Left Coast, Part 3

In Part 3 of my relatively aimless wanderings through California, I discover great cigarettes about Chinatown, visit the home of Emperor Norton, and lecture you on important books you're too busy to read.  More after the jump!



     After the unplanned stop at my grandmother's house, I decided to head directly into the city of San Francisco to spend the bulk of my day there, and then see if I could make it to Colma before dark.  I had a BART pass and there was a stop near her house I could have got on at, but instead foolishly decided to take my car into the city so I wouldn't have to risk another great meal and good nights rest in familiar settings.

     Since I didn't get up earlier enough to beat the morning traffic, I ended up in the tremendous crush of San Francisco bound cars coming over form the east bay.  Sitting in the snail passed crawl towards the city, I had an opportunity to listen to local radio broadcasts in my car.  The thing that surprised me was that, at this time in Phoenix, the radio would have been polluted with "morning zoo" type shows, but coming over every station were broadcasters talking about history, art, and cultural events.  I spun the dial a couple of times and the same sort of thing came on over and over again.  Just two days previously, the only thing I could find was spittle-lipped rantings about the wrath of the coming Christ, and now all I could find was commentary on Ginsberg.  One thing seemed certain- if you want radio programs about you to be broadcast in California, grow a beard.

     When I finally got to the tollbooth, the few seconds I had there were especially life affirming.  Sitting in the penultimate slot before the booth itself, I could hear familiar bass lines humming from the glass and metal enclosure.  When I pulled up, money in hand, the operator was dancing fervently to the sounds of Parliament Funkadelic, and effortlessly took my money and passed me my change without breaking the flow of her knee-deep funk.  I smiled stupidly, enviously.  Other than all the sanitary goo she must go through in a day, she seemed to have the best job ever.

     San Francisco traffic. I dumped my car at the first available free parking (some street in Nob Hill, surprisingly enough) and headed towards Chinatown.  I had three major reasons for heading there.

1.  Chicken Feet.  Known affectionately in Dim Sum places as Phoenix Talons, they hold a special place in my stomach's heart.  If you've never eaten one, or balk at the idea of eating any animals foot, that's your problem-  More for me.  The Golden Buddah in Phoenix makes them the way I like them: fried crisp and steamed to plumpness.  Every bite is a greasy mouthful of spicy, hot-wing style chicken goodness.  If you are the kid who picks the skin off a chicken, this is a dish for you.  I'm getting aroused just thinking about them.

2.  I'm a geek for the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and really hoped to find some statues or some such novelty items in the various gift-shops scattered through Chinatown.  If you haven't read the epic novel of China's gigantic civil war in the 2nd and 3rd centuries (written in the 15th century) then that's sort of like not knowing what "The Bible" is. The Three Kingdoms is the most famous and popular book read in Asia, and considered one of the Four Great Classical novels of China.  It is probably the second most read book in the entire world, after the Bible.  Not knowing Lu Bu is like not knowing Judas.  Get on it- it'll help when we're all speaking Chinese.

3. 624 Commercial Street.  This was the last known address of Emperor Norton, the person who inspired my trip in the first place.  I won't go into too much detail now (stay tuned) but Norton has a sort of special palce in my pantheon of Personal Badasses.  There are few historical figures whose lives are as inspiringly unreal as his.  I could easily fill an entire post on the subject of the Emperor of United States and Protector of Mexico, and probably will soon, but for now I'll simply say that I wanted to see the building he resided in, on Commercial Street, bordering Chinatown.



I spent the bulk of the afternoon digging through the gift shops looking for an affordable Guan Yu statue, which to my dismay, could not find.  There were some nice figures of Lord Beard, but they were all beyond my price range and bordered on insanely super-tacky.  I didn't have a table at home large enough for some of these things.  I did end up finding a replica of Zhuge Liang's crane feather fan, which now resides in my studio looking sagely and strategically minded.  By the time I'd satisfied my nerd-urge, I was getting pretty hungry, and most of the Dim-Sum places I could find had transitioned over to regular dining, and so ended up heading to Commercial St to find some dumpling soup and the address of the Emperor.

Wandering up and down Commercial street with a half gallon of soup in my hands, it slowly occured to me that the addresses seemed to jump around a lot, and that 624 was nowhere to be seen.  My best guess is that the original building has since been torn down and the properties combined into a larger business structure.  Planning would have helped in this case as well.  I ate my soup across from the phantom address, and bought a pack of cigarettes at the bodega.

A side note:  Golden Deer Cigarettes are now my favorite cheap brand.  They were inexpensive and tasted fine.  Seriously, Shanghai does it right.  I mean, yes, they give you cancer and you die eventually, which is bad.  Cost wise, though, they can't be beat.  They were just a couple of Bucks.

So, having been thwarted by progress but having eaten something, I spent the rest of the day on foot just sort of meandering about.  I know I could have gone to a museum or library or art gallery or something touristy like that, but this was never my intention.  I stood and let the Pacific Ocean wind pass over me at a small wharf where a coast guard vessel sat rusting in the salty air.  As late afternoon encroached I knew it was time to get moving and head to Colma, lest the cemetery close and I lose another day.

I set out south along the western coast of California towards the town of Colma.  The rest of that night deserves it's own blog post, so I'll leave it at this:  By this point, I was still in a sort of high-pressure mode.  I didn't really slow down much throughout California, and my energies were dwindling already.  I could have spent two or three days in the bay, but I just powered through like a mad-man.  Things start to blur for me, even in my audio journal.  I was already reaching some strange wall in myself.

TUNE IN TOMORROW FOR PART 4.