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Vegetarians, close your eyes
Meatatarians might also want to look away. This is how your pork arrives at the market. Tossed, headless, in the back of a big truck. It does on Clement Street, anyway. I had an unexpected amount of leisure time on Clement while my car was being tinkered with, so I went into all the Asian groceries between Funston and Arguello, a stretch of about twelve blocks. I was jaywalking when I encountered the back of this truck, unattended, full of pig carcasses.
Inside a live-fish market nearby, crabs clawed at each other in a cardboard box while clams squirted water on them from a tub above. I couldn't identify a few species, maybe a conch or some large sea snail? A variety of fish swam in murky acrylic tanks behind the counter while I peered into some plastic bins on the floor that were draped with netting. Live frogs. The netting kept them from hopping out. $4.29 per pound. Do they weigh them while they're still alive? How?
It was interesting to be on Clement on a weekday, when the locals do their own shopping. On the weekends it's a zoo. Figuratively, of course.
November 1, 2006 10:02 AM
Ooooh, how I love Clement Street. I used to see an equivalent to this in New York on 9th Ave. On my occasional pilgrimages to the Cupcake Cafe I'd walk past the butcher shop that was only a block or so south of the bakery. Sometimes, I'd be lucky enough to see meat carcasses (usually pigs) heaped in a shopping cart being rolled around on the street (and, one hopes, quickly into the market).
That was just gross.
Yikes.. you know, for some reason I'm thinking I'll be having a vegetarian kind of day today.
I was going to comment on how vibrant and awesome your pictures look.
Yeah what you described was pretty typically of Asian grocery stores. Sadly. I guess having seen that type of atmosphere all my life, I'm not shocked by it anymore. We don't get live frogs a lot here. I don't remember how they weighed them, but I know they cleaned them for us. Not to gross anyone out, but they do taste like chicken.