Tiki Central / Locating Tiki / Trader Vic's, San Francisco, CA (original incarnation), San Francisco, CA (restaurant)
Post #178232 by cynfulcynner on Tue, Aug 9, 2005 12:26 AM
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Tue, Aug 9, 2005 12:26 AM
Name:Trader Vic's, San Francisco, CA (original incarnation) Description: I'm reading "Oh the Glory of it All," Sean Wilsey's often-scathing account of growing up in San Francisco society. He writes this on page 10, but does not name the restaurant until much much later: My parents' third home was a restaurant halfway down Nob Hill, toward the seedy Tenderloin -- run-down on the outside, clubby and leathery and lustrous on the inside. I was a nonspilling, silent-when-told-to-be child, so, also when I was nine, my parents convinced the management to make an exception to their unbendable no-children rule, and for nearly a year I almost lived there, too. It was like traveling overseas to a ruleless country. All proscriptions were thrown out. I got to stay up late. I was an adult. The maitre d' told us what a great table he had for us, down the hall, past the cigar lady in her closet -- who waved to me as from a ship -- past the bathrooms with their zebra-skin doors, in the dim, glowing hum of the main room, called the Captain's Cabin, which grew louder as we entered, as if we were newspaper thrown on a fire. No chord of music has yet been found I knew about the clink of ice in crystal glasses: It was a sound that meant all was well, everything was in its place, no mistakes were being made, everybody loved each other. I looked at the maxim on the plaque above Mom and Dad and I knew we were doing everything perfectly, and as long as the crystal and ice kept clinking there was nothing to worry about. |