U. City Olive Link
Lord, what a stilted name for a neighborhood. But them's my old stomping grounds! I grew up around my dad's guitar store there, and yup, I most certainly love paying visits to the East Asian groceries, which gave me a rich early adolescence's worth of Pocky and fermented milk sodas. And may the internet correct me if I'm wrong, I've heard that the McDonald's is the very McDonald's that Nelly used to work at. Do correct me if I'm wrong, internet.

I love that strip of Olive Blvd. to death. Maybe I oughta bloggerate the whole street's worth of businesses someday. People call it "Chinatown," but it's about as culturally diverse as you're gonna find. Among the cultures represented in the neighborhood's businesses and restaurants: Chinese(/Taiwanese/Hong Kong), Filipino, Indian, Jamaican, Japanese, Korean, Mexican, Nigerian(/pan-African), Pakistani, Russian, Vietnamese, and with Marco's picking up the slack from Terri's Southern Cafeteria, good old fashioned American soul food.

So what's happening these days? First, I wanna say how wonderful O.J. Photo is. They're in the process of remodeling, and in the meantime, they're running a basement sale, which I'd encourage every film photographer to pay a visit to. LOADS of camera filters too.

The African/Jamaican grocery, if you show up early on Saturdays, is carrying freshly-made Ghanaian kenkey.

Also, since it's on a rather obscure little strip just behind Olive, I hadn't realized until recently that sadly, St. Louis' old premiere ride-pimpers Lightspeed seem to have bit the dust.

Finally, there are a lot of places around the neighborhood to buy foreign movies, but Universal Toys and Gifts' new, bigger location has nothing less than all of these for sale, and endless amounts more:
b420
Sad Movie
Cocktail
April Snow
Operetta Tanuki Goten
Golden Chicken 2
Everlasting Regret
I'm thinking I'll be buying one of these. Any suggestions? In general, the new place has all kinds of stuff that the old one didn't. Nice, graceful furniture, clothes, all kinds of stuff.

Also just picked up this from Manila Food Mart. Bless ya, Olive.
- posted by Eric @ 12:03 AM