Something Fishy

Irving Street, near where we live, changes dramatically as you head west towards Ocean Beach. It is the primary shopping area in the Sunset, starting at 7th Avenue and ending at 25th Avenue. Although very ethnically mixed throughout, around 7th avenue it's primarily caucasian, but as you work your way up the avenues, the ethnicity takes on a pronounced Asian flavour. The change is dramatic once you pass 19th Avenue. Tash and I refer to it as "Downtown Beijing." It becomes almost completely Chinese - the shop signs are Chinese, the nail and hair salons are Chinese, and the banks are Chinese. Old Asian ladies bustle glumly from store to store, suspiciously prodding the fruit and vegetables displayed on the street side stalls. Asian-American teenagers, lean against tricked-out Hondas and Scions, flirting bilingually, and yammering on cellphones, while little kids sample tapioca drinks. English isn't even the second language here, it is the third or fourth.
One great distinctions between inner Irving and outer Irving is price. In inner Irving, a bag of shiny, waxed veggies , artfully displayed at the upscale supermarket, Andronico's, will set you back about $40. The same bag in one of the scrappy, bustling Chinese shops, less than 10 short blocks away, will cost you only $15 - if that, (it should be pointed out that Andronico's has an amazing selection and everything is very high quality).
All of the Chinese produce stores and supermarkets have live fish tanks teeming with lobsters, crab, bass, carp, eels, and a few varieties of marine life that are very, very unfamiliar to me. They are also crammed full of all sorts of meats, various mushrooms, and a huge assortment of fruit and vegetables. It leads to the kind of pungent aroma that western supermarkets do their best to hide.
Many Sunday afternoons find us strolling to the playground, stopping for a coffee near Downtown Beijing, and the most common refrain from both Shane and Maya is, "Can we puh-leeze see the fishies and lobsters?” We, of course, consent.