21st Oct 2003
Chinatown
No, no pictures. Chinatown is a zoom blur in sound, in smell, and in real-life visual.
Am I imagining that San Francisco’s Chinatown is smaller than New York?
Daytime noon overcast, ped lost in thought. Stride. Amble. Keep a walking pace. No browsing. Blocks of Asian Impressionism. A New York wrapped inside another. Atmosphere volume knob high. Keep going, past fresh fish on ice, birds on string, pigs on hook. Lobsters and crabs wave hello from tanks, destined for really hot baths. Wafting steam. Fresh Jade. Ginger. Mary Ann. Rugged sidewalks. Yelled conversations across narrow streets. Thick dialects and hand scribbled signs; Cantonese or Mandarin? Some Vietnamese signs add to the mix. Sudden alleys, paths, leading who knows where – possibly the best restaurants of all? Old ladies with toothless smiles shuffle by. Toothful overseas beauties beam from magazine racks. Graffiti’ed trucks. Deliveries of fruit. Endless double parking. Add rain, night, drops of oil, and neon signs, and we’d really be there. Just a few blocks – all it takes for a blur to set in, sensory overload. Delightful urban buzz.
Someone drives their SUV the wrong way down a one-way. Traffic cop loses it, shouting “what the hell are you doing!”. Shamed SUV executes 12 point turn. Go park in a corner for an hour, bub. Streets a barely contained chaos. Any Chinatown, anywhere – faster to just walk.
One block to the next, natural compass steering me towards the Brooklyn Bridge. Suddenly I pop out, back to the rest of Lower Manhattan. Pace, volume, energy level drop off to normal (but still frenetic) levels.
Gotta do that again.
