San San 848 Washington Street

San San sits at the end of Waverly Place, a shining beacon of cleanliness and efficiency.

 

My favorite part about this whole place is the decor. It’s almost hospital like in it’s adherence to stainless steel: chopsticks, bowls, cups, little dishes for condiments; all shiny – sterilized, sanitized.

The condiments are daunting; everything from pickled peppers to hoisin. It is hard to resist the urge to try absolutely everything in every combination. Generally before my pho arrives I have 3 or 4 bowls holding Sriracha, hoisin and vinegar, and some hot pepper sauce. There are so many little stainless steel shakers holding pepper, salt, chili flakes and rice seasoning that, in my excitement to try as many different things as possible, I shook toothpics from a dispenser into my soup.

The specialty, I think, is the satay sauce noodle. I’ve actually never seen anyone order anything that isn’t some form of noodle soup.

 

For some reason the owners felt that having 6 televisions would add to the ambiance, 3 of which display large pictures of food that they serve, and two display ESPN or news – not exactly an interesting programming schedule. However, I like to watch the 7th television, the one that displays the security cameras – including their back door on Ross Ally. It’s enjoyable to people watch from the comfort of the indoors, and using a camera, very voyeuristic.

 

 

 

 

The March through the Tenderloin.

The March Through the tenderloin. Moments forgotten in Occupy.

included here as a remembrance for what used to happen

February 12 2012

 

The San Francisco march against police violence that took place on Feb 10th was not a normal march.
First, it was the first march specifically against the police that took part in the City, Occupy Oakland has a weekly #FuckThePolice march each Saturday; and these, in typical Oakland fashion, are brutally suppressed by the cops.
The Feb 10th action was attended by a wide swathe of people mostly due to the Jan 28th actions in Oakland; these actions were marked by an escalation of police violence into something we had not seen before, as one person put it; “Anyone who was at January 28th new the cops were out for blood”. They came in swinging, arrested 400+  people and put them in heinous conditions in the Santa Rita jail.
This has all been written about, well documented and on video. Yet the police violence is still given little to no coverage in the “main stream media”, instead pictures of protesters burning the flag in city hall and pushing down barricades, never-mind that these barricades blocked the only means of escaping getting shot and beaten by police; if a dispersal order is given, people must be allowed to disperse; seems logical.

So the reasons to march are clear and subsequently many people showed up at 101. Highlights from the march included bursting into the Westfeild mall to “Fuck The Police” by NWA, shop keepers, terrified blocked the stores. This brought us out into the open, forced people to see us, and they didn’t see violent protesters, they saw people dancing, waving flags, signs “There is no Honor in Police Brutality”, #catbloc was giving out kitten memes and the whole thing was very vanilla. Of course the security guards bellowed, but there was never any intention of occupying the mall, it was less an anti consumer maneuver as a wake up call and public spectacle.

The greatest moment was in the Tenderloin. Marching down through the poorest neighborhood, young men stood on the sidewalks in groups, the bars were full, the liquor store was busy and the soup kitchen was serving. In the midst of this comes the march “No Justice, No Peace. Fuck the Police”. We had been chanting this for hours, near parks, shops and in the middle of the street. We also chanted “Join Us, help us, stand up!” and no one did, no one from the sidewalk did anything other than take pictures and point. Until the Tenderloin. In the tenderloin the residents are overwhelmingly black, poor and as such, targeted by the police for harassment.
The Tenderloin joined us, people enthusiastically joined in; “Fuck the Police!” the sidewalks emptied and the march swole to double its size. Of course, we were a few blocs from the tenderloin police station, and as one lone police car was surrounded, hundreds of riot cops showed up and attempted to kettle us.
This was too much for most, people scattered the march pulled up a side street and swiftly came to market. The Kettle was avoided, but not before we offered the police a voice; “You can come to our marches, but do not bring your weapons”.
The media paints us as violent protesters, but we did not bring our grenade launchers, our night sticks or our guns.

Buddah Bar’s Zagat

I love the Buddah. I went there far too much during my stay in San Francisco and urge all to do the same. Here is a piece I wrote for Eater SF back when the zagat guide for 2013 came out.

The Buddah Bar gets good Zagat review

Neighborhood favorite The Buddah Bar, has been given a good write up in Zagat’s 2013 issue.
First, it’s important to clear up the name of this place. The giant neon sign reads “Buddah Bar”, the bartender refers to it as “The Buddah Bar”; so why then, does yelp and Zagat insist on referring to it as “The Buddah Lounge”? Perhaps it’s listed this way on some sort of city document, but “Language cannot be controlled, only recorded.” let’s get this right.
The review, which names the Buddah as “one of the best dive bars in San Francisco”, was greeted with apathy by longtime bartender Mark, who threw out the $15 guidebook  because “there is no point in keeping it”.

Theater Review: What’s Wrong With A Mouse?

What’s wrong with a mouse.

What’s Wrong With A Mouse is a powerful and moving, one woman play by Vicki Dello Joio. Joio’s work is part of a larger show called 2 women 2 stories which ran at the New York Fringe and unfortunately is sold out for the remainder of it’s time here. Joio is also an author, her book is called The Way of Joy, and she would perform what would eventually become What’s wrong with a Mouse as an improvisation at book readings and various conferences she attended.

There she found that the piece resonated, particularly with queer folks, but also with anyone who has rejection issues. Her improvised performances went over so well that she decided to make it it’s own stand alone show. Joio performed her work all over Northern California, in conjunction with her spiritual lectures on The Way Of Joy. Then, after 4 years of improvising her story, she teamed up with her friend Merry Ross to create the show 2 Women 2 Stories; which has been touring this year at the San Diego Fringe, the New York Fringe, and next at the San Francisco Fringe.

What’s Wrong With A Mouse is a piece about rejection, reconciliation, death, and hope. It deals with Joio’s true story of being disowned by her father for being queer and her path back into a relationship with him. She was separated from her father entirely for 20 years, but then managed to reconcile with him during the last years of his life; a message of hope for all those who have been rejected by their family.

As the audience is led through the story Joio recalls her past, and touches on subjects that any person, but especially someone estranged from their family can relate to. The show touches on queer teen suicide due to being ostracized and unaccepted; which, while Joio’s anecdote took place over 40 years ago, family rejection, dehumanization, and queer suicide are still major problems happening today and this play forces the audience to remember this.

The response to the show was overwhelmingly positive, people hugging Joio and saying thank you for being here and thank you for telling your story. During the performance some audience members were in tears.

The entire show is moving, subjects like euthanasia, dementia, spirituality and what it means to be queer; it’s incredible that it all take place in a mere 45 minutes.

Interview to follow.

What was the inspiration behind the show?

My dad who disowned me; first when I was 18 when he found out I had a boyfriend who was going to move in with me. Then we reconciled about 10 years later and figured out I was queer and then he disowned me again, and we didn’t speak for 20 years. 10 years before he died I had done some work around how I communicate, thinking about defensiveness, and I kind of connected with him again.What inspired me was that there was such a huge transformation, particularly in the last year of his life, it was like turning something on it’s head.

I started doing the show originally as an improvisation. Then I published a book called The Way Of Joy. At the book launch, while I was doing a reading I decided to make the second half of the book reading an improv, there were about 250 people there and so I did the improv, and it had such a huge impact that I realized: this isn’t something that’s about my own personal growth, but it seems to hit something, particularly for queer people, but also really for anyone who has had what seem like long term irreconcilable differences with someone in their lives. {the show} shows that there is a possibility for redemption or reconciliation. I thought, if this is something that can really serve people to tell this story I’d love to.

How much of the current show is improvisation and how much is scripted

I would say it’s 98 to 95 percent scripted at this point, it evolved out of improvisation, so after 4 years of improvising it every time I did it I would be thinking, tweaking, whats not working what is working so I never actually sat down and wrote it as a script. I wrote it on my feet, I wrote it in front of people, and then eventually it got set into what is is right now. I do improvise a little bit, even just last night, but mostly it’s pretty set.

You’re here for the New York Fringe Festival and How many other cities have you been to with this show?

Well, Merry and I went to Santa Cruz Fringe Festival just last month, and the only other place we have performed together is in San Francisco. We’ve performed at a small venue there called “The Marsh” which is a breeding ground for new performances, and we also performed at “Stage Works” in San Francisco.

For me personally for What’s wrong with a Mouse, I used to call it Time Of Reckoning that was the origonal name which was named after a piece of music that my dad wrote. I’ve performed it all around Northern California, Oregon, Canada I can’t even remember.

So you have been touring it for a while?

I’m a Qigong teacher, I teach this system that I call The Way Of Joy. In Austen, I taught a class and then said “here’s something that would show you what this inner work did for me in terms of a really difficult situation I had with my father, then I would take a half hour and do the improv, just so people could see where the work could go. So it’s not like i’ve been touring as a theater performer, but i’ve been bringing theater into the other things that I do.

How has the reception been here in New York and San Francisco versus Middle america where there is less of a queer community?

It’s been unbelievable. I’ve been blow away, I’ve been surprised how receptive people are. When I’m talking about being queer, I’m not really doing a whole lot about queer culture or anything like that, i’m really just talking about my own personal experiences with my dad. I would say 98% of the people are super moved by it because even if they are not queer they have somebody queer in their family, or even if they don’t have any queer associates people still know what its like to be rejected or feel like your not being accepted for who you are. The word that audiences have been coming up with again and again is ‘universal’ I thought it was really personal, but I realize I’ve hit a chord that’s bigger than just me or even just the queer experience.

So to make it NY specific how Is the NY fringe fest, and what is next?

The experience has been awesome, we’ve had pretty full houses, but wether its been a full house or a ¾ house, the reception has been amazing. People have been incredibly receptive. My piece is a dramadey show. My show has funny stuff in it and the New York audience has seemed to gravitate more towards sad. Some audiences have laughed, its not heavy and pedantic, it moves along and its not just all the tragedy of it. So I’m finding the New York audience more serious, but super warm. After people will come up to me after with literally tears streaming down their face saying “Thank you so much, it really meant so much to me to hear that”. In fact the biggest compliment ever for me was that someone brought their 15 year old son and she said to me “My son turned to me after and said ‘that was so amazing, so wonderful, I feel so moved by that’”. So the fact that I could hit a 15 year old boy with the story of a 60+ year old woman dealing with her father felt like a success to me.

What’s the most important message you want to get across

I think the most important thing to me to say about it is, especially those who are youths who are having difficulty with their parents, or even if they are adults and they’re still hanging on to feeling like a victim of having been victimized; and I don’t mean that just as a mindset but people who have actually been hurt or abused for their sexual orientation – that there is a possibility of coming to a place of peace and power. Its important to give people that sense that there’s other ways to do things other than falling into the old paradigm of being severed; and if you are severed, because I was severed from my father for a total of 30 years still things can come back around.

I think for me as a person what’s most important is to offer people a little bit of candle in the night; that there is a possibility of coming to a place of power, even if it isn’t in direct connection to a parent or a rejecting person that there is a possibility of getting to a place where there is peace.

So what’s next

We’re going to the San Francisco fringe, we will be playing at the “Exit Theater” and we’re starting to talk about Edinburgh, and there are a lot of people who want me to come to Canada.

THE WASHINGTON CAFE 826 WASHINGTON STREET

 

       ”I got you this because I know you like it”, a smiling, slightly tipsy man said as he plonked down two coffee cups half full of Hennessy. He raised his own glass, we ‘Yam sing”d and he walked off.

It was the opening day of the Washington cafe, huge floral arrangements decorated the florescent doorway and tangerine plants covered the floor.

      The Washington cafe took over the space that was previously operated by New King Tin, a place I frequented until it was shut down for health violations, and will write an obituary of at a later date. One day I was walking to New King Tin and saw the owners piling into a airport shuttle and asked; ” Oh, are you going on vacation ” the answer I got from the matron was a hurried and exasperated ‘yes yes’ as she loaded children and boxes into the van and took of never to be seen again. Four months later, Washington Cafe came onto the scene.

      Part of a larger group of restaurants of a similar ilk, I have heard the Washington Cafe referred to as a ‘cafeteria style’ ‘hong Kong style cafe”; by various people. It is a collection of about 12 tables, a menu of about 150 items and operating hours that last well into the night.

     Having been to the cafe many times since it’s opening I got to know the owner. We have shared bottles of wine and Hennessy while talking about what owning and operating a restaurant is like in Chinatown; in the business we call this talking shop, or bitching about work; either way, It’s important to have other restaurant owners to talk to about this kind of thing; preferably over a glass of poor cognac.

      During the first months of their operation they focused on cheap and simple Cantonese style food. The chef is a friend and ‘student’ of Truman Du of Pot Sticker/Spicy king – but goes in a different direction. The chef here has a crowd who don’t like anything too unusual, so the food stays typically Cantonese, however, as we are in San Francisco, not China, typically Cantonese here means Cantonese food as you would get in China, not ‘typical’ or ‘non unusual’ for those of us not versed in Cantonese cuisine. This is an important distinction to make; lots of places play it safe, but Washington Cafe plays it safe in a whole different way; safe to a community who don’t want to assimilate to the western palate – and that’s what makes the food here interesting. Without going into too much detail, I like the spicy chicken feet, beef stew, and the Quails Pot.

      Then as they had been opened a few months, they installed hot pot plates in every table, and now offer some great and inexpensive hot pot, and if I had enough friends to go to these places en masse, I would eat it all the time.

     The crowd is great, and if you visit on a Saturday night after 10pm be prepared for older men playing cards, drinking cognac, eating hot pot (crab), and generally being raucous. As a veteran of the Chinatown bar scene, I can safely say that its’ 90% non Chinese in the bars here, and that most locals tend to drink with friends at restaurants.  The best upside to this is that you can bring any booze you want into any restaurant in Chinatown and not have a problem.
Aslo, plenty of Hong Kong Cinema is always on the TVs, and even if the servers don’t understand, they will write the name of the movie down and you can go an get it pretty easily in any store around.XO sauce –
This place introduced me to XO sauce; a Hong Kong sauce made with various dried seafood and aromatics. Apparently it’s all the rage in Hong Kong and is in fact named after the XO brandys (and marketed the same way, in fancy boxes and even uses the XO(extra old) distinction brandys use). The Washington Cafe will put it on everything and anything, and with good result. It offers a fermented seafood flavor, umami and salty, in a dark ‘demi-glas esque’ preparation, it might even have brandy in it.

There is something going on with Hong Kong and brandy; XO sauce clearly marks the trend, and friends in Shanghai or anywhere else in mainland china don’t report a predilection for hennessy, so it has to be a Hong Kong or diaspora thing.

VIETNAM 620 BROADWAY

 

        While not technically in the borders of Chinatown (Broadway is the border, and Vietnam sits on the other side of the street), I would be remiss not to include this oft visited spot.Due to it’s location in North Beach, this tiny spot gets over it’s fair share of drunken revelers after 11pm.

An aside about North Beach and Broadway.

North Beach, for those not familiar, is essentially a tourist stroll during the day, and an Italian themed frat party by night. Broadway marks the end of the line for most of the clientele, stumbling out of the bars and spilling onto the streets shouting and yelling. Broadway has a red light district feel; with neon signs 3 stories high, strip clubs and awful bars; and alleyways inviting a whole manner of drug use. Despite this it is more of a red-light theme park than an actual seedy district, so diluted and costly has the message become. Top tip – for real sex workers and scary drug use visit The Tenderloin; specifically Leavenworth between Turk and O’Farrell. It’s the constant threat of robbery that allows a red light district to thrive without too many drunken tourists.

But back to Vietnam.

A small and cramped space, most of it taken up by the bar for counter service, and 2 tables in the back. Walking into to space one is greeted with the savory and delightful smell of grilling meats and steaming broth.
The secret to this place is it’s long hours of operation, I have actually yet to see it closed. They begin the day with chicken stock, beef stock and pork stock boiling away on the tiny stove. A grill next to it is constantly brushed but never soaped, seasoned with the meat from last night. The chicken is marinated after poaching (without fully cooking) in the stock. As the meat cools the outside becomes more permeable and the chicken sucks in the marinade of (I think) soy sauce, ginger, fish sauce et al; while releasing some cooked chicken jus. As the day progresses the chicken is sandbagged without being overcooked, and the exclusively thigh meat leak their juices all over each other into the marinade, adding to the flavor. When the time comes to finish the chicken it’s reheated and grilled over high flame giving it a charred outside and soft inside, coated with the goop into a semi-sweet glaze as the flame evaporates the non essential elements.
Because the chicken is the most popular meat here; it has the most flavorful stock and leftovers, that go on to flavor the next chicken.
However, any of the Banh mi are safe bets – cold cuts (pate, head cheese, salami) and hot (pork, beef, chicken) with a bunch of quick-pickled carrots, cucumber, mayonnaise and jalapenos. Also -$4, come on.

The Pho broth is the same basic concept. Most Pho places, and indeed most restaurants who use long simmering liquids, will have the broths made at the beginning of the day (with some leftover from last night, but never older than 1 day), and as they cook their potency increases. However, as with stock there is a law of diminishing returns; most veggies give all their flavor after cooking for an hour, and most bones for 5 or 6, then it’s just wasted space. But, if one is constantly poaching chicken, blanching veggies, steaming pork, cooking noodles in the broth then it will be continually flavored and thickened. Never order pho before 1/2 way through dinner service, your soup is just flavor for the next people. That’s why, at 3am – as the drunks try to haggle for a beer well after last call and the pho broth happily simmers away with lunch and dinner flavors, that is the time for the finest broth, the thick, almost demi-glas mouth feel and the rich beef bone taste.

They also have a beverage selection of weird crisped rice, bright purple jelly things and condensed milk which is sort of great. They make Thai Iced Tea and Vietnamese Iced Coffee, and they sell beer.
All of these beverage choices became secondary when a friend and I invented the Vietnamese Michelada, using exactly one Vietnamese ingredient, a Mexican name and coming from the USA it should really be called the “Faux-pan-southeast asian-michelada”. I realize the addition of fish sauce may seem unbecoming, but recall that Micheladas use Clamato juice, so seafood is not unheard of.

The Vietnam Michelada
1 bottle of tsing tao
1 slice of lime
3 shakes of salt
3 squirts of siracha
2 tsp fish sauce.

Mix well then drink over ice. Watch out for the nucleation of lime juice and salt with beer, don’t make a mess.

You are welcome.

WING SING DIM SUM 1125 STOCKTON STREET (AND MAKING MONEY OFF TOURISTS)

 

There is this old man who lives and works around here; he’s short, probably around 70 or 80, smiles a lot, shakes his head and is always holding a plastic bag of food leftovers.
When I first moved here he would speak to me, ask me about eating, where I was eating, had I eaten, and my reply was always the same – I’m going to work and I eat there. His name is Jackie Chan, and he goes by the epiphyte Jackie Chan number two; lifting up two fingers. 

I would see him around, mostly he chatted to tourists, and when he and I spoke it would be a contest over who had the shittiest apartment, and who’s paid the least rent. He assures me that not only is my apartment a hovel, and probably illegal, but that I’m also being robbed blind with the amount I’m paying. It’s because I’m a foreigner, he explained. He’s keen into the chinatown photographic society and we’d go there and look at the pictures stored in a brightly lit room with a couple computers and pictures of serious looking traditionally dressed people standing in various places around town.

When I asked him what he did for a living he looked at me like I was an idiot; clearly, obviously, he said: he was retired. It wasn’t until my mother came to visit that i figured out what he does for money. I was upstairs getting a shirt on and my mother waited downstairs by herself, and when I returned there Jackie was speaking to my mum. He was telling her about a restaurant he liked and wanted to take her to; and when he saw me approach decided we all had to go to this place. We walked and he talked to my mother about how her son was paying too much rent, but that he knew a great cheap place for food. We follow him up to Stockton and weave our way through the crowds to a busy, counter service lunch cafe that advertised Dim Sum under a layer of grime on the doorway. Whatever I ate that day I have forgotten about, so surreal was this experience,  but as we left my mother offered to pay and after some argument he begrudgingly accepted her money and she told him to keep the change.

Now, I could be reading this entire thing wrong; Jackie could have genuinely wanted to take us to dinner, we were, after all, acquainted; and my mother is a very nice lady who would buy lunch anytime. So I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he just likes company and free lunch, which is fine.

Wing Sing Dim Sum is like most of the other dim sum – lunch service counter places on stockton. They make large amounts of food, store it at temperatures not entirely food safe and sell it for cheap.
The lunch plate is 3 types of food over rice, it’s $4 and that’s fine.

There are two different experiences one can have here. In one senario you walk in, point frantically at dumplings or pork buns, and walk out with a plastic bag containing some doughy dim sum, which you then happily eat, pleased with your ability to grab street food and eat like the locals. Never-mind that no one ever eats on the street unless they are homeless, and you paid fifty cents more than normal; it’s all part of the service.

The second experiance involves getting a tray with a plate of lunch food, which consists of typical cantonese stuff prepared using the least amount of effort – beef balls, pork balls, tofu with pork, eggplant with black beans, fried tofu skins stuffed with veggies, small bluefish fried in potato starch,  and so on. It all tastes vaguely the same and is pretty boring. How Wing Sing differentiates itself from the other 8 or so cafes of a similar ilk within a 8 block radius is with their incredible disregard for any kind of food safety regulations or even reasonable sense.

As my friend and I sat eating, or rather picking at  our plates moving shapeless pork products onto the tray, we marveled at the rawness of the beef balls; the box of frozen fish fillets sitting on the floor, the shoes stored in a potato box, and the pervading yellowness of the walls.
I’m not a stickler for decor, I don’t care if a place has yellow walls and, fine, sometimes you can’t throw the fish in the freezer right away; there are plenty of places in CT with just as flagrant a disregard for health code and I’d eat there any day, but this was a special kind of filth.
We left and vomited, then drank yakult to calm our gastrointestinal systems. It was a great experience and I would never do it again, but I reveled in the dirt, and have no permanent damage to my bowels as of yet, I’d even eat their ribs again if I had siracha.

THE LOVING HUT 1365 STOCKTON STREET MIGHT BE A CULT

 

Warning: This article became a diatribe against monetizing the idea of health and spirituality. It contains broad generalizations about some of the citizens of San Francisco, as well as probably offends people from Taiwan. More than anything this article offends people who are not bitter health nihilists.The Loving Hut is a vegan restaurant with prices slightly higher than average that has good miso soup, a clean atmosphere and friendly staff.To continue to the original ’review’ see below.The Loving Hut is weird. Posters with lots of writing, pictures of smiling people, pamphlets and some funding that allows it to be a chain offering vegan food. It’s eerily quiet.
It’s creepy in that everyone who works there is always smiling and helpful, but formal. That the overreaching message of world peace, and healthy living – through us, seems, not in-genuine, but obvious.
One can’t disagree with world peace, nor can one really fundamentally disagree with eating healthily, but something remains unusual.

Some cursory research shows that the Loving Hut is owned by Ching Hai, head of theSupreme Master Ching Hai Association. She is a mystic, spiritual leader, business owner, fashion designer, etc. Just read her wiki page. I’m not saying that Ching Hai is a cult leader and marketing expert who can sell abstract ideas packaged as spirituality, but.

San Francisco has a relationship and understanding of new-age yoga though; the bay area has monetized yoga into exercise and has countless stores selling Tibetan tchotchkes. This kind of world peace and be healthy lifestyle appeals to a large demographic in San Francisco.
What the Loving Hut appeals to is a different demographic of people – mostly, it appears, in Taiwan. While the ethos seems mostly the same, these two demographics like different things.
Rich white people in San Francisco, who for the purposes of this I shall refer to as “Yuppies”, go for a different aesthetic than the demographic that Ching Hai profits off of.

So let’s compare to something I understand.
The best reference point for the same level of uncomfortable niceness, cost, and holier than thou atmosphere is Cafe Gratitude. Gratitude serves a customer base of yuppies, who I can comfortably pass judgement on due to the large amount of time spent in a city designed for them. The Loving Hut, however, does not make any sense to me. I have no reference  it’s not that busy, and when it is the customer base is diverse. The prices are high, but not too high to scream “class warfare” as loudly as Gratitude. 

      It comes down to culture, it has to; The Loving Hut is an operation based out of Taiwan and I imagine every store in Asia looks the same as any store in the USA, but it’s money is made in Taiwan.
      The answer lies in Capitalism. Capitalism uses status symbols to organize itself . So when people pull on their $100 yoga pants, that’s a class signifier and a status symbol, the same way eating at Gratitude is, the same way the dog and the address are.

I cannot claim any knowledge or even a theory of why the Loving Hut does not easily make sense in those terms; all I can say is that it confuses me, and creeps me out; it’s something so far removed from my experience that it makes me uncomfortable.

So then, why is The Loving Hut a cult, while Cafe Gratitude isn’t? My answer is probably that:
1. I am being racist and assume people into The Loving Hut are less rich and less educated than those into yoga in the united states.
2. I assume the people buying into The Loving Hut and Supreme Leader Ching Hai in Taiwan have closer ties to spirituality and more sincere reasons for doing things. (This could easily be more racism)
3. I assume rich people are inherently selfish and never do anything for any genuine reason.
4. Yuppies never do anything culturally worthwhile.

Reviews of San Francisco’s Chinatown

I used to live in San Francisco’s Chinatown. It was culinarily eye opening. I wrote and documented “reviews”; more experiences, at the local places in an attempt to better understand the culture and food of this predominantly Cantonese neighborhood.
I include these here as history, as it is writing on food.

Ah Buddah, how I miss you.