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CHEAP EATS Where were you when the Giants won?
I was eating Buffalo wings at NY Buffalo Wings with the Maze and Kayday, and when it was over we decided to spill into the streets.
What a great city our city was! This was the way that I was feeling, that San Francisco was the best place on Earth and had the best pitching. All that remained was to set a police car on fire.
“That’s what they do in Philadelphia,” Kayday explained.
Yeah, but we’re not Philadelphia, or Texas, are we? No, we are not. Besides better pitching we have district elections, the view from Dolores Park, and bike lanes. We have Buffalo wings, Philly cheese steak, Texas barbecue, Chicago pizza and Buster Posey. We have players with pretty hair, dyed beards, and cool names.
I don’t really follow baseball anymore. Baseball lost me a few years ago. Oh, I still appreciate good pitching when I see it. And a sacrifice bunt — which is not after all “hit,” but “laid down” — is still my favorite Thing in the whole wide world of sports. Executed properly — which is to say, poetically (see Aubrey Huff, top of the seventh, Game 5) — the sacrifice bunt makes me all buttery inside, and crispy outside, like the fried yucca at Limon Rotisserie.
I will never get tired of it. In fact, thanks to the tingly feeling I still have for power hitter Huff’s li’l push-n-puff between the mound and first base, I might just become a baseball fan again. Fuck Edgar Renteria. Fuck the sweet and sour punch of Lincecum-Wilson. They all might have won the game, according to sports sections, but — even before his thong-related antics at the parade — Aubrey Huff had won my heart. And which, in the long run, is really more important?
Oh, yeah … I guess you’re right: probably for sure the game, now that you mention it. This is why you’re not supposed to answer rhetorical questions.
But why am I writing about a week-old baseball game in the food section instead of dates and shit? Don’t answer that!
I want to. Because, like a lot of other wahoos hanging out of SUVs and minivans or dancing in intersections, on boats, or flying through the air, I was and still am beside myself with pride and joy for the city I live in and the people I live in it with.
Kayday was right. It was almost our civic duty to set things on fire. I wish I’d thought of this beforehand, but I’ve never been in a city that won the World Series before. As a result, I didn’t have matches or a lighter and that’s why I was at the corner of 18th and Mission streets rubbing two sticks together when the party started.
The Maze, who had come straight from the airport to wings and still had his luggage in tow and isn’t much of a baseball fan (lapsed or otherwise) and was tired, went home.
Kayday had her iPhone out and was taking pictures or making movies.
And I, like everyone else who has ever rubbed two sticks together, eventually gave up and started looking around for something to tip over, or at least kick.
All mayhem-related kidding aside, I love how everyone loved each other and seemed to want to hug or at least high five me. As someone who errs on the side of eye contact, who tends to smile and/or say hello and isn’t always (or even often) requited in this, I was like a kid on a choo-choo train.
I’d never felt anything like it.
So I stayed out late, in some cases dodging glass bottles, because I guess I wanted one more hug. One more high five. One more woohoo, ain’t we great.
Yeah, we are.
But I forgot to tell you about dim sum. Last week, and now, nearly, again. There’s this one out on the avenues, in the Richmond, that claims to be “the Very First Chinese Restaurant on Clement.” I don’t care about that. I barely care how good the dim sum was, which was, for the record, pretty good. What I do care about: $1.95 per plate, weekdays.
Ergo: new favorite restaurant!
LEE HOU
Sun.–Thu.: 8 a.m.–1 a.m.;
Fri.–Sat.: 8 a.m.-2 a.m.
332 Clement, SF
(415) 668-8070
D,MC,V
Beer and wine