Ian Felton

Financial District

We got off the BART at Embarcadero and had to backtrack to Powell. It seemed like every twenty feet you could smell a different prescription. Contrasting mid-Western values with this environment is like contrasting salt with cumin. We both probably made too many jokes about me going to a massage parlor. We spent hours finding outfits for dinner at La Folie. It has a Michelin star I found out. We glanced down at a child curled up under a blanket outside of Loius Vuitton and made our way around the block to Banana Republic. I wanted to get an idea of the jewelry she liked. She laughingly pointed out an extravagant diamond necklace in De Beer's window. The next day in Chinatown I looked at the jade and coral necklaces. They wouldn't do. An almost inhuman howl came from a man on the sidewalk. His voice ballooned from inside and pushed out every other sound nearby. "Something, something, can you help me." I drank lots of tea from a shop just down the street. Oolong, green, baicha, pu-erh. Great stuff. The next morning on our fourth trip to the Ferry Building, a young woman with wild hair and no shoes stumbled out from some bushes and knelt about three yards away from us on the brick walkway. "Can you spare some food, some change." We talked about how horrible her night must have been. I wanted my companion to have the same experience I did yesterday at the tea shop at the crest of the hill on Jackson where it meets Grant.

Who is this person
smiling with strangers
tasting tea?