Tuesday, March 01, 2005
Two Days Only!
Welcome to the dawn of the dead: I’m so tired my dreams are asleep. The foregoing is not a complaint; I’m tired because I’m living too muchly and having plenty big fun. Exhibit 1 in this persuasive presentation will be “last weekend,” because I want to get some of the details down before they fade like so much cotton candy in the multi-headed showermassage that is my life.
Friday night: we watched a dvd of Spiderman II, which I found reasonably entertaining but not a work of cinematic genius, which I suppose is about right; except that we also watched 15 minutes of Robot Chicken, which was freaking brilliant. Somehow the rest of Friday night and Saturday morning are lost to recordable memory up to the point that we got up in the morning and oiled the ranma (see yesterday’s photos if ya wanna, they came out well), which we will soon hang over the large comfortable bed (LCB). The rest of the day included a run through the park, several catch-up episodes of Lost, starting to figure out my taxes, and a rich, flavorful nap (mmmm....) before we cleaned our sorry selves up and went out to visit two old friends we have not seen much of - Mitch went to college with us but was way too cool for me to feel as if I’d justified his friendship so we just hung out with mutual friends who had degrees of coolness intermediate between his and mine; afterwards he moved to SF and our mutual friends and we all got together but Mitch and I rarely saw each other, nor even spoke much at these group gatherings; he eventually married Catherine, who’s a brilliant musician and a fine person all around and we finally actually wrangled an invitation to their lovely home for a delicious supper with some really tasty wine. Special treat: hanging out with their infant son Eli, whom it was a pleasure to meet. So that was a good saturday.
Sunday: we got up with ease and relaxation, did a bit of stretching, and then headed downtown on the California 1 bus to Chinatown for a bit of a tour. The busride was already foreign territory - very different from my standard 38, but entertaining. We started at Delicious Dim Sum on Jackson, where we met Jeannette and the rest of our gang; they’d gotten a head start but there were still five dishes on the table and they were all, in fact, “delicious.”
We headed out into a light misty drizzle (one of many reasons I really took very few photos) to Ross Alley to see the fortune cookie factory (it’s really cool) and then to the Yau Hing Tea Company, where we were treated to a highly entertaining explanation of chinese tea types and the differences between them. There was a chill in the air and it was delightful to wash the oily dim sum down with the fragrant teas, and the teawhiz (no I don’t like the sound of that either) who led us through the process had this great “naughty schoolgirl” style, with a very conservative blazer and a wry sophistication that belied her youthful appearance. (Best line: It’s a very subtle flavor; I’m tasting it as somewhat woody. // Oh, you get wood off of this one?) Yesterday’s “quiz picture” was our guide Jeannette returning to our tasting area with a bin of chrysthamum blossoms for more tea. It was a great shop and a great experience; we even got great little paper shopping bags for our purchases.
Next on our agenda was the Eastern Bakery, where we got some sweets - a bowtie (fried wonton wrapper dipped in karo, how could it be bad), a mooncake (sweet filling with an eggyolk baked inside), and a lotus cake with preserved duck egg. The duck egg was a dark gelatinous mass, delicately flavored and fun to chew - much tastier than the actual egg yolk. Who knew? (I mean other than billions of chinese people. You know.) Next stop was the Wok Shop to price some cookware and cleavers, and then to the Sweet Mart candy store right off Portsmouth Square where the city was founded in 1833 or thereabouts; at the Sweet Mart (which apparently post-dates the founding of the city by a few decades) we got hot-n-sour mango and dried lychees and some other weird stuff I didn’t care for but that seems to sell like gangbusters; I got a package of mochi that turned out to be very tasty indeed.
Next stop was the nadir of Chinatown, the most chinese place they have: Star Lunch, home of the stinky tofu, for some rice noodles and cabbage. The rice noodles were great but we 6 intrepid travellers all ate on the sidewalk because we did not want to be inside the cafe where stinky tofu was made, cooked, sold and consumed. This was food so disgusting to the nostril that I never even considered eating it - an unusual event for a person of my cuilinary adventurousness. It was by far the raunchiest odor I’ve ever associated with food, and the place was doing a brisk business. No matter, on the sidewalk we watched a Falun Gong parade go by (protesting persecution of practitioners in China) and entertained ourselves with the plight of unescorted tourists who were trying to build up their moxie to go in and eat the stinky food. They were sufficiently entertaining that I was able to stomach the stench coming from the refectory itself.
Our next stop was the Cheap Mart on Pacific Avenue, for some random housewares shopping, and then we hit Hing Lung dim sum for double roll (chinese churro wrapped in rice crepe in a sweet soy sauce.... mmmm, rolled fried food) and dual jooks (porridge) - mix seafood (mmmm, abalone and giant scallop) and sturgeon (mmmm, best line: I think this sturgeon was a baby // you mean a pediatric sturgeon?) We finally ended up at Jeannette’s comfortable and sophisticated apartment at the cusp of Chinatown and Nob Hill for a bit of durian (barely odiferous at all once you’ve been around the stinky tofu) and a few moments out of the rain, watching the Mason street line cars crawl their way up the side of the hill on their underground wire ropes.... rain washed the things nearby and obscured those that were distant, and I relished the genteel sophisticated view of it through Jeannette’s 1920s windows 6 stories up....
The bus home was a mess, with a loud drunk homeless guy (Best line: Yup, I admit it, I’m an alcoholic. (No, he really said this out loud.)) cranking through can after can of cheap beer and trying to talk to everybody anywhere nearby him, acting all cool even though he was filthy and his pants were torn wide open at the crotch and he kept his knees splayed wide apart; he kept wanting to “kung fu” things like the bus doors or passing cars but was clearly harmless. He got off at Fillmore; we got off at 12th and came home to finish some housework, finish the taxes (oh god not again), do more laundry, take a nap, go to the gym, hit the grocery, watch more Lost and some 24, read and fall asleep.
And that’s one of those there good weekends. Last night it sort of continued with a great concert. I will try to get to some of those details tomorrow; in the meantime, ship your extra wakefulness to me care of my PayPal account. I’ll post the link when I wake up.
