The prejudiced San Francisco

I visited San Francisco twice but haven’t really done the tourist bit. The closest I got was accidentally standing right in front of my Mecca “China Town” while I was doing my after dinner stroll. OK, for the record, China Town is NOT my Mecca (really!!). Why would ANYONE, other than Paul, see China Town as their Mecca?

But sometimes you get to see a lot more while you’re in town for something else. For both times I went in for some VC annual meetings at the Four Seasons Hotel. Not only it is the best hotel I’ve ever stayed, it was indeed some eye opening experience for me. While I believe time should be spent outside the hotel rooms during any trip, I think everyone should at least indulge herself in one of those truly top notch high-end hotels once in her life time. Although I was lucky enough that the company paid for it because I would never spend $400 on hotel rooms, I can buy a bag AND a pair of shoes with that kind of money.

San Francisco is famous for many things, and among them, it is the Mecca for gays and lesbians in the US. And one can totally feel the vibe of freedom while walking on the street. In my opinion, US is probably one of the most conservative countries I’ve been to, among many other things, there’s the big debate over Darwin’s Evolution theory vs. the God created the World theory (why can’t we teach them both and let them make their own choices), but I won’t go into much detail except to say that therefore it takes a great deal of tolerance to become San Francisco, and for that I respect the city.

As much as I’d like to pretend my open-mindedness, my most bizarre encountering with such diversity also happened on my first visit here. I was shopping in Neiman Marcus, right next to me was a gay couple trying various shoes in the women’s shoe department. I overheard him explaining to the shop assistant that he tends to shop women’s shoes because he could never find the right shoes in the men’s department. (Hey, I don’t care about your excuse but you’d better not pick MY shoes!) And then in my big awe, he then said, “I am looking for this pair of shoes I saw last week when I came here with my wife, she and I saw this…” Forgive my overreaction but it was before the whole Brokeback Mountain thing, and how dare he has a boyfriend AND a wife? No wonder there are all these desperate singles out there! But I guess there is no other city in the US where you can casually disclose your bi-sexual polygamy relationship to a shop assistant.

Therefore, it was to my deepest disappointment when I had the following experience on my second visit. Mike and I finally decided to have our little reunion dinner after four years. It was a windy rainy night so we decided to hail a cab to the restaurant several blocks away from us. And there was at least a dozen, if not more available cabs stormed past us like a hurricane. Some even bothered to slow down, took a closer look and decided to storm past us in an even more hastily fashion. OK, as much as it is politically incorrect for me as an Asian girl to point this out, it was obviously because of Mike, not me. Some of you might think I’m half joking, but trust me I’m dead serious. As an Asian girl who look semi attractive from the back, this may be the closest experience to know what it is like to be an African American male. And let’s be totally free from being politically correct for a second now, many of these taxi drivers looked like Iraqi or Palestinian and ever since 911, you would think they have had the most painful experience about racial prejudice. And yet, every single one of them, in a universally unspoken agreement, drove by us with their feet passionately pressed all the way down on the accelerator. Finally there was a nice cab driver who decided to pick us up, and sure enough, it was an African driver.

I wouldn’t be so disturbed had this happened in any other part of the country. But for a city renown for its diversity and liberty? Sorry if I didn’t know it only applies to your sexuality, not the color of your skin.

Not too impressed with Toronto

I want to do some recollection of the places I've been to while the memory still faintly resides somewhere...Decided to go backwards but this is really a bad choice, as I don't have much recollection of Toronto really. Well, in my last post I said I was sick on this trip, so unfortunately that negatively impacted my whole experience with Toronto, honestly I didn't do all that much, but it's quite telling that I didn't even take a photo (I still can't quite believe it myself!!!) So for any Torontoan who accidentally surfed here, don't hate.

Among many people, Paul is one of those who praises Toronto like it's the greatest city in North America, as he certainly thinks Canada is so much cooler than its filthy neighbor. I only agree on the surface, it is truly much cooler, the temperature was around mid 40F under bright sun in the middle of April. Canada may surpass US in many regard (size for example), but certainly not on the diversity of what its cities has to offer (am I stating the obvious?)

Toronto, unlike its more controversial counterpart Montreal, is a lot more like any other North American city. It's quite huge in size, spanning into several districts, but definitely without much of the spice you'd expect in a city of its size. The prime spots we went was China Town. As Chinese decents, we always try to show our respect to our root--food. For the record, Toronto has the most amazing Chinese food that I've known to, it has to be true because I felt that way during my stomach illness, isn't that something? But the better Chinese food are probably in the other sections of the city namely the 太古廣場 and Highway 7, as the old China town was way too congested and is more like a tourist scam for the Westerners. But 太古廣場 and Highway 7 are really only for the Asian Americans/Canadians. I don't think there's anything exciting to see for anyone who can't fully appreciate the authenticity of the food, including those who live in Asia who can taste authentic Asian food anywhere they go.

After the China Town, we went to the AGO, Art Gallery of Ontario. Well, maybe the whole trip was at a bad timing because it's under some major construction (lesson learned: research is key before any trip). So the admission was free, but as expected, nothing much was on site.

One famous attraction spot we didn't go was CN Tower. I'm really not a big fan to get on top of a city tower, besides the crowd, it is like viewing the city without its landmark so what is the point?

The other famous place was the Lake Ontario, but to our own mistake, we drove to the east side of the lake and it was just miles and miles of empty lands between us and the lake. I assume the nice part is on the west side judging by the fact east side was really not serving its name well, but by that time I was already feeling ill again and had to finish our short Toronto trip in a hastily fashion.

I certainly don't mean to disrupt Toronto's tourism business, but personally, I would probably never pick the city as my vacation spot again. My personal advice to my family and friends: go to New York, San Francisco, or even Chicago instead. It's a lot more fun there!

(Note: Photo from Toronto's official website as I didn't take any photo during the trip)