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Breakfast is not Served

An early morning walk in Chinatown made me realize that nearly all of the restaurants had stopped serving breakfast.  I was pining for a waffle, the old fashioned kind that was a little burned on the edges with a pat of butter melting in the middle.  Or maybe an egg with a watery yoke.  That would be fine too.  But walking up and down the hills I was not able to find a place that would provide what used to be standard comfort food.

Although on the outside it is still funky and bizarre as if it is suspended in another time, Chinatown is changing subtly.  The men sitting in the bakery drinking coffee and buying lottery tickets will gradually fade away, so will the homemade basement temples, and the old gangsters who talk football at one o’clock in the morning at Sam Wo.  But I think in the gift shops they will always have something to sell to everyone.  Like a charm on a red string, for protection.

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Go Back In Time For A Cheap Eat

Late night in Chinatown has the atmosphere of a film noir.  With shops and restaurants closed so vanished the crowd.  Freshly sprayed sidewalks smell of fish.  Garbage cans and wet cardboard boxes are the still lifes.  Walk uphill into the neon-sphere.  A couple tumble out of the Buddha Bar.  Our car is parked on Washington and Taylor.  I need to fill my stomach before taking on the hill and Sam Wo’s dirty red sign blinks at me.

It has been some years since I went to Sam Wo.  I am no longer the young wide-eyed tourist, nor the tour guide when friends came to town, nor the music shop owner who needed a bowl of won-ton soup at one in the morning before driving home.  Sam Wo hasn’t changed in all its one hundred years.  The slapdash kitchen at the entrance, the narrow stairs, the rectangular tables with slanted red legs, the dumb waiter, the thin film of grease that get swished around by the waitress’ rag…food is still priced no more than $6.25.  Time stops, where the good Sam Wo stuffs the bellies of poets and wanderers.  I finish a third of my chicken chow-mein and box the rest to go.  Outside it is darker still.

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