tai-what?

i spent this past celebratory weekend in taiwan with some friends. i need to find more photos, like the ones of me with a mustache for most of the time, but here are some others to catch you up on what we got into.....



see that door next to this poster? the guy from the poster is sitting at a desk right in there, in the same position. it was as if the photo had been taken 3 minutes earlier. this was in an underground mall in taipei across from a temple that had a huge LED sign outside flashing all kinds of shit. i would say that sign took away from the history of the temple. at least a little bit.

i caught some graf along the way. this was outside a skate shop. im not sure what the story was but it wasn't open at noon on a friday.....



dope. i guess taiwan has some artists. the next two photos are food related.....



see that middle dish? needles with meat sauce. thats about half as good as jew's ear. of course we ordered it and of course it was delicious. this was at a dumpling spot in xi men ding which was really delicious and super cheap. i surprisingly ate the needles and some friend curry dumplings. quite enjoyable. oh yeah, the name of the dumpling place is radish garden. they make their noodles from some green powder out of the radish. does that even make sense? whatever. that night, we found this spot....



oh yeah. shih's bagel, bitches. sadly, i was too full to give it a try but fuck did it look good. i mean the sign alone tells the whole story. as far as i know, shih isn't a taiwanese/chinese name. i could certainly be wrong on that account. if i had to guess, this haven is named after someone from an area west of china. so what do we have here? a potentially indian-owned, taiwanese operated bagel spot in taipei. amazing. found this place after going to a bar next door that was called the staircase. it had a big staircase in the middle of the bar that led up to what we think is the owner's bedroom. actually, the girl running it had her friends in there and one went pretty hard. maybe she heard it was my birthday, but she was blacked out around 11. her friends had to drag her up that same staircase so she could take a rest. watching 3 people trying to carry a grown woman up a set of stairs without a handrail was certainly entertaining. as was the on-the-house popcorn the bartender gave us. must have been my mustache.




this is just a typical shopping block in taipei in the ximending district. lots of bootleg shit, a few legit stores. a lot of people were hanging out and there was a bunch of street meat being sold. actual meat on the street, this time.

later on we went to the eastern side to check out some shops and i found these......



i know the photo sucks, but these were my birthday gift to myself. last pair, my size, bitches! my 2nd pair of air mogans, definitely my first in this colorway. the other pair i have i got in tokyo in december 07 and they have fur on the front. now my collection has a mogan competition. sweet. here's the bag from the shop i got it at.....




after taipei, we took a train down to kaohsiung, what we believe to be the 2nd biggest city in taiwan. also the 4th largest port in asia. so much shit is manufactured in and exported from taiwan so that doesnt really surprise me. we took a high speed train which was awesome (not as awesome as the maglev in shanghai, for the record) but check this out. while i was waiting for my friend to buy the train tickets, i found this sign......



can you see that shit? the punctuality rate of taipei subway trains was 99.58% during feb/09. fucking 99.58%! thats amazing! and it wasn't a small amount of trains. oddly, if you multiply that out, it isn't a whole number. so like half a train was late one time. still, who cares. that's amazing. the nyc subway couldn't take this measurement because there isn't a schedule. lets not get started at my distaste for the nyc subway. its definitely helpful, but its terribly inefficient and can't compete technologically with other systems in asian countries. but yeah lets not get into it.

kaohsiung didn't have too much going on. we went hiking in a park and found some wild monkeys which was awesome.....



this little guy only had one arm which isn't a happy thought. he looked pretty sad. these monkeys were just hanging out though which must have been nice for them. we did catch some old people throwing rocks via a slingshot at them though, which we couldn't really figure out.

our hotel in kaohsiung was pretty sweet especially when i saw this....



the tv stand is the top shelf of a dishwasher. why wouldn't it be?


oh and scott, i read All Fifty. ridiculously good. how do we talk about it?