At the gates of Chinatown

About a month ago I walked past a cab driver playing a trumpet in the front seat of his taxi. He was on break, I gathered, because the "For Hire" fin on the top of his car was off and his head was down, his lips pursed around the brass mouthpiece of his instrument. He was parked on the corner of Grant and Sutter, near the gates of Chinatown, and he was black with a brown leather cap tilted down over his eyes. The music drifting from the base of his trumpet was slow and jazzy and beautiful, as out of place and transcendent as the Italian opera singers in "Shawshank Redemption."

Today I ventured back to the corner of Sutter and Grant in hopes of finding that cabby on his break again. He wasn't there when I arrived, so I sat down on a bench and waited. A cab driver swung around the corner of Grant and Bush and pulled up to the yellow curb. His "For Hire" sign was still lit up as he stood out of his car, shut the front door, and stretched. He was Middle Eastern without much hair. A young lady emerged from the Baldwin Hotel and flagged him down, and he went to the trunk of his car and helped her put her luggage in. She was attractive and buoyant. Her hair was dark brown, pulled back into a ponytail, and she had a crescent of teal blue makeup above each of her eyes to match the blue in her dress. Her boyfriend strolled out of the lobby a minute later with more of the luggage, and they all got into the cab and headed south.

The bench I was sitting on was bolted down in front of Farinelli Fine Antiques, a store that looks, at least from the outside, like a garish cross between the boutiques of Union Square and the bric-a-brac of Chinatown. In the window alone I spotted an emerald green eagle, its wings and claws outstretched, a fat glass Buddha, 10, perhaps even 15, chandeliers, and a set of Italian crystal glasses on sale for $10 each. There was also a silver, flat-screen TV boasting the wonders of Farinelli: "Over 16,000 square feet!!! 19th and 20th century decorative arts for your house, including ..." and then a flood of pictures.

To my surprise, the shop extended up three floors, each of which seemed to get more gaudy and cluttered than the floor below. At the top there was a story reserved for a photographer’s studio, then a thin white cornice and a row of metal spikes to deter pigeons from defecating on everything built below.

The owner of the shop emerged from the front doors and started singing a song in Italian. He looked Italian, too, with wavy gray hair and a tan, angular face. He was probably in his early 50s. A passerby asked how he was doing, and he said "Wonderful." By the time he'd added, "I have a nice collection here," the passerby was gone. Two Japanese boys walked up to the shop window slowly, as if it was haunted or magical, and turned at the command of their mother for a photograph. The older of the two boys spread his hands like the claws of the emerald green eagle in the window. The younger of the boys put up the peace sign.

On the other side of the entrance, a homeless man was rubbing the bronze mane of a roman soldier's helmet. There are three bronze statues outside Farinelli, two of them Roman soldiers hunched down close to the ground with their shields on guard, the third a mermaid reclining on a rock. The homeless man centered his hand on the mane of the soldier and made the sign of the holy cross, as if he were the Pope blessing a warrior in his legion. Then he rocked back on his heels and pulled out a McDonald’s cup from his tattered jean jacket to ask for change.

The shop owner moped back into his shop, and I decided to follow him. I picked my way through a few of the Baroque goods inside, then listened as an Asian-American woman asked for a glass chess set. The owner signaled to the guy at the register.

"A glass chess set."

The guy at the register signaled to another guy in the back.

"A glass chess set."

And finally the chess set emerged without anyone having done any work at all.

The shop owner asked the woman if she was from San Francisco.

"No, Alameda."

"Everything here is very reasonably priced. Usually 50 percent off. Do you need an area rug?"

"A what?"

"An area rug. I have wool, silk, all 80 percent off the regular price."

"Are they imported?"

"All of them."

The woman looked curious. She tucked a bit of her black hair behind her ear and then followed the shop owner up the stairs, as he was already leading the way.