Chinatown

I was in chinatown recently. Chinatown can be a magical place, but i've always compared being in chinatown to being drunk for a number of reasons. Namely cause you always feel sick, but for a million other reasons too.


The other day i was walking around and felt disoriented simply by the amount of signs and people around that i couldnt understand. It was like being in a nightclub full of drunk white girls yelling nonsense at eachother, except the drunk white girls were tiny chinese women and the nonsense was a legitimate language. Your ablility to figure out where the hell you are and which way your facing is completely gone. I like to think i have a great sense of direction. You could blind fold me, spin me around, tie me up in a berlap sack, throw me in the trunk of a car and drive for half and hour in as many directions you want and i would still know how to get to where im going. But enough about how i got here. When im in chinatown its like the bermuda triangle. Compasses dont work and electrical devices fail. Either cause their in chinatown or...cause...they were made in china. Still, i walk into a building and i dont know what it is.on the one side theres a wall of dusty merchandise that probably predates the cold war, none of it you would ever need like those good luck cats. So it must be a shop right? But then i turn around and theres a guy making dumplings and smiling at me with a gold capped tooth. Not to mention the merchandise itself is terrifying.


I went just before halloween to the candy isle and everything had a picture of a prawn or a squid on it and a little kid smiling next to it with a thought bubble of a doctor in it and the doctors yelling "SUPER HAPPY FUN GO GO TREAT SNACK YUM YUM". I ended up settling for a giant plastic elephant filled with those little jelly shots if youve ever seen them.


Every cashier in the area works like their at foxcomm. Really, theyre like woodchippers. I go up to the cashier and give her the candy and before i even took my money out she already bagged the product and handed me my receipt and change, while already having started the next customer. I think she actually took my wallet, took the money she needed, and put it back before i even reached for my pocket.


The best part of chinatown for me though is also the worst part. Im not proud of how often i go to it and i really wish i didnt because ive spent a lot of money here, but i still go. Some guys go for pleasure. Real sleazy, low life characters i hate being around. Guys sitting in their torn up chairs, panting and breathing heavily while they mutter to themselves. Sweating through their shirts, riddled with acne as they get off playing Starcraft or World of Warcraft. Im addicted to internet cafe's. Ive made it a rule that i dont go in while the suns out but even then its still me and a bunch of pre-pubesant korean kids playing video games together in a small, smelly room. This is a low point in my life but one thought always gets me through. "At least im not an acne riddled pre pubesant korean kid"