I flew to San Francisco for work and was immediately thrown into an unfamiliar milieu of cable cars and tourists. I spent the afternoon trying to find an WiFi connection in my hotel that even approached the strength of the public network outside, and by the time I could think about where to eat I decided on the sushi place across the street. And this wasn’t something I had wanted or planned, but I ordered the California roll. (I was trying to save money and they had a special sushi meal option that gave me the choice of either that or spicy tuna, which seemed even less distinctive.) From Matthew Gavin Frank’s The Mad Feast:

“Someone cartwheels in the Mission District after eating her to-go California Roll — the pseudo-sushi, traditional sushi turned inside out, the cucumber and avocado of it — her hands to the asphalt, her feet to the sky, limbs whipping like the spokes of a wheel. We mimic the machines we’ve built to move us. We try to remember when we didn’t need them.”

(Photo: Union Square, San Francisco.)

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