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San Francisco is the city where the War on Drugs was lost. Many times throughout the day, in different parts of town, one walks through a cloud of the familiar yet unusual in the streets of Kansas City smell and immediately takes another whiff just to make sure it’s not a mistake. In the middle of the day in the touristiest of the tourist areas, next to expensive stores and restaurants, a nicely dressed woman produced a mini-bong out of her pricey purse and turning her face ,to the wall, proceeded to treat her glaucoma (if you know what I mean). When my kid came out of the store, I started to recount that mind-blowing event, but then realized that she may not know the meaning of the word bong. She knew. Thank you, O-e School District for taking care of that awkward conversation!
San Francisco is beautiful city, with many different faces, amazing food of a mind-blowing variety, endless number of things to do, enough weather changes to keep an army of meteorologists busy, and more homeless people than an average resident of Midwest will encounter in a lifetime. My only advice is that if you are not in the greatest of shapes, visiting the Crookedest Street in the World is better done on a bus. It’s not that exciting and you almost need a Sherpa to get up on the damn hill. If you have time, check out SF Playhouse, we really enjoyed My Fair Lady, much better choice than a magician we originally set out to see.
I found this 1946 Life Magazine article while searching for vintage Kansas photos (the article features a farmer from Shawnee County, KS and a future post is forthcoming). We frequently hear about the way it used to be, stable middle class of the past, high taxes on the wealthy and many other economic and cultural realities that were lost over the past 60 years. The article briefly touches on several segments of the post-war society, their roles in the economy and their material well-being. The language of the article is strikingly similar to what we see in the media today. Over time, the classes described in the article were redefined or disappeared; rich people are not content with just two Cadillac’s; no one is paying two thirds of their income in taxes; and $12,000 a year does not equate to being successful. There is one notable exception: the teachers are still being screwed. Anyway, the article is short, enjoy.
Some day I will go out to get lunch and come back dead or it least in a “critical but stable” condition. That’s because unlike the local lunch-reviewing icon who eats in the safety of Johnson County,I have to forage for food around the war zone a.k.a. Independence Ave. Its unpredictable mix of ethnicities, poverty and crime make every lunch trip an adventure.
I am not sure where I ate today. I can see the place on Google Street View (it’s the white storefront to the left of the barber shop).
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I think it was called “Yasmine Cafe” but I can’t find it in the Yellow Pages, Google and anywhere else. This trip started few days ago when I noticed a sign advertising shish-kebab while driving around looking for Mexican food. Today I came to work with a thought to try some middle-eastern cuisine. I drove to the place and walked in. Small clean room with a few tables and booths and no signs of food, decorated with a TV with some Arabic channel, few paintings and a sign that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah. Three guys hanging out in the dining room, watching TV. By the way, on Arabic TV the ticker at the bottom of the screen is moving in the opposite direction.
I started to feel like Jimmy Carter on his way to talk to Hamas, except that he is not Jewish. I asked one of the guys if there is any way I can get some food to go, so one of them went to the back of the building and retrieved a nice guy who could speak English. I asked about food again to which he smiled and said “Do you want to know the menu?” and proceeded to make up and recite the menu from the top of his head. I recognized some items and ordered shish-kabob, rice and salad, and he also offered to get me some soup just to try. I asked him how much this would cost and after minor hesitation he said that he will give all this food to me for 8 dollars. I watched Arab TV for about ten minutes, they were talking about NYSE, probably enjoying the oil prices. Then a group of men walked through the building and all greeted me with As-Salāmu `Alaykum, I actually knew the reply (wa `Alaykum As-Salām) but decided to limit myself to diplomatic shaking of hands. I got my food, paid and left.
The food was actually pretty good and there was so much that I split it in two decent size lunches. I also got a 16 inch flat bread to go with it. I didn’t really like the eggplant soup, it was to acidic for my taste. The rice had some vegetables in it and even a few raisins and was light and tasty. Kebabs were grilled and meaty. Salad had cucumbers and lettuce, nothing weird. If anything, I expected the food to be a little more spicy, but a co-worker who spent some time in the Middle East confirmed that it was pretty close to authentic.
I am not sure if I’d recommend this place with no menu and all, try it at your own risk. I am still alive so food quality is not substandard. So just like Jimmy Carter, I am not only eating lunch, I am also improving Jewish-Arab relations, one kebab at a time.
All this Sarah Palin satire business reminded me of a special place satire held in the USSR. Even during the times when straight talk would get a person arrested, the same idea framed in satirical terms was perfectly acceptable, up to a point of course. When I was growing up® there were at least two state-published satirical magazines – Krokodil in Russian and Perets’ in Ukrainian where in between the caricatures bashing Americans Imperialists and Israeli Zionists, there was plenty of space devoted to satirizing the bureaucrats, alcoholics and other violators of work discipline. From the state-sponsored satire all the way down to colorful walls of shame at the workplace, various humorists were allowed to speak their mind as long as they didn’t direct their criticisms at the wrong people and didn’t say the wrong things. The most popular comedians mastered the special language understood only by the Soviet citizens who were trained to “read between the lines”. Fairly innocent comic routines had people rolling on the floor without having to say anything deemed offensive by the government; an uninitiated person would be dumbfounded but everyone in the country knew exactly what was being implied.
Often satirical materials were displayed in the streets for everyone to see and condemn whoever was being condemned at the time. Few photos as a continuation of my recent Window Shopping post.
From top to bottom (minus the rhyming):
“Volodya was kissing Nastya, talking about happiness, but all she wanted to know was how much money he was making” – criticizes gold-diggers;
“Flying for an hour, landing is fast but it takes all day to get home from the airport” – criticizes slow airport transportation.
“Fedot is always sending people to his boss to get the answers, but if the boss has all the answers, why do we need Fedot” – criticizes indecisive management.
“When the fight was going on there was a crowd watching, but when it came to filling out a report, there were no witnesses” – no snitching?
“There is a line waiting outside some bureaucrat’s door, while he went home to eat his lunch” – criticizes bad customer server and lack of work discipline.
“Plan of stocking the warehouse was well-prepared and discussed, instead someone should’ve discussed the shoddy condition of the warehouse itself” – criticizes wrong priorities and failing to see the “big picture”.
“Lazy useless employee didn’t do much all year and got so tired of doing nothing that he went on a resort vacation” – no explanation is needed.
“Lecturer talked about culture with self-importance and at length, but his unshaven unkempt looks were in contrast to the subject” – hippie looks were not encouraged.
Lastly, an international one. There were no limits on international satire as long as it wasn’t about the friendly socialist countries.
Top left pokes some wordplay fun at the UN (ООН); top right bashes the Spanish dictator Franco for boycotting soccer quarter-finals in Moscow obviously ordered by his superiors in the USA; the bottom one is about the U-2 incident.
As you can see, Sarah Palin is right: if you say something unfavorable you should resign, be fired, hauled away, sent to be “rehabilitated” at the labor camps, your family should be harassed and your name dragged through the mud; but satire is a different story because it’s so satirical, right?
You betcha.
Small clean room with a few tables and booths and no signs of food, decorated with a TV with some Arabic channel, few paintings and a sign that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah. Three guys hanging out in the dining room, watching TV. By the way, on Arabic TV the ticker at the bottom of the screen is moving in the opposite direction.
