On a sunny day, after a stormy family to-do, there was nothing better in my mind than a car ride to Chinatown. Chinatown spells mystery, seediness, crime and silence, not just because of Roman Polanski's film or a short story I read in a series for students of English as a foreign language, Lost Horizons, I mean some similar title. The joke widely spread at the Instituto Brasil-Estados Unidos was surpassed only by Fok-Us ( Focus on Composition ) which the Supreme Director pronounced Fok-Us.
In Lost Horizons 6 there was a story of a young man who goes up the rickety stairs of an old building in ... Chinatown. He seeks a love potion. The Chinaman sells it for a dollar. "So cheap," says the lad. The Chinaman explains that after drinking the potion ..."She will have eyes for you only, she will worry each second you are away, all her life will be for you and around you."
The guy is ecstatic. "Is it forever?" He asks. "Yes, forever, unless you want the effect to end. For that you need a lot, a lot of money to buy the antidote."
The Chinaman paused and continued. The antidote is a poison nobody can smell or see. It can't be traced, either. But you have to be older to have all the money you'd need to buy it..."
The stuff teachers memorize.
Our Chinatown is cheerful, with Chinese restaurants, Vietnamese ones, and next to Little Tokyo. It's next to our Broadway, a street that sells anything very inexpensively, peopled with sports fans and slightly anxious overweight mommas.
In Chinatown there are enormous "money trees" for five bucks. Here on the Westside they'd cost fifty.
We highly recommend this restaurant, all of us. The slippery shrimp is a killer delish; even spinach is great. I skipped the spinach; I didn't want to push my luck now that the essence of me has been flushed in its totality, it seems ( The Flu from Ipanema )
Yang Chow
819 N. Broadway
(bet. Alpine & College Sts.)
Los Angeles, CA 90012
213-625-0811
Total bill for three main courses and flied lice and spring rolls an tea. Ready? Sixty-five dollars for today and tomorrow. They make Louise's sound like Spago in terms of prices.
Our ride enables us too discuss the architecture of the city, from Le Corbusier to Mies to F.L. Wright to --Yikes-- Gehry; from déco to nouveau to "modern" to contemporary and the only in L.A. Egyptian, Chinese, chateaus... It's a chance to educate people on why some areas are razed and others not. Hancock Park, right there near downtown is refined. Alvarado and Rampart, "Training Day," anyone? Our tunnel, gardens, the Ambassador Hotel gone, so many new developments under a beautiful and happy sky one can find only in Los Angeles, sometimes.
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