It's Tea Time at the Junkplex

Where's That Cake? Here's That Cake

Robert Happysad expressed concern that my recent tea party tableau looked so lovely but was missing the all important cake. Hello Kitty! dropped by this evening and took care of that. She also left a hamburger. She left a lot more, but we're saving that for just now.

All Over Tea in the Mission

Bunter and I had a couple of guests over for tea this afternoon and introduced them to Millie, the glass-eyed wonder cat, who has been a member of my family since before I was born (She's that lovely creature featured with Junk Thief in the current -- as of this posting -- profile photo).

Although everyone enjoyed the conversation, the black rose and premium Oolong offerings and plates of tiny savories, there was far more comment over our cups, such as the one featured above. I don't know its exact lineage but think it's been in the family at least as long as Millie. Although I've talked earlier today about my garden journals, I realize I've never kept tea journals, which is a shame. Perhaps I should start some retroactively. There have been tea parties under the baby grand at Aunt Louise's house in thimble size cups with all the guests in hand made hats with my famed Cousin Ginger; malaria crazed Touareg tea in Segou, Mali, in the early 1990s; high tea at the Empress with my eternally on-again-off-again ex from Newfoundland; Sunday teas with local exes at Lovejoy's in Noe Valley, the arrondissement next door, where there is often a passionate fraction of a second when our eyes lock and we both (likely) wonder why we parted and then comfortably go back to the tedium babbling about how we occupy our solitary days; and various trips through Hong Kong just to visit the Museum of Tea Ware where I've acquired a number of favorite pots and tiny cups.

But I always come back to the above, favorite cup, which I've often called the tea elf. It's always reminded me of having a tea party on the order of this scene.

As my guests departed, I could not help but think about how thinly fragile yet sturdy much of these tea cups and pots are yet will long outlive all of us and the rivers of tea that will flow forward with us into obscurity.

High Tea at the Junkplex

Care to join us? Write us at junkthief@gmail.com for details.

Deadbeats and JunkThieves Collide!

You can say you saw it first here, Eva Deadbeat and Gregg JunkThief met for a great gab fest and lunch today at the Samovar Tea Lounge in the Castro. After six months or so of blog commenting, we met live and had great conversation. What did we discuss? Oh, some things are private and not to be spread all over the blogasphere! I think we both were pleased to find out that we are both the good kind of crazy not restraining order kind of crazy.

Eva's just as peppy, bright and adorable as she is on her blog and vlogs, and I hope it's not the last time we converge. I'm sure we'll continue our cross-country banter in the days ahead. I hope to meet other visiting bloggers coming through SF or when I'm in your town. Drop me a line, and we'll take time to shut off the modem and monitor for real conversation.

As Eva can confirm, do be warned that I can be a real JunkThief. I unwittingly nabbed her tasty English tea, but she seemed to have no problem with the bottomless cup of Russian tea intended for my lunch. Sometimes the serendipity gods manage to smile down to make all things work out. As you can see, I'm not even scowling in our photo!

JunkThief Always Wanted to Be a Shriner

What house is complete without a tea shrine? And what did poor JunkThief do back when he lived in a city without a Japantown, let alone Ichiban Kan that was selling tansu cabinets for less than he usually pays for a pair of shoes?

Most of these pots came from the Hong Kong teapot museum shop and are not even the tip of the iceberg. And as far as varities of teas? He has more varieties of Oolong than most have of pairs of socks. Okay, Warhol had his cookie jars, JunkThief has his teapots..as well as LPs, 78s, shoes, silent movies, Oaxacan pottery, ex beaus...Thank God for offsite. Off to Sugarlump for coffee in the meantime. Tea after dinner sounds good.

UPDATE: Not completely unrelated question: How many times in one day is KCRW going to play clips from the Joni Mitchell tribute album? Especially Bjork's take on "The Boho Dance"? JunkThief does love almost all things Joni, but this is starting to get on his nerves to the point to where he might actually have to resort to doing something radical -- like listen to local San Francisco commercial radio stations. Uh, no, that's not going to happen. How did this city that was once considered cutting edge on the pop music scene end up having generally stellar NPR affiliates but popular music channels that would be considered lame in Moline, Illinois. Aw well, Thank God for the internet and iTunes radio for that matter too.

Tea, Tea -- TeaNY, TeaMe

Oh, has JunkThief mentioned his ever growing tea collection? For each bag he consumes, he replaces it with three new bags. Green tea, white tea, no tea too short or Oolong. Remember when people laughed when Moby launched TeaNY? Remember when people still could laugh at Moby? Moby, Moby, where is Moby now?

Isn't tea just so civilized? JunkThief grew up with grannies and aunts of the tea room set and still has an internal ding, ding bell that goes off in his head at precisely 4 p.m., as if he were living up to his decidedly Anglo-Saxon surname. (As those of the JunkThief inner circle know, he has an English surname by marriage four generations ago but not a drop of English blood in his veins; see today's earlier entry about his mixed race should you be so inclined).

Hardcore JunkThief fans know that he is one of the few people that have been to the teapot museum in Hong Kong TWICE and had breakfast in bed with a chap named Jeremy from Liverpool on trip #2. But that's another post on another topic.

Well, all of this was an excuse to brag about the recent bargain find JunkThief found of a cast iron tea pot in the basement of Soko Hardware, making it teapot #72 or #73 in JunkThief central. We'd really planned to do inventory in January, but the JunkThief elves were stranded in Denver during one of those huge snowstorms of the past two months. More importantly, JunkThief wanted cross-promote his Yelp parallel universe, including a glowing review of Soko Hardware.

No, not that sort of tea room

Sometimes I wish that I DID have a one-track mind. Coming back from a business lunch at the new downtown location for Samovar Tea House in Yuerba Buena Center, I got to thinking about how I sometimes think that gay men fall into two types -- those who enjoy these types of tearooms and those who enjoy the other kind of tearooms that in Britain are called "cottages." I won't go into details except to say no thanks, gross, yuck, I'm a hygiene freak. I'm all for sex between two men of consenting age, but not there.

Actually to prove my true nerd-dome, I spent three hours at the tea museum when I went to Hong Kong a decade ago, the only reason to be there more than 24 hours. (Actually, an Englishman named Jeremy, but that's another story of the other tearoom variety....)

But I could write volumes about tea and teapots and the good kind of tea rooms. Writing the earlier post about my first love in first grade and buying a fancy card at the downtown store of Halls got me to thinking about going to various tearooms with my grandmother and other women in the family in the Midwest. In fact, there is an online tearoom guide (no, not that kind), that I find quite interesting. I've sometimes heard that three places in the western hemisphere come the closest to being a replica of Victorian England -- Victoria, British Columbia (duh, with that name, yes); Buenos Aires (at least certain neighborhoods, and the fact that it has a branch of Harrod's) and Kansas City (there was a Merchant-Ivory film – Mr. and Mrs. Bridge set there, after all). I very much remember and miss the tearooms of my childhood with the tall women of my family, something I will likely write about in more detail someday. Kansas City reportedly is second only to Rome as the city with the most public fountains, has more Henry Moore statues than London, and a few more “mosts” that I can’t recall at this moment. I am sure tearooms of the doily and lady finger variety is up there.

All of this got me to thinking about Halls, the local department store I mentioned in this post about my childhood. There used to be many local, city-specific department stores before the days of the Dayton-Hudson and other chains that homogenized the whole experience. If you go to the tearoom of the former City of Paris, now Neiman-Marcus of SF’s Union Square, you still get a bit of it. That’s why I included the link to Halls in the above mentioned post. Just opening that site and hearing its harp strumming entrée gives you a sense of this very local, very old department store unique to Kansas City. I have strong memories of the old, now departed downtown store, and even the Crowne Plaza and Country Club Plaza stores. The sound of those harp strings makes me think of women in hats who in just a couple of years would be the ridicule of the opening line of “The Ladies Who Lunch.” Venture into the tearoom of Halls, and I bet you’ll get an affirmative response to the question Elaine Stritch so desperately needed to have answered 36 years ago: “Does anyone…still…wear….a….HAT?”

All that having been said, I must admit certain things that I have more than a few dozen of -- books, ex-boyfriends, shoes, CDs, DVDs, plants, ties, blazers, samples of foreign currency, pants, shirts, sweaters, cuttlery, cotton swabs...teas pots. I must admit my most favorite acquisition is this one that I got in Antigua in February. I also must admit that my favorite tea is the black rose tea from Red Blossom Tea Company on Grant Street. Though in the middle of cheesy tourist shops in the heart of Chinatown, this place is my favorite spot for tea in SF. Good service and no pretense. Okay, just a little, but it's good value. Put those two together, and I can forget however many dozen shoes or ex-boyfriends I've ever had or want again...

Okay, this entry just proved my advance years...so be it. I'm heading off for a tearoom with hats and doilies...And, yes, I promise no Fiestaware, Roseville pottery or Frankhoma pottery on this site...unless you insist on seeing my vast colllection...