I woke up early this morning with a raging thirst, and there was nothing in the house to drink but a can of sour-tasting orange juice. I walked down Fifth Street to the little market on the corner of Folsom. Don’t know what it’s called, but it’s very clean and nice — not like a lot of the other stores here, which sell mainly liquor and cigarettes by the fag. The owner is a Chinese-American whose family has lived in this neighborhood for two generations. There is a plaque on the wall near his door dedicating the building to the memory of his parents.

All I could find was one dollar, and I spent it there on a Koala, and the remaining quarter outside the M&M Bar for a Chronicle.

City’s Choice is its name and is still there. In 1988 was brand new, with pale clean floors and walls and very carefully arranged shelves and it was part of my morning routine to walk there. Now, from what I’ve seen in passing, it’s expanded to a deli with a menu of sandwiches and seating. A “Koala” was a small bottle of Koala Springs Sparkling Juice. I typically drank orange. 75 cents. I thought that was high. Twelve years before, as a high school student, I could buy a coke and a bag of M&Ms for a quarter. 

For the paper, I walked a block in the other direction to the kiosk in front of the M&M on Fifth and Howard. “The last of the old newspaper bars” the Chronicle has called it, just around the corner from the Chronicle/Examiner offices. Editors were always walking the half block to the bar to pry out reporters. I never went in, but I did notice it seemed always open and always full, even early in the day. Now it’s an Irish Pub called The Chieftan.