Before the invention of WhatsApp and underutilized fish, San Francisco was an obscure gay hamlet, notable mostly for its colorful characters and sourdough bread. The advent of high-concept eateries with in-house foragers and on-site barrel-aged drinks had not yet begun, so the village residents were still quite dull and basically ate whatever shit was put in front of them. Apparently, there were fewer colon-cancer deaths as well as assholes.
Then one day, something extraordinary happened: a Shelf.com was born. And soon throngs of war-worn Wall Street grizzlers and unique and special Millennials, armed with tightly coiffed, totalitarian lacquered haircuts and an aggressive can-do spirit, arrived and settled in San Francisco and its culturally vacuous wastelands. The commoners of San Francisco wept with gratitude for their arrival, even as they were forced to sell off their children and high-value body parts to pay their rent.
But while the peasants and colonizers alike marveled at how much easier and productive their lives had become, and at how much more connected they felt to one another thanks to Bannerman and Juicero, something was missing: pancetta-wrapped heirloom pork belly pluots. The eating establishments of San Francisco were called upon to match the lavish expectations of the anointed ones. Donuts without façade simply would not do. And so many a small-batch hand-wept mescal-infused thorn-berry butter clot were revealed, and the ignorant commoners were immensely #grateful for the Tacolicious scraps they were thrown, even though they had sold off their gallbladders and could not process the fats.
At long last, the unique and special trailblazers, story architects and culture hackers could populate their social feeds with stock-photography-inspired #perfectmeal close-ups that served as proof of their superior taste — as well as personhood. (The Wall Street grizzlers, BTW, were content to feast on other people’s souls.) For no longer was it fashionable for bright young things to break laws and contract STDs. Instead they spent their unbillable time building their personal brands, and staying on-brand, with impeccably “curated” West Elm simulacra of their lives. Here’s a top-performing influencer moodily perusing a persimmon farm at dusk, and here’s a well-lit tight-crop #nomnom of aspirational avocado dipping toast and Bosnian fondue — by all measurements, a winner at 300 Likes.
The only downside to the cultural-upgrade revolution was the complete annihilation of San Francisco as we knew it. Yet … it’s a story you’ve heard a million times before: San Francisco was a magical kingdom that was ruined by rotten, self-entitled Napoleonic Google bus invaders, with their stupid despotic haircuts and skin-peelingly offensive comments like “I don’t like Chinese — I only eat Thai” and “DoLo.” It’s a tired narrative, but it’s at least75 percent true.
The reopening of Sam Wo — a legendary Chinese-American restaurant in Chinatown — couldn’t have come at a better time. A hundred-year-old family-owned business manned by generations of pre-Splunk.com San Franciscans, Sam Wo is a place where this native simpleton felt right at home. No underutilized fish, but plenty of individual, no-nonsense packs of hot Chinese mustard. No Sardinian cured-tuna hearts, but the lightly oiled chow fun was soft and browned in all the right spots. The tea was hot; the room was cramped; and the vegetables were fresh and crisp. The waitress didn’t give a shit about my feelings, and the water came with ice.
I didn’t come to Sam Wo to be amused or impressed. I came for a taste of old-school community and to pay homage to the history of Sam Wo and the late Edsel Ford Fong, the infamous Sam Wo maître d’ who flamboyantly abused the restaurant’s patrons (and who made me cry as a child by forcing me to clean the tables). This pre-Tinder era was not the best of times, but it was emblematic of a lower-budget period when real-life characters and a homegrown community were more valuable than pristine hotspots. Fuck your hen liver pâte.
As I ate alone, overhearing bits of muffled conversation, I realized that the restaurant’s new location overlooks Portsmouth Square, the first-ever public square in San Francisco. Which moved me to wonder — maybe San Francisco deserves everything bad happening to it now. For thousands of years, it was home to the Ohlone, and then the brutal Spaniards showed up and paved the way for an endless stream of thieves, gamblers, hookers and drunks. Fast-forward to the lacquer hairs and beige start-up slacks of 2015, and it’s one big hip-hip-hooray for progress.
I’ll take the spring rolls, please.
