After 35 years living in San Francisco, it's still a treat stumbling into brand new neighborhoods. Last Saturday, it was an area called Miraloma in a hillside valley between Twin Peaks and Glen Park.
The occasion was an annual pig roast hosted by John Burke (above) and his wife Peggy for a large galaxy of their friends, all of whom turned out to be interesting people.
Before this afternoon, I'd never met John, but felt like I knew him since he's been one of the smartest, sanest commenters on this blog for years under the nom de plume "rootlesscosmo." When he confessed that he had also been a fan of "FotoTales," my public access show from five years ago, I just about kissed him.
His old friend Harry Noller, a professor at UC Santa Cruz, was helping John with the Turning of the Pig inside of La Caja China Roasting Box...
...which our host maintains is the crucial element.
I asked Harry how he'd met John, and he said the two were at UC Berkeley in the late 1950s when they were both teenage jazz musicians. John had put up a card on a campus bulletin board offering the services of "an incredibly hip New York pianist," and they ended up playing together for a number of years.
John maintains that the "incredibly hip" part of the story is apocryphal. "I mean, it went without saying that I was incredibly hip if I was a young New York pianist."
A couple of hours into the lovely party, everyone started getting tipsy and hungry...
...and they gathered around La Caja China in anticipation of their pork.
They were not disappointed.
Yum, and even a special box to cook it in -- what a deal...
ReplyDeleteBut now I'm curious abut your public access "PhotoTales" -- sounds interesting...
What a fabulous party! That pig looked delicious... good thing the crate wasn't a litter "longer"... LOL!
ReplyDeleteMMMMMMM, roast pork!
ReplyDeleteIsn't meeting people through the comments a grand thing? I think so.
Dear momo: It feels a bit like internet dating (which I haven't tried). You always want to say something like, "I thought you'd be taller." But yes, it is a grand thing.
ReplyDeleteI read about the box in the NY Times Food section a few years ago and immediately ordered one. According to the article, Cubans use the adjective "chino/china" for any ingenious or artful solution to a problem; the problem here is "how do I have a luau when I can't dig a hole in the concrete to put the pig in?" and the box is the clever answer. Why Chinese? Cab Calloway told Dizzy Gillespie not to play "that Chinese music"--he meant bebop--"in my band." And an early review of the Ravel string quartet said it sounded like the noises issuing from a pagoda--this was not meant as praise. For some reason a lot of non-Chinese think that the Chinese are the limiting case of weirdness.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the kind words and good-looking photos, Mike.
Dear rootlesscosmo: Thanks for the party and also the "chinoiserie" explanation which is very Western. I wonder how Asians such as Koreans, Japanese and Filipinos refer to Chinese culture.
ReplyDelete