so natural after their wedding was having children. Really, what had pulled them together was the places they shared and the people they used to know. They were mature individuals who found renewed stability with each other, they weren't hormonally stressed young lovers. And it was precisely because stability was lacking in Java during the last few years of the Dutch empire that children at the beginning had been out of the question. What kind of environment would they give a child, when the end of four hundred years in the East was in sight?
Was it responsible to bring someone into a world that had yet to recover from chaos?
When they settled in Noord Brabant, she ended up taking care of her sister's son Jan - her sister had died in prison in 1944, leaving a widower made unstable because of the war, and an infant - and by the time Jan was of college age, she and her own husband, while still close, no longer shared a bed. Jan was an adult now. An engineer working for the state. He had a promising career ahead of him, and would probably marry soon and have kids. She was looking forward to having the tiny ones stay with her during the summer, and visit regularly the rest of the year. Her husband could tell them tales of the Indies, and both of them would make sure the kids grew up knowing about all the people who had gone before, whose tales must be told, because their deaths had robbed them of their own voice.
She smoked cigars partly because of memory.
There had been several cigar factories in Valkenswaard before the war. Everyone in the town was, in some way, connected to tobacco.
The filler leaf came primarily from Eastern Java. The binder was often grown in Europe or South America. The best wrappers came from Sumatra, not too very far from where the Japanese during the war tried to build a railway through the jungle with slave labour.
Every few months buyers for the factories travelled to Rotterdam, and later to Hamburg, to inspect bales of new leaf, test samples, place orders. They would arrange transport back to Valkenswaard, guarding the precious cargo which was the life blood of so many people in the town, and the tobacco would be carefully warehoused. After fermentation, the central vein was stripped from the leaf by workers who lacked other skills, more experienced hands would roll the bigger cigars, young women made the thin little cigarillos that were barely thicker than cigarettes.
The town grew during the twenties and thirties, nice houses were built for successful merchants, and a few people got an education - learning was a little bit more affordable because of the money that cigars made.
The war was, of course, a disaster.
She had been in the North at nursing school when war broke out. For five years she did not see the South again. Finally, in 1945 after liberation, still rail thin from the hunger winter (the Germans had robbed all the food in the North for their own people), she went back for several months. But so much had been destroyed, or had simply worn down and not been repaired or restored, that she felt out of place. She was cognizant of her uselessness to relatives who had to share their own almost non-existent resources with a skeleton, and she was a stranger to people who had been there all the time and were still trying to digest what they had seen and what they themselves had experienced.
When the chance came, she took it. A re-opened hospital in the Indies was desperate for nurses, as many of their previous staff had died in the prisoner of war camps.
She signed up, shipped out. Learned a few phrases of Malay on the boat, as well as words like Tjimahi, Soekoen, Keloet, Lawiesegalagala, Pangkalan..... all of which have a peculiar resonance for those that lived.
Java when she first arrived was intense and brilliant, a place so different from the cold grey northern world. Viridian, gold, and crimson.
She met the engineer at a social event in the city where she worked. Many Dutch people still lived in or near the former P.O.W. camps, because going back into the countryside was dangerous. The Javanese were determined to be rid of the colonizers and tales of rape and murder in the outlying areas were common. In some towns and villages, the pemoeda (armed nationalist youth wing) had practiced unspeakable cruelties on those whom they considered collaborators, and destroyed all traces of the Netherlanders, including schools, churches, clinics, public facilities, even train stations.
In addition to the mental barriers that people had pulled up around themselves in order to survive the Japanese occupation, walls were growing between ethnic groups, and between those whose war years were not at all the same. Javans, Chinese, Ambonese, Holland-Dutch, and Indo-Dutch - they all seemed at times to be from different planets, and did not get along smoothly.
The engineer was different. Thin and gaunt, yes. But despite everything he had a sunny personality. He had survived, the Japs and Germans had been defeated, and no matter what happened, things could only get better.
Surely life would be good!
He seemed so very alive, and very attractive precisely because he was alive. They knew the same colloquialisms, the same dialect phrases, the same places in the gently undulating Southern landscape of sandy stretches, forests, and peat bogs.
They even know the same songs and dance moves. There had been no dancing for so long!
A year and a half after they married, the Dutch left Java forever. When the transports docked in Singapore, passengers weren't allowed on shore because the local politicians sided with the Indonesian Nationalists and were determined to be as inhospitable as possible.
When they arrived in Holland, there was no place in the big cities for most of them, and the refugees dispersed. Many ended up in North Brabant. Eindhoven, and surrounding towns like Valkenswaard, seemed to have more space and more prospects.
The multitude of cigar factories that existed before the war had been severely reduced - among those that remained were Hofnar and Willem II in Valkenswaard, Karel 1 in Eindhoven, a few more in various other settlements of the Kempen region. But they were finally flourishing again, and other industries were starting to grow.
She took in her sister's kid, and raised him in the small living quarters over a store that she and her man had found. Several years later they bought the store. It wasn't until they moved the business to a larger space that they finally had enough room for all three of them.
But by that time she and the engineer were just friends. He was still sunny, still reassuring, and comforting to be around. But they had met as mature adults after years of great hardship, at a time when they had already become fully formed individuals. After a period of play-acting at married life, they had percolated back into being independent by themselves.
Not solitary, mind you, but not quite able to function as a couple.
When the boy Jan moved out, her husband moved into Jan's room.
No fuss, no scene, no bitter argument. It just seemed right.
Among other things they sold cigars in the store. She worked during the day when her husband was at his job for Philips in Eindhoven, then when he had come home he would have dinner, and she would go to her evening job at the recovery facility among the pensioners. But during the day she puttered about, stocked the shelves, dealt with customers, kept track of what products people wanted.
The cigars had always fascinated her. Tobacco has such romantic names....... words that recall a warmer place, with more interesting scenery, smaragdine rice paddies, dormant volcanoes covered in forest green, the heat beating down and making the air vibrate, docks interspersing the dense dark line of palms along the shore, little black bugs that were everywhere during the rainy season when all was mildewed. Colours, fragrances, warmth.
Cigars connected Valkenswaard to a place that was not Valkenswaard. Different.
They had been young then. They weren't old now, but they were no longer young.
She hadn't worked at the recovery facility for several years by then. And her husband had retired.
They still ran the store, but in the evening she would go to the café for a few hours, to have a cup of coffee or a glass of sherry, smoke a cigar, and hear about the rest of the world through the eyes of the local newspapers.
Like many mature adults, she needed time alone. Her time.
One could escape for a while, dream a bit.
Have some coffee, and smoke a cigar.
A halve corona, or a bolknak.
As the first whisp of smoke rises, the long long piers of Tandjong Priok come into view.
The air trembles in the blazing heat rising up from the cement.
Briefly, autumn rain turns into summer.
Gilded evenings, silken leaves.
AND NOW
When I went back to Valkenswaard in 1999, the cigar factories were long gone. Nobody makes the product that once gave life to the town anymore, and far fewer people even smoke them. The place now smells of beer and car exhausts, not of country side and leaves.
Shopkeepers no longer live over their stores. Café-Billards have disappeared. Old buildings have been torn down and replaced.
The streets still follow the same plan.
For those who stayed, change has undoubtedly been both gradual and desirable.
But for someone now permanently in exile, the difference is drastic.
Many of the people I used to know are gone.
That is to be expected, we all get older.
At the Occidental on Pine Street, surrounded by the incense of other people's cigars, I can view the world through sepia-tinted spectacles if I desire.
Or happily wonder what rosy marvels will yet come.
All is briefly timeless in the smoke.
I can escape for a while.
And dream a bit.
My time.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Unlike the rest of the week, it is a quiet night there.
I like quiet Saturday nights - I lament the lack of female companionship, but as I am totally s.o.l. in that regard, that cannot be helped - but the absence of the rowdiness and drunken merriment that is usual elsewhere in the city is very pleasant.
The Occidental Cigar Bar is our kind of place.
All I really want out of an inn at eventide is the same calm comfort that many Dutch cafés used to have, before they forbade smoking indoors and started catering to alcoholic teenagers, druggies, and drunkards.
That, and the displays of rutting behaviour.
Not having rutted in a while, seeing such is sickening.
A café is a place to relax, smoke contemplatively, and read a bit.
Or take in the world-map on the far wall, showing all the places where 'our' ancestors raped, pillaged, and conquered.
We Dutch used to be the world's incendiarists, now we simply light a pipe in the evening, or have a Java cheroot with a cup of coffee.
The old-style Dutch café is a living room - a public place where you can be a bit more private.
Except, of course, because of Brussels, one now has to behave.
Europeanization enforces clean new living.
No more smoking! And sit up straight!
Be social to the drunken puritans!
[Informational interstice: Java cheroot - Besuki filler, zandblad binder, Sumatra wrapper. Besuki leaf comes from Eastern Java, and has a fine mild fragrance and flavour. It is often used in mixed filler (the main part of the cigar). Zandblad ('Sand Leaf') are the leaves close to the ground, pale and large. Their strength and size make them suitable to hold the guts of a hand-rolled cigar together. Sumatra produces lovely thin and silky leaves with narrow veins, soft and pliable, that form the perfect outter layer; aesthetically pleasing and possessed of a spicy-floral fragrance. A good cigar is a work of art.
Brands to look for: Glorie van Java, Hajenius, De Olifant, Oud Kampen - the last mentioned is probably the only all-handmade smoke left. But the previous three (machine formed, hand finished), are also exceptional products. And there are many others, in a variety of shapes and sizes. The old-fashioned Tuit Knak (short torpedo shape) is harder to make and will cost marginally more than a Halve Corona or a Senorita. ]
VALKENSWAARD, THEN
There was a pleasant café-billard before the end of town. Broad tables covered with rugs, as is common in the Netherlands, with comfortable chairs. In one section of the large tap-room was a pool table, hardly ever used by patrons - that was the generation before us, by the seventies billiards had faded a bit - but mostly there were empty tables around, each with a large glass ashtray that was far too big to casually pocket.
Dark browns, muted carpet purples, small reflected glints of glass.
Like many cafés in that day the owner also sold a selection of cigars: cheaper greenish torpedoes that smelled of clay for the old farmer, Senoritas for the fancy man, and very decent Half-Coronas for the patron with good taste.
One of whom was a elderly woman of spare frame, who smoked them at her table while reading the newspapers.
I spoke with her a few times when I was there, and after a while I knew more about her.
No, I didn't pry.
In an otherwise empty establishment it is polite to say 'goede avond mevrouw' when passing to one's own table with another cup of coffee, or to occasionally borrow a pack of matches. Eventually conversation may happen.
She owned one of the local shops, which she and her husband had bought a few years after being thrown out of Indonesia. Like a fair number of people locally she was in a permanent state of exile, but unlike most such she was not a Northerner temporarily carpetbagging in the South, nor an actual Indo desperately trying to forget the emerald lands forever lost.
She had been born in Eindhoven, and had family in Valkenswaard - that was why she and her husband had returned after Soekarno's revolution.
They had met shortly after the war during the bersiap ("be on guard") period. She had been a nurse sent out in 1945, he was an engineer who survived the Japanese railway project in Pakan Baroe and escaped into the jungle a few months before end of the war.
She had known his uncle and aunt who lived in Eindhoven in the thirties, that was one of the things they had in common.
Both of them had lost relatives during the war, in Holland and in the Indies.
It seemed natural for them to get married.
What didn't seem so natural after their wedding was having children. Really, what had pulled them together was the places they shared and the people they used to know. They were mature individuals who found renewed stability with each other, they weren't hormonally stressed young lovers. And it was precisely because stability was lacking in Java during the last few years of the Dutch empire that children at the beginning had been out of the question. What kind of environment would they give a child, when the end of four hundred years in the East was in sight?
Was it responsible to bring someone into a world that had yet to recover from chaos?
When they settled in Noord Brabant, she ended up taking care of her sister's son Jan - her sister had died in prison in 1944, leaving a widower made unstable because of the war, and an infant - and by the time Jan was of college age, she and her own husband, while still close, no longer shared a bed. Jan was an adult now. An engineer working for the state. He had a promising career ahead of him, and would probably marry soon and have kids. She was looking forward to having the tiny ones stay with her during the summer, and visit regularly the rest of the year. Her husband could tell them tales of the Indies, and both of them would make sure the kids grew up knowing about all the people who had gone before, whose tales must be told, because their deaths had robbed them of their own voice.
She smoked cigars partly because of memory.
There had been several cigar factories in Valkenswaard before the war. Everyone in the town was, in some way, connected to tobacco.
The filler leaf came primarily from Eastern Java. The binder was often grown in Europe or South America. The best wrappers came from Sumatra, not too very far from where the Japanese during the war tried to build a railway through the jungle with slave labour.
Every few months buyers for the factories travelled to Rotterdam, and later to Hamburg, to inspect bales of new leaf, test samples, place orders. They would arrange transport back to Valkenswaard, guarding the precious cargo which was the life blood of so many people in the town, and the tobacco would be carefully warehoused. After fermentation, the central vein was stripped from the leaf by workers who lacked other skills, more experienced hands would roll the bigger cigars, young women made the thin little cigarillos that were barely thicker than cigarettes.
The town grew during the twenties and thirties, nice houses were built for successful merchants, and a few people got an education - learning was a little bit more affordable because of the money that cigars made.
The war was, of course, a disaster.
She had been in the North at nursing school when war broke out. For five years she did not see the South again. Finally, in 1945 after liberation, still rail thin from the hunger winter (the Germans had robbed all the food in the North for their own people), she went back for several months. But so much had been destroyed, or had simply worn down and not been repaired or restored, that she felt out of place. She was cognizant of her uselessness to relatives who had to share their own almost non-existent resources with a skeleton, and she was a stranger to people who had been there all the time and were still trying to digest what they had seen and what they themselves had experienced.
When the chance came, she took it. A re-opened hospital in the Indies was desperate for nurses, as many of their previous staff had died in the prisoner of war camps.
She signed up, shipped out. Learned a few phrases of Malay on the boat, as well as words like Tjimahi, Soekoen, Keloet, Lawiesegalagala, Pangkalan..... all of which have a peculiar resonance for those that lived.
Java when she first arrived was intense and brilliant, a place so different from the cold grey northern world. Viridian, gold, and crimson.
She met the engineer at a social event in the city where she worked. Many Dutch people still lived in or near the former P.O.W. camps, because going back into the countryside was dangerous. The Javanese were determined to be rid of the colonizers and tales of rape and murder in the outlying areas were common. In some towns and villages, the pemoeda (armed nationalist youth wing) had practiced unspeakable cruelties on those whom they considered collaborators, and destroyed all traces of the Netherlanders, including schools, churches, clinics, public facilities, even train stations.
In addition to the mental barriers that people had pulled up around themselves in order to survive the Japanese occupation, walls were growing between ethnic groups, and between those whose war years were not at all the same. Javans, Chinese, Ambonese, Holland-Dutch, and Indo-Dutch - they all seemed at times to be from different planets, and did not get along smoothly.
The engineer was different. Thin and gaunt, yes. But despite everything he had a sunny personality. He had survived, the Japs and Germans had been defeated, and no matter what happened, things could only get better.
Surely life would be good!
He seemed so very alive, and very attractive precisely because he was alive. They knew the same colloquialisms, the same dialect phrases, the same places in the gently undulating Southern landscape of sandy stretches, forests, and peat bogs.
They even know the same songs and dance moves. There had been no dancing for so long!
A year and a half after they married, the Dutch left Java forever. When the transports docked in Singapore, passengers weren't allowed on shore because the local politicians sided with the Indonesian Nationalists and were determined to be as inhospitable as possible.
When they arrived in Holland, there was no place in the big cities for most of them, and the refugees dispersed. Many ended up in North Brabant. Eindhoven, and surrounding towns like Valkenswaard, seemed to have more space and more prospects.
The multitude of cigar factories that existed before the war had been severely reduced - among those that remained were Hofnar and Willem II in Valkenswaard, Karel 1 in Eindhoven, a few more in various other settlements of the Kempen region. But they were finally flourishing again, and other industries were starting to grow.
She took in her sister's kid, and raised him in the small living quarters over a store that she and her man had found. Several years later they bought the store. It wasn't until they moved the business to a larger space that they finally had enough room for all three of them.
But by that time she and the engineer were just friends. He was still sunny, still reassuring, and comforting to be around. But they had met as mature adults after years of great hardship, at a time when they had already become fully formed individuals. After a period of play-acting at married life, they had percolated back into being independent by themselves.
Not solitary, mind you, but not quite able to function as a couple.
When the boy Jan moved out, her husband moved into Jan's room.
No fuss, no scene, no bitter argument. It just seemed right.
Among other things they sold cigars in the store. She worked during the day when her husband was at his job for Philips in Eindhoven, then when he had come home he would have dinner, and she would go to her evening job at the recovery facility among the pensioners. But during the day she puttered about, stocked the shelves, dealt with customers, kept track of what products people wanted.
The cigars had always fascinated her. Tobacco has such romantic names....... words that recall a warmer place, with more interesting scenery, smaragdine rice paddies, dormant volcanoes covered in forest green, the heat beating down and making the air vibrate, docks interspersing the dense dark line of palms along the shore, little black bugs that were everywhere during the rainy season when all was mildewed. Colours, fragrances, warmth.
Cigars connected Valkenswaard to a place that was not Valkenswaard. Different.
They had been young then. They weren't old now, but they were no longer young.
She hadn't worked at the recovery facility for several years by then. And her husband had retired.
They still ran the store, but in the evening she would go to the café for a few hours, to have a cup of coffee or a glass of sherry, smoke a cigar, and hear about the rest of the world through the eyes of the local newspapers.
Like many mature adults, she needed time alone. Her time.
One could escape for a while, dream a bit.
Have some coffee, and smoke a cigar.
A halve corona, or a bolknak.
As the first whisp of smoke rises, the long long piers of Tandjong Priok come into view.
The air trembles in the blazing heat rising up from the cement.
Briefly, autumn rain turns into summer.
Gilded evenings, silken leaves.
AND NOW
When I went back to Valkenswaard in 1999, the cigar factories were long gone. Nobody makes the product that once gave life to the town anymore, and far fewer people even smoke them. The place now smells of beer and car exhausts, not of country side and leaves.
Shopkeepers no longer live over their stores. Café-Billards have disappeared. Old buildings have been torn down and replaced.
The streets still follow the same plan.
For those who stayed, change has undoubtedly been both gradual and desirable.
But for someone now permanently in exile, the difference is drastic.
Many of the people I used to know are gone.
That is to be expected, we all get older.
At the Occidental on Pine Street, surrounded by the incense of other people's cigars, I can view the world through sepia-tinted spectacles if I desire.
Or happily wonder what rosy marvels will yet come.
All is briefly timeless in the smoke.
I can escape for a while.
And dream a bit.
My time.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Friday, November 04, 2011
BEST ROAST DUCK IN SAN FRANCISCO
A friend asked me about the roast duck and superior yau choi I had so dreamily mentioned.
Did I cook them myself, or had I gotten them from elsewhere?
Well, I can indeed cook such things, but often it is both more convenient and better to let someone else do so.
And economically there is scant difference.
Especially when you factor in the quality.
There are excellent prepared food places in Chinatown, and fortunately the old neighborhood is only about half a dozen blocks away.
My apartment mate really likes the roasted meats (燒味) at Kam Po on Powell, whereas I personally think the duck at Gourmet Delight on Stockton is absolutely orgasmic. Both places are treasures.
Kam Po is on the southwest corner of Broadway and Powell, Gourmet Delight is between Jackson and Washington Streets.
港新寶燒腊小食
KAM PO (H.K.) K. - KAM PO KITCHEN
801 Broadway, San Francisco, CA 94133.
415-982-3516.
[Gong San Po Siu-lahp Sui-sik: "harbour new treasure roast meats eatery".]
新凱豐燒臘店
GOURMET DELIGHT BARBECUE
1045 Stockton Street, San Francisco, CA 94108.
415-392-3288.
[San Hoi Fung Siu-lahp Diem: "new triumphant surfeit roast meats shop".]
Note the apparent difference in the fifth word (lahp) in both names - it is actually the same.
The simplified version of 臘 is rendered as 腊, meaning preserved meat. Which is not, strictly speaking, correct. It merely has a similar flavour and treatment as the traditional cured pork belly (臘肉) and pork sausage (臘腸) with which you are familiar, and the terminology is hallowed by centuries of usage.
[ROASTED MEATS: siu mei (燒味), or in context, siu-lahp (燒臘). Roast duck (siu ngaap 燒鴨), barbecue pork (charsiu 叉燒), roast pork (siu yiuk 燒肉), salt water chicken (lo sui kai 鹵水雞), white boiled chicken (paak jek kai 白切雞), soy-sauce chicken (si-yau kai 豉油雞), crispy chicken (ja-jee kai 炸子雞), poached plumped-up octopus (lo sui mak-yu 鹵水墨魚), etcetera.]
Chinese mustard green (油菜 yau choi) is something that you could easily prepare at home, but if you are picking up the prepared protein component in C'town already - which is probably where you'd have to go to get the vegetable also, seeing as most non-Chinese markets wouldn't know what to do with it - why not simply pick up a pound of it already cooked on Stockton Street? That's what many of the local residents do.
Tasty, very affordable - a huge amount for a few bucks.
Nearly every time I go across the hill to Chinatown, I end up buying more stuff than I really need. Not only the prepared meats, which right around late afternoon beckon temptingly, winking at me with their winsome surface reflection and evident fatty goodness, but also condiments I seldom use, bags of dried oysters or shrimp, tofu skin, yi-mien noodles, tonic herbs......
One time the bitter melon looked particularly nice. I ended up eating it for a week.
Wasn't bored with the taste either when I finely finished the bag.
It was utterly delicious, several ways!
清湯雪菜豬肉圓河粉
[Tseng-tong Suet-choi Chyu-yiuk Wan Ho-fan]
I think I'll have fatty pork meatballs in noodle soup tonight.
With chopped preserved greens and cilantro.
Plus a squeeze of lime juice.
Need to go to Chinatown.
Might pick up a duck.
Nice fatty Donald.
Mmmmmmm.
Chan ho sik!
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Did I cook them myself, or had I gotten them from elsewhere?
Well, I can indeed cook such things, but often it is both more convenient and better to let someone else do so.
And economically there is scant difference.
Especially when you factor in the quality.
There are excellent prepared food places in Chinatown, and fortunately the old neighborhood is only about half a dozen blocks away.
My apartment mate really likes the roasted meats (燒味) at Kam Po on Powell, whereas I personally think the duck at Gourmet Delight on Stockton is absolutely orgasmic. Both places are treasures.
Kam Po is on the southwest corner of Broadway and Powell, Gourmet Delight is between Jackson and Washington Streets.
港新寶燒腊小食
KAM PO (H.K.) K. - KAM PO KITCHEN
801 Broadway, San Francisco, CA 94133.
415-982-3516.
[Gong San Po Siu-lahp Sui-sik: "harbour new treasure roast meats eatery".]
新凱豐燒臘店
GOURMET DELIGHT BARBECUE
1045 Stockton Street, San Francisco, CA 94108.
415-392-3288.
[San Hoi Fung Siu-lahp Diem: "new triumphant surfeit roast meats shop".]
Note the apparent difference in the fifth word (lahp) in both names - it is actually the same.
The simplified version of 臘 is rendered as 腊, meaning preserved meat. Which is not, strictly speaking, correct. It merely has a similar flavour and treatment as the traditional cured pork belly (臘肉) and pork sausage (臘腸) with which you are familiar, and the terminology is hallowed by centuries of usage.
[ROASTED MEATS: siu mei (燒味), or in context, siu-lahp (燒臘). Roast duck (siu ngaap 燒鴨), barbecue pork (charsiu 叉燒), roast pork (siu yiuk 燒肉), salt water chicken (lo sui kai 鹵水雞), white boiled chicken (paak jek kai 白切雞), soy-sauce chicken (si-yau kai 豉油雞), crispy chicken (ja-jee kai 炸子雞), poached plumped-up octopus (lo sui mak-yu 鹵水墨魚), etcetera.]
Chinese mustard green (油菜 yau choi) is something that you could easily prepare at home, but if you are picking up the prepared protein component in C'town already - which is probably where you'd have to go to get the vegetable also, seeing as most non-Chinese markets wouldn't know what to do with it - why not simply pick up a pound of it already cooked on Stockton Street? That's what many of the local residents do.
Tasty, very affordable - a huge amount for a few bucks.
Nearly every time I go across the hill to Chinatown, I end up buying more stuff than I really need. Not only the prepared meats, which right around late afternoon beckon temptingly, winking at me with their winsome surface reflection and evident fatty goodness, but also condiments I seldom use, bags of dried oysters or shrimp, tofu skin, yi-mien noodles, tonic herbs......
One time the bitter melon looked particularly nice. I ended up eating it for a week.
Wasn't bored with the taste either when I finely finished the bag.
It was utterly delicious, several ways!
清湯雪菜豬肉圓河粉
[Tseng-tong Suet-choi Chyu-yiuk Wan Ho-fan]
I think I'll have fatty pork meatballs in noodle soup tonight.
With chopped preserved greens and cilantro.
Plus a squeeze of lime juice.
Need to go to Chinatown.
Might pick up a duck.
Nice fatty Donald.
Mmmmmmm.
Chan ho sik!
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
Thursday, November 03, 2011
MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS
One of my friends is obsessed with 'Pigeon Man'. Normally other people's obsessions do not bother me, as obsessions are natural. And for anyone on the Asperger Spectrum, as I presume my friend to be, obsessions define normalcy.
I have obsessions too. You may have noticed a few on this blog. Food. Language stuff. Fine tobacco. The well-known perversion and degeneracy of small European countries. Other things.
Forwarding a video of Pigeon Man to a vast list of e-recipients, however, is a little disturbing.
Most of us are not that heavily into the whole Pigeon Man gestalt.
He does not dingle our bells. We notice him, but we do not dwell upon him.
Our feelings don't fondly encompass Pigeon Man's 24 hour aura.
But 'Agent Left Testicle' has an alternative agenda.
Of his forty seven recent e-mails, fully half have mentioned Pigeon Man.
"We dress like chickens, Sasha dresses like a housewife, Von Auter wears vintage suit and a bow tie. I've changed my fetching headgear so many times now I don't know what I look like."
His electric texts paint a picture of San Francisco that I'm not sure I am comfortable with. In his world, San Francisco is an unstable place, filled with dark forebodings, and inhabited by strange musicians, men who imitate Sean Connery, chickens, coconuts, bananas...... goat fondlers, and Pigeon Man.
When most of us are at the wall, smoking our expensive tobacco products like the true one percent that we are, the Left Testicle will sit on the ledge, drooling all over the butt end of his cigar and giggling to himself. Without warning he'll say something non-sequitorial, before once again lapsing into a cell-phone screen induced catalepsus. The smoker's minyan will pause briefly to digest the comment, before rejecting it as not-strictly-speaking-sane, then continue their previous conversion.
Does not compute.
It's just Agent Left Testicle.
No one ever knows where the Left Testicle is.
A day ago we were all at the wall when L. Testicle vocalized. Perhaps not strictly in reaction thereto, Mike E. moved away so that he could see the jogging blonde woman both coming and going. After she had passed, he rejoined the conversation with a beatific smile that made him seem years younger and boyishly innocent.
Never before has a man's face beamed so radiantly.
Agent Left Testicle didn't notice a thing, but blindly continued his stream of consciousness commentary on life, the universe, and everything: "... when he inadvertently rear ends the Simon Peabody car causing his own airbag to deploy, punting him out the back window. He crash lands on a Creepy Tim's open briefcase lodging seven Tiffany pens and pencils in his pasty nutsack. Photos of the injury later posted to his Facebook page look like a miniature albino bagpipe."
[That's an actual quote. I cannot make this up. He really said it.]
There's only one conclusion possible. Too much nicotine in that cigar.
He rolled out of bed at the crack of noon, and this is his third stogie - he's all wired and jangly now.
No wonder his butt ends up soggy as a sponge. Which displeases Pigeon Man.
If I have too much nicotine I may have hotly glowing cheeks.
Agent Left Testicle, on the other hand, starts gibbering like a monkey, and chivies the Pigeon Man.
You'd rather deal with glowing cheeks than a crazed testicle.
I mention all this as a cautionary note for the parents of young children.
Never let your offspring smoke cigars first thing in the morning.
They'll end up either like our Left Testicle, or Pigeon Man.
Both of whom have been missing in action for ages.
Instead, introduce them to pipes and tobacco.
So they'll grow up clean and wholesome.
You've really got to be careful.
Rambling Left Testicles.
A horrible fate.
Obsessed.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
I have obsessions too. You may have noticed a few on this blog. Food. Language stuff. Fine tobacco. The well-known perversion and degeneracy of small European countries. Other things.
Forwarding a video of Pigeon Man to a vast list of e-recipients, however, is a little disturbing.
Most of us are not that heavily into the whole Pigeon Man gestalt.
He does not dingle our bells. We notice him, but we do not dwell upon him.
Our feelings don't fondly encompass Pigeon Man's 24 hour aura.
But 'Agent Left Testicle' has an alternative agenda.
Of his forty seven recent e-mails, fully half have mentioned Pigeon Man.
"We dress like chickens, Sasha dresses like a housewife, Von Auter wears vintage suit and a bow tie. I've changed my fetching headgear so many times now I don't know what I look like."
His electric texts paint a picture of San Francisco that I'm not sure I am comfortable with. In his world, San Francisco is an unstable place, filled with dark forebodings, and inhabited by strange musicians, men who imitate Sean Connery, chickens, coconuts, bananas...... goat fondlers, and Pigeon Man.
When most of us are at the wall, smoking our expensive tobacco products like the true one percent that we are, the Left Testicle will sit on the ledge, drooling all over the butt end of his cigar and giggling to himself. Without warning he'll say something non-sequitorial, before once again lapsing into a cell-phone screen induced catalepsus. The smoker's minyan will pause briefly to digest the comment, before rejecting it as not-strictly-speaking-sane, then continue their previous conversion.
Does not compute.
It's just Agent Left Testicle.
No one ever knows where the Left Testicle is.
A day ago we were all at the wall when L. Testicle vocalized. Perhaps not strictly in reaction thereto, Mike E. moved away so that he could see the jogging blonde woman both coming and going. After she had passed, he rejoined the conversation with a beatific smile that made him seem years younger and boyishly innocent.
Never before has a man's face beamed so radiantly.
Agent Left Testicle didn't notice a thing, but blindly continued his stream of consciousness commentary on life, the universe, and everything: "... when he inadvertently rear ends the Simon Peabody car causing his own airbag to deploy, punting him out the back window. He crash lands on a Creepy Tim's open briefcase lodging seven Tiffany pens and pencils in his pasty nutsack. Photos of the injury later posted to his Facebook page look like a miniature albino bagpipe."
[That's an actual quote. I cannot make this up. He really said it.]
There's only one conclusion possible. Too much nicotine in that cigar.
He rolled out of bed at the crack of noon, and this is his third stogie - he's all wired and jangly now.
No wonder his butt ends up soggy as a sponge. Which displeases Pigeon Man.
If I have too much nicotine I may have hotly glowing cheeks.
Agent Left Testicle, on the other hand, starts gibbering like a monkey, and chivies the Pigeon Man.
You'd rather deal with glowing cheeks than a crazed testicle.
I mention all this as a cautionary note for the parents of young children.
Never let your offspring smoke cigars first thing in the morning.
They'll end up either like our Left Testicle, or Pigeon Man.
Both of whom have been missing in action for ages.
Instead, introduce them to pipes and tobacco.
So they'll grow up clean and wholesome.
You've really got to be careful.
Rambling Left Testicles.
A horrible fate.
Obsessed.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
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GRITS AND TOFU
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