food trucks

Every time I come here, be it for one week or one month, there is some strange new trend that didn't exist the last time I was here.  For example--the ipads that scan your credit card and you sign with your finger, or the foodie-obsession with nutrient-rich kale...

Or the FOOD TRUCKS.  Yes, they are exactly what they sound like.  Food trucks.  They park all over the city and set up a portable restaurant right in front of their service windows.  There are breakfast ones, lunch ones, even late-nite ones! On sunny days downtown, all the business men are sitting on their picnic tables in suits enjoying the fresh (and cheap!) food they have to offer...

And they offer EVERYTHING.  In fact, I think a prerequisite for owning a food truck is specializing in some bizarre fusion of cuisines, like Indian Burritos, or Hawaiian Barbeque.  The one right next to Andrew's house that I passed every day on my way home from work last week was called "Le Truc" and, so boring, specialized in french cuisine.  It was an adorable truck though.

They are all adorable trucks, just the french one per usual is cuter than the rest.  But really, another prerequisite of the food truck: aesthetically pleasing.  The french one is in a navy blue school bus (like the typical yellow ones, but navy blue) with classic white cursive lettering and chic black umbrellas.

If you aren't already thrilled by the idea of Food Trucks, just wait because it's about to get much, much better.  

The best part about these food trucks is that they congregate.

A music festival? You can bet the Taco Truck and the Salad Toss Truck are there.

A flea market?  The Korean Kobe Burger truck would be stationed and serving by noon, right alongside the Peruvian Pigs in a Blanket.

An empty parking lot full of Food Trucks? Yep.

A PARTY DEDICATED STRICTLY TO FOOD TRUCKING? DAMN STRAIGHT.

And they take credit cards.  The end.

(this was a sort of letter I wrote to Lucas, part of the series I like to call Just wait til you get here cause even I'm having culture shock.  Then I thought I should just share it with others, for anyone who might still be out there reading this, who actually know and experience what I am talking about. Do you guys thinks it's funny too?)

lust for life

hello sf

Hi everyone from sunny and breezy SF.

I arrived with few troubles on Thursday night.  MAD to JFK to SFO, a payphone, a slouchy, dimly-lit BART ride, then all the sudden, just like that, I find myself waiting downstairs at the 16th and Mission muni for Ash because upstairs, outside on the corner, the station is overly populated with crazies at all hours of the day...

I have to admit that I have had one person on my mind a lot since I got here, partly because he will be here in September.  It will be his first everything, having never been to the US before.  So I see crazies downstairs even at the 16th and Mission muni station, and think of him, he who has a million notions but really no idea what to expect, he who does not yet realize the extent of madness the San Francisco hobos are all about.  He's going to love them.

So anyway, a little reverse culture shock here and there, but give it a week... in any case, I'm currently sitting in this garden of eden at my July summer pad...part of me hoping that somehow plans will change and it will remain my August pad as well.  I really had no idea what to expect, besides the slightly scary location, so you can imagine what a pleasure it was to find this tiny, two-floor, tucked away paradise on 21st and York.  I love everything about it (except walking alone at night).

So wish me luck in the next week that everything else falls into place.  I totally forgot that Wednesday was the one and only 4th of July, so that is kind of putting a stop on things for me, and by that I mean I am putting a stop on things because I want to go drink beers on a boat.  I know we can't have it all, but we can have a little.  A bit of indulgence is the key to happiness, right?

beginning and end of summer

So it's my second-to-last Saturday in Madrid before heading back to SF for the supposed summer.

I sort of can't believe I'm giving up the long, sunny Spanish days that I so love.  For chilly, grey SF. The coldest winter I ever knew, a summer in San Francisco.

And the nice weather, the long days, there is so much that comes with it.  Gazpacho, sandals, hours of tinto de verano and cañas in the terrazas around the city, IBIZA...

Tonight we're going to see Guadalupe Plata, an awesome Spanish dirty blues/rock band.  This is the type of music you groove to, sweat with, you don't mind that your eye make-up runs a bit 'cause it goes with the feel of the whiney, erotic guitar.

This goes out to the people I want to see longer than the blink of an eye...quality time will have never felt so good!  I'll be living up my last few weeks of summer here, with other people I will dearly miss, and I'll say goodbye with a touch of remorse but more than anything an incredible thrill.  The countdown has begun---see you in two weeks!

saturday

Wishing I were here...  northern-most point of Ibiza--Santa Agnes.

subcultures/gypsies/prueba

Considering its situation, Spain itself is by no means diverse, Madrid and Barcelona being the only places one kind find an array of different cultures, and even so it's not saying much.  In the city center, my lovely neighborhood of Embajadores might be the only area where you can find several different cultures melding together like a poorly cut puzzle.

I could go into how this puzzle sort of works, but there is the looming fear of political incorrectness, and in any case, this post has greater purposes.

Like the gypsies.  The gypsies in my neighborhood are many, and what's funny (predictable) is that because they blend in a bit more looks-wise, I was never very quite aware of their numerosity.  Everything changed, of course, when all of the sudden they were my students. And all of these students are in one way or another cousins, or so they say, and their moms and dads and aunts and uncles and grandparents are in the street all the time.

They don't say hi much...in fact I salute them with waaaaay too much enthusiasm considering the majority hardly give me a smile.  It is a very, very closed culture (probably even more so than the Chinese who are also mingling on the same street corners).  In any case, I want someone to let me in, because I am actually boiling inside with curiosity for who they are, who they were, their histories.  Nobody seems to know where they came from...I've asked several and received all different answers... in any case there are some things that are just general knowledge, like the roots of flamenco lie in the gypsy culture, and that gypsy law is far different than that of the state, and that to this day, they practice la prueba del pañuelo.

And this is what I've been getting to, la prueba del pañuelo, or the handkerchief test, because I just feel the need to share this...

It probably goes without saying, but we will start from the beginning: the gypsy culture is a very chauvinistic one.  Once women are older, they can enjoy a matriarchal position over their children and grandchildren and ailing husbands, but this, obviously, does not come without a long, hard life of paying the price of respect.  In the beginning, women are seen as sex objects, and once they are married (usually very early), they are in charge solely of producing children (preferably boys) and raising them on the same principles they themselves were.

That being said, young gypsy women are expected to save their virginity for marriage (of course, the double standard is obvious: young gypsy men are encouraged to sleep with as many women as they like).  To ensure that the young woman has kept to her promise, la prueba del pañuelo  is performed on the eve of her wedding.

La prueba del pañuelo entails the bride, her grandmother or some other elderly wise woman, and the closest female sisters, cousins, etc to enter a room with a handkerchief.  The matriarch then opens the girls legs, and with her hand in the handkerchief, penetrates the girl.  If the handkerchief is pulled out with rosas, figurative for blood, they celebrate the woman's soon-to-be marriage.  If not, the wedding is called off, the girl may never marry, and her family will probably be shamed.

I don't know what to make of it all, you make of it what you will.

stress

Each time I sit at my computer to write something, pretty much all that comes out is a flood of confusion.  I don't even think my mom wants to read that.

Aaaaaaand I've been spending an average of five minutes a day sporadically visiting the kitchen to fish pieces of chocolate out of a cereal box.  I didn't even realize it, but I think this is how I deal with taxing stress.