I’m having a fine time in San Francisco. Saw Beach Blanket Bablyon yesterday — it was worth every penny. It’s the world’s longest running variety show. The official “plot” is Snow White searches around the world to find her Prince Charming, and encounters a variety of different celebrity impersonators. However, it’s more than that, in an incredibly inexplicable way. And it’s done with a lot of big hats, some going 3 or more stories in height. Afterwards, went to Sushi at North Beach. Katsu, the owner, served us the omakase, and scored like 4 major home runs with the dishes. The next day, we walked the Golden Gate Bridge, saw a series of Asian gay themed movie shorts at the Castro Theatre for the SFAAIFF (really interesting, beautiful theater), bought bento boxes (fantastic) and bought a dozen more of those dan tats to bring home.
The mixed review is Ton Kiang, the Hakka Chinese restaurant that I really wanted to go to. The Cantonese waiter kept pushing the tamer, expensive dishes, and I was insisting on having the real stuff. Didn’t turn out so good. Let me qualify that — it was excellent Chinese food, just it wasn’t authentic Hakka dishes. However, I made small talk with the manager, Richard, who was really cool, and he said that the people here don’t really want to try the real stuff, like stuffed bitter melon, stewed beef tripe or “steamed bacon with mustard greens”. He insisted that we try him again and he’ll make sure to get us the real stuff.
We’re flying out at 8 am; we’re going to take a taxi to SFO in a few hours because the BART doesn’t run in the morning. SSW, I have fresh dan tat’s waiting if you’re willing to come out on Sunday night!