This morning there was a
man standing on the street corner, right next to the Pacific Stock Exchange
building. He was about 45, wearing a suit and tie, with a big smile on his face,
and he had big nostrils. He was holding a sign, about 30X40 inches, that said
"Thank You Everyone. I just got a job." And it had a smiley face drawn on it
filled in yellow with a highlighter. The whole thing was wrapped in saran wrap,
which was probably a precaution because it rained out overnight and he didn't
want it getting wet this morning. I couldn't decide if he was just a nut who
was glad to get work after being unemployed, a guy trying to sell something
and doing it with a clever street marketing campaign, like, you might go up
and say, "did you really get a job?" and he'd say, "Why yes, and it's all thanks
to Monster.com" or something. Or the third most likely option, that he was just
a nut. He certainly had a crazed smile on his face. It would be kind of cool,
I suppose, to show the world you are happy when you finally get a job by standing
in the middle of the busy part of the city announcing your joy. Only if your
new employer saw you, presumably the first thing they would do is fire you.
Last night, we went to a restaurant, recommended as the best in San Francisco,
for real food. And by real food, I mean a tonic to the prevailing trend here,
which is for soft lighting, muted fabrics, Dr. Seuss architecture and food that
has been fussed with so much you can hardly tell what you are eating, all served
in tiny expensive portions. It's like the graduating classes of culinary schools
all descended and decided to open their dream place, which means having a name
like luLu with a random capitol letter, and maybe a few umlats thrown in for
good measure. Then they charge twenty five dollars for grilled arctic char with
balsamic reduction served over frisee with Argentine shallots sauteed in grapefruit
glaze. The thing is that frilly food preparation never disguises a basic talent,
or lack of it, that makes a meal cohesive, and somehow this always seems less
effortful when it's not contrived. Like when you go into a formica pizzeria,
where the first layer of formica is worn down from people's elbows. And you
get two slices that come with corn meal on them on a paper plate with scalloped
edges, with a coke in a wax paper cup, all under flourescent lights. It's a
conspiracy of factors that are unaffected and somehow make the meal better than
if you went out in the sun and ate the same food. Anyway, we went to this restaurant,
which was in what I was forewarned was a seedy neighborhood. The funny thing
about seedy neighborhoods is that this one is on the edge of what was a booming
neighborhood two years ago, an area south of Market street renamed Soma, to
give it a more glossy, Soho feel.
Now it feels like a wierd
combination of what it was, which is industrial spaces with almost no light
commercial businesses, not even delis or barbers. And they have all been renovated
with preservation of their industrial past, juxtaposed with some modern element,
so the old brick painted sign that says "Mallory Coppersmiths" is still visible,
only new smoked glass windows with a teal tint are set in them. After about
10 blocks of this wasteland, the neighborhood suddenly changes. There are porn
shops, clusters of homeless, missions, and boarded up buildings. Even though
San Francisco is not that scary, it was a little anxiety provoking to walk down
a street in an unfamiliar neighborhood at dusk with homeless people standing
in crowds, and occasional miscreants casting malicious stares. Plus I didn't
know where the restaurant was and eventually had to go into a porn shop and
ask the proprietor.
The restaurant was only
about eight feet wide and as you come in you have to squeeze past the kitchen,
which is a frenzy of steam table activity, with about four people working six
woks in a tiny space. Behind them were three tiny tables shoehorned in. Next
to where we sat was a group of toothless Mexican men, with about 15 Bud long
neck empties between them. They were laughing up a storm. On the other side
was a table of men who seemed to be recently paroled. A more genteel class of
customer kept arriving in a steady stream for take out, presumably because the
eating conditions in the store weren't up to snuff for them.The menu featured
a hand drawn pen and ink of Julia Child, who supposedly said Tu Lan was her
favorite place to eat in San Francisco.
Julia Childs is a demented old
bat, but that doesn't mean the food wasn't good. It was certainly authentic.
I had been warned not to go to the bathroom at Tu Lan, but it wasn't that bad,
though I heard that it had been spruced up. There was a kind of looming fear
in the back of my mind during the whole meal that I should transfer all my credit
cards to my sock in case I got mugged as soon as we went outside. While the
trip home was uneventful, the first five blocks or so were definitely a little
ill advised, in that the sun had set and mischief was afoot.