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.