All that you can do is watch them play

Yesterday in San Francisco proper, following a divine massage at a spa (gift card I've had since January 2011) and a faaantastic non-chain-restaurant lunch, during which I sat blessedly alone and read two entire New Yorker magazines -- o heaven -- I was doing some wandering around, and on the way to the Powell St. station to begin the long journey back to the ass-end of the Silicon Valley, I found myself  taking a razzoo through Forever 21. 

Now, this is a store that I hate for a lot of reasons -- I haven't been in one in five years at least, because A) believe you me, I am a lot more than 21, B) the very idea of wanting to be Forever 21 is repugnant to me, C) "fast fashion" is cheap, wasteful and built via the bloodied and harassed fingers of the lowest-paid workers in the garment industry at the worst environmental offending factories of same, D) the founding family of the company is a bunch of evangelicals who print bible verses on their bags, and E) the things they sell are awful and the store is a mess. 

But I had like ten minutes to kill, so. 

And y'all ... it is all still true. Forever 21 is like a big, cheap, badly-organized costume shop targeted to your next 80s/90s party. They were playing Blur ("There's No Other Way"). I felt old, and strange, and like I'd taken a weird tumble in the fucked-up wayback machine, ending up in a combination Claire's/Express/Limited/Wet Seal/Slutty Laura Ashley mashup store from the mythical year 199119891994. It was ... disorienting. I did not last long. I am quits with that place, for all time. 

----------------------------------

On another note: San Francisco, goddamn you. You're super pretty and there is good stuff all around you, but you will always be a toy city, not a real city, and you want to know why? You made me (and six hundred other people) wait 27 minutes for a fucking N train, at a transit hub, on a Monday morning during rush hour, for NO REASON AT ALL. Your transit sucks NYC's smelly cocknballs with an extra lick to the taint, and the worst part of it is, you don't even realize that this is what's wrong with you. Plus also your restaurants close at 9:00 p.m. TOY CITY.