Chinatown At Night

After following around many a dragon, Alex and I decided to call it quits and get some food. Several of the places we tried were filled to capacity, so we ended up at a small joint in New Chinatown. The service was horrible, the entire waitstaff seemed stressed out of their minds, but the food was, of course… excellent.

Throughout the day, Alex and I kept forgetting that we met real, honest-to-goodness Raeleans. Once we remembered, we both started laughing a lot. Here’s Alex reviewing their materials.

After a while, we could hear noise outside and realized there were more shops that had yet to be blessed. I was unwilling to take my camera out to go see, despite Alex’s prodding. His camera’s battery had died, and so he grabbed my camera and ran out to the door. Based on where things were situated, he was safely behind a closed door and had a fantastic vantage point. He got some really killer fucking shots, IMO.

Check out that smoke!

Hahahaha – look at all the debris!

Five minutes from now, all this smoke leaks into the restaurant.

God damn this is gorgeous. Alex got some of the best pics with my camera!

To our surprise, the dragon later came inside our restaurant and danced on the tables. This is taken by me, basically right at the table, where I was sitting.

I tried taking some video footage, but the timing was off by about 5 seconds. I’ve got video of the dragon putting the lettuce in its mouth, and then it stops. What I missed was the dragon flinging the lettuce up into the air, hitting the ceiling fan, and throwing the shit all over the room.

A crowd gathered outside the restaurant. This pretty much sums up the whole day – people gathered in groups, watching and smiling.

Right outside the front door of the restaurant. Almost all of New Chinatown had a carpet of used fireworks.

Closeup and down low.

Afterwards, Alex and I walked around a bit and stopped in a bakery. We had some Chinese pastries, some coffee, and spent a really good long while just talking. About relationships, about our lives, our plans, all the good stuff.

The time just sort of flew by. I’m repeating it, but it’s true – it was a great conversation.

After the bakery closed on us, we walked around Old Chinatown some more. Happened to come across this sign, and found it hysterical.

We hit yet another bakery, got some stuff to go, and headed back for the trains. On our way home, we nibbled on some of the pastries we bought, and watched a drunk guy fall out of his seat and make a bed on the train floor.

What a great fucking day.