soundtrack to this post will be camera obscura. it’s hella twee, but it always makes me happy to listen to them and belle and sebastian… sometimes crazy cheery, sweet music is exactly what you need. maybe, i just need to be soothed. god, i’m burned out… oh and they got a show at webster hall in june, which i probably can’t afford. so if there’s a mysterious benefactor out there or a drunken homie trying to spend some money, you’d be my new favorite person.
man, fuck NYC banh mi.
The NY Times had an article about banh mi places in the City, and goddamn me if it wasn’t written by a white person. While i haven’t been to the places in brooklyn, i’ve been to pretty much every place in Lower Manhattan and ain’t none of the banh mi places down here that ain’t wack.
folks, you gotta remember, i’m from a vietnamese-heavy neighborhood boston. i’ve been eating various banh mi my entire life. hell, every time i go back to boston, i GORGE on banh mi and cafe sua da (vietnamese iced coffee – crack). so whenever i’m in the city, ‘specially when i’m homesick or missing that good ole vietnamese cooking, i go searching for pho and banh mi. while i got my pho joints, i still haven’t found a good banh mi place.
imagine how happy i was to find out that there wasn’t just one, but TWO banh mi places opening up near me. imagine how heartbreaking it was when i tried the sandwiches and they were wack?! fucking a’, one place had goddamn char siu in their banh mi. hell, most of the places in this city sell banh mi with goddamn char siu. can you say sacrilege? and though one of the places had decent cafe sua da, better than any i’ve gotten except in my favorite pho place, there’s something even more fuckin’ awful and evil about it…
every place i go is at least 2x the price i pay in boston, some places are goddamn 4x the price i pay in boston. and there’s the really core problem… this shit’s marketed to yuppies.
ain’t no vietnamese folks gon’ buy this ish. tastes awful, costs hella. whoa. let’s sell it to the white folks.
holy hell does this ever break my heart into a million pieces. and worst of all… almost all the sandwiches at these places are fusion. dude, i want me some traditional, legit vietnamese food. i come from academia so i know how problematic the whole ‘authentic’ thing is, but dude, don’t be messing with this vietnamese boy’s favorite foods.
i can’t believe i just went on a massive spiel about banh mi, but what can i say? i’m tired. haven’t really slept in awhile and am burned out on this whole academic hustle. and for whatever reason, jolt soda makes me hungry.
but no matter how emo i am, i can’t help but smile about having my hair back. live i’ve said before and i’ll say again and again, my mohawk makes me strangely happy. i like getting my hair cut, cuz the whole thing of it is that there’s hella things i ain’t got control of in my life… including how many bookings i get… but i do have some say on what my head. and the reactions from folks to an asian boy with a mohawk are just full of epic amounts of hilarity.
btw, im exhausted so i came home and watched tv. i’m watching the racism/diversity episode of better off ted. shit’s problematic as hell, but not much more than any comedy club i’ve been to… and it’s hilarious. it’s irreverent, well-written, grounded in both realities and archetypes and is able to pull off the straight faced satire thing. which is hella hard. and it doesn’t even depend on awkwardness for its hilarity like the office does. win.
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(this poem is a little wack, but hey, waddya expect, im churning ‘em out like whoa)
barback nights
(after ed bok lee’s real karaoke people)
real bar people have accents, speak
with lisps and slurring, at home
in the cacophonies.
real bar people have faces
carved haphazardly, striking
bas-reliefs in shadowed lighting.
real bar people know all
about their bartenders’
lovers, vicarious wish fulfillment
real bar people know intimately
both the sun and the moon, have breakfasts
after closing with the bar backs
real bar people are all broken hearted poets, failed
screenwriters and investment bankers with no nose
for the trade.
real bar people make snide remarks
about frat boys barfing, college girls
leaving with ugly guys
real bar people know the signs of a fight
make bets if it ain’t regulars, make fists if it is
jokes if it’s the bouncer
real bar people have droopy eyes
and sagging shoulders, their favorite seats
and usual drinks.
real bar people share drinks
to split loneliness and laughter
as a middle finger to fate
i know more real bar people
than i know any other kind.
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life is like lost… you might think you know what’s going on, but even the writers have no idea.
Tags: emo, food and drink, poetry, ramblings
so there’s this place near like..Christie street? or somewhere in NY that i go to for banh mi which is pretty good (but then again, i’d eat like..anything hahaha). I dont know where exactly or what it’s called or if you’ll even think its good, but i can find out. maybe its one of the wack places you’re talking about. hahaha :]
… there’s a place on chrystie street? i live offa it. throw me the cross streets and i’ll check it out.
dude, when the hell’d you’d become a club kid hipster blogger girl?
nice post vinh- i recently tried one of these newfangled banh mi at this new place BAOGUETTE on st. marks…it was tasty, but $7 fer chrissakes! at least it’s Viet-owned. it made me extra excited to go back to Seatown and get my $1.75 pate w/ extra jalapenos. i also had a couple pho spots i like…but once white ppl found them, the prices got jacked way up.
oh so is that what they’re called?? we just call them Vietnamese pork rolls down here. General prices are about 3AUD which is ~2USD atm. Suffer americans
Also i agree, the good ones are really hard to find, and for some reason the Melbourne viet bakeries do it slightly different to the Sydney viet bakeries i grew up with, but good banh mi is good banh mi and i can eat em all day long…hell yeah.
Walker and Lafayette. Banh Mi Sau Voi. 3 bucks, but I’d say worth it. Cha Xiu is a choice; ask for mot o banh mi thit nguoi. Of course, nothing like in the humble, than-lan-infested huts of my village on the Mekong.
i did a banh mi marathon
the first month i came to new york.
results:
ba xuyen in bk all the freaking way.