The days of being bopped on the shins by little old Chinese ladies carrying pink and white striped plastic bags and suspiciously poking the flesh of fresh fish may be numbered, as DPW tries to pass a law banning overcrowded sidewalks and double-parked trucks in Chinatown. DPW notes that it's very difficult to walk on Stockton Street on the weekends, and the plethora of produce delivery trucks frequently brings traffic to a standstill.

Well, suuuuuure -- but come on, DPW! It wouldn't even really a Chinatown if proud vendors didn't get to show off their electronic chirping crickets outside their store, or the big basket of plastic slippers, or the huge stacks of produce with their colorful misspelled labels (we still love the one we saw in New York that said COC*NTS (we've omitted the offending letter)). How will tourists have an authentic Asian-American experience if they don't get to see, say, an old man in a windbreaker sniffing the butts of fresh crab? And we don't know what we'd do if the 45 bus could just zip on through to Union Square without the maddening stop-start wrenching of our shoulder out of its socket, or the glare of Cantonese speakers for refusing to give up our seat.

Life doesn't always have to be so plastic-wrapped and convenient all the time, you know! Sometimes we like that wave of nausea we get when the odor of the seafood bins wafts out onto the sidewalk!

Picture of Stockton Street off an MTC website

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