The Elegant Art of Dining: Bohemian San Francisco, Its ... - iMedia

soft dialect of their native communities, and if you are so unfortunate as not to
be able to understand them, then it is you who are the loser.
Do you wish to know something about conditions in Mexico? Would you like
to learn what the Mexicans themselves really think about affairs down in that
disturbed republic? Go along Broadway west of Grant avenue, and then around
the corner on Stockton, and you will see strange signs, and perhaps you will not
know that “Fonda” means restaurant, or that “Tienda,” means a store. But these
are the signs you will see, and when you go inside you will hear nothing but the
gentle Spanish of the Mexican, so toned down and so changed that some of the
Castilians profess to be unable to understand it.
Here you will find all the articles of household use that are to be found in the
heart of Mexico, and that have been used for hundreds of years despite the
progress of civilization in other countries. You will find all the strange foods and
all the inconsequentials that go to make the sum of Mexican happiness, and if
you can get sufficiently close in acquaintance you will find that not only will
they talk freely to you, but they will tell you things about Mexico that not even
the heads of the departments in Washington are aware of.
Perhaps you would like to know something about the bourgeoise French, those
who have come from the peasant district of the mother country. Go a little
further up Broadway and you will begin to see the signs changing from Spanish
to French, and if you can understand them you will know that here you will be
given a dinner for twenty-five cents on week days and for thirty-five cents on
Sundays. The difference is brought about by the difference between the price of
cheap beef or mutton and the dearer chicken.
Up in the second story on a large building you may see a sign that tells you
meals will be served and rooms provided. One of these is the rendezvous of
Anarchists, who gather each evening and discuss the affairs of the world, and
how to regulate them. But they are harmless Anarchists in San Francisco, for
here they have no wrongs to redress, so they sit and drink their forbidden
absinthe, and dream their dreams of fire and sword, while they talk in whispers
of what they are going to do to the crowned heads of Europe. It is their dream
and we have no quarrel with it or them.
But for real interest one must get back to the slope of Telegraph Hill; to the
streets running up from Columbus avenue, until they are so steep that only
goats and babies can play on them with safety. At least we suppose the babies are
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