So Im chillin, post mulching, on the stoop with some of my neighborly Belmontonians the other day, watching Brick and Berries teach his Most Excellent Hound to catch frisbees. Grandfathers ChiHooaHooah, Cocopuff, is too small to get in on the game, but you know, he had to try. All in all a lovely spring afternoon.

Now my man Brick and Berries is a man who loves his food. Fairly soon, he will be in my yard consuming cherries at a rate that is most inhuman. Hell, he has even taught his Most Excellent Hound to enjoy such fruits. He has concocted salsas from the Yo Tomato and Pepper Patch that would make you weep. He may not be a butter obsessed cocoNUT, all well schooled in the Culinary Arts of Goddamnit I Know What Im Talking About, My Parents Had Tall White Hats, nor does he have the Yellow Belt in Free Liquor like señor Francesco, but he is a man among men, and as he is my bud, I trust his buds, tastewise – dig?

So when Brick and Berries starts waxing about “one of the best meals he has ever had in his life”, my lobes were knocked akimbo. Then when his discriptives trend toward “30 different distinct spices and flavors dancing around in his mouth in a distinct yet harmonious manner”, I am like a corn field, baby, all ears. By the time he gets around to the “nicest family and service and presentation and overall happy eating experience” I am waiting for the end of the bible – thats right – revelations! Where is this culinary mecca? And so he told me…

KOREAN HOUSE!

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I have never been one to shy away from an afternoon of what I have come to call recreational anthropology, and as such, I have never really minded the occasional trip to the Department of Motor Vehicles. Truth be told, whatever complaints folks have about the VA DMV, they pale in comparison to the experience when faced with it in a city such as San Francisco. A trip to the DMV out there requires bring provisions, several books of language translation, and perhaps a Kafka novel or two to stave off the inevitable ego disintegration and complete loss of humanity. When I first moved here and went to obtain my Virginia driver’s license, I was asked a few simple questions, winced as they cut my CA license in half, and I was on my way in under an hour. Along with the $5 postage paid parking tickets ($7 all day in the garage over there vs. $5 in the loading zone right here? has anyone thought this through?) it was one of the “quaint” things about my new town that I adored. Of course this was a pre 9/11 DMV, and after it was found that a bunch of the hijackers had got their cards from VA DMV, the state decided to upgrade their procedures to “infuriating”.

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