San Gabriel

I picked up A today at her house and we had brunch at LA Mill Co on Silverlake Boulevard, in the part of town A refers to as Grown Up Silverlake - as opposed to dirty, beareded, skinny guys, girls with DIY bangs, under earner, biodiesel, Silverlake over on Sunset.


Their dish ware is gorgeous. I ordered the Onyx Black Coffee. A ordered Organic Brazil, which she called complex, I thought it was more like old sweat socks in coffee flavored lemonade.


We drove to San Gabriel to get 1 hour foot massages for $15.00 at Lucky Foot SPA. Next door (not pictured) we got $2 dollar blow jobs at Lucky Cock Hole.


The Wall of Rules clearly posted.


The waiting area. Looks as though someone's been paying close attention to HGTV.


You sit in a large hybrid barcalounger/massage table. They sat me next to A, positioned dead center in front of the big screen, displaying a DVD of insects hard at work, set to synthesizer versions of classical hits like Ravel's Bolero. You'd be a caucasian fool to expect a serene massage set to pan flute and rain stick sounds. My massage was delivered by a woman with pipe wrenches for hands. Lot's of torque and a penchant for giggling whenever I winced.

As my feet soaked in a bucket of hot tea, she began by pretending to rip off my ear lobes, followed by a massage of my ear canal. Then she scratched my scalp which immediately made me pur and think how grateful I was that I got up early this morning to get myself a new thing of Head and Shoulders - otherwise I would have given her a pillow coated in parmesan cheese. She knocked on my head a few times, treated my shoulders like a pile of dough she was pissed at - really pissed at. The foot massage almost shooed my soul out of my body. It was so intense in some spots that I had to watch the insects on screen to give me other things to focus on. She adjusted the barcalounger to its flattest setting, to reveal a face hole in the head rest. She had me turn over to work my back with what seemed like a rolling of Mag Lites and pummeling by frozen cornish game hens. She answered her phone a few times throughout - very chatty woman. Had a lot to say about a lot. And when it was over, I was a bit sad, but my ankles, which had been sore from running were magically healed, and similar to the lame man in the Jesus hype stories, I could walk unaided by small, unpaid asian children.


We did not have our brains checked next door.


Instead we spaced our way to this diner. We ordered silken tofu cold sweet ginger soup, crullers wrapped in onion cake, a mushroom and pork dumpling, chicken and scrambled egg congi. It was a decent recovery meal and it allowed my soul ample time to walk away from the light and re-enter my body.


We went to SG Super - a combination grocery store, fish market, indoor swap meet, hello kitty outlet, hardware store, chinese herb mart, deli, DVD store and gucci boutique. I watched A buy a lifetime supply of bulk pickled fruits. Typical asian mega mart - there was no way to avoid the smell of dried iguanas and salted sea horse. A also bought red bean mochi in a four pack, I got an avocado smoothie with some flan on the side. We didn't have any patience for the dim sum line that looked more like a swamped red cross relief station and for good reason, all the posted prices for dim sum were 99 cents.


Some careful digging brought us to a good place to buy tiny balls. It's about fucking time.

And now that we're a little bit smarter in the ways of San Gabriel, we are going back next week with a tighter game plan.