To me, the attacks on Asian Americans are as puzzling as they are deplorable, taking place in cities – New York, San Francisco – that are not only sophisticated, ethnically diverse, and famously tolerant but that have large, long-established Asian communities (the most visible and, one thought, the most accepted being the Chinese). I wonder if the prejudice toward them is new, or if it’s always been there among a small population that now feels emboldened to make it public. Either way, it suggests that as a nation we are regressing.
Yesterday, for the first time in over a year, we went to the movies: Savor Cinema to see the live action shorts that were nominated for an Academy Award. There was no problem with social distancing as there was only one other person in the theater. The films were mostly depressing: a Palestinian man who goes shopping and is thwarted by soldiers at checkpoints, a young Black man who has a recurring dream he’s being shot by a policeman, a corrections officer in a high security prison. The highlight was the coming attractions, as one of the trailers was for The Truffle Hunters.
Needing relief, we went to Las Olas for dinner. It was not our lucky day. As soon as we sat down at a table near the window we saw shuffling down the sidewalk, with a covey of the curious, Dennis Rodman.
Monday morning, instead of sitting here at my desk, I will be in Miami having a small tumor removed from my throat. The surgery will be followed by a few days in the hospital, so I'm going to take a break from blogging. I'll be back here as soon as I feel well enough, surely with some new material.
I watched the evening news last night, where no mention was made of Myanmar, though a lot of attention was given to a possible attack today in our nation's capital. Then I watched BBC news, which, in a long segment, announced that it had been the deadliest day of protests in Myanmar.
I first visited Tampa in 1990 to write a story about the city prior to its hosting Super Bowl XXV. At that point I had been in Florida a little over a year and I knew enough to begin my visit – as I began my story – in Ybor City, specifically at La Tropicana Café, more specifically at the table with the nameplate: RESERVED FOR ROLAND MANTEIGA. Manteiga was the editor of La Gaceta, which had been started by his father as a Spanish newspaper in 1922 and now claimed to be the only trilingual paper in the United States. (In addition to Spanish and English, it featured a column in Italian.)
I still remember sitting at that octagonal table, where Manteiga regularly held court, and hearing him talk about the imminent rebirth of Ybor City. Later, walking past the empty storefronts on East 7th Avenue, I had serious doubts. Subsequent visits, of course, have proved him right. But even as I was skeptical about the resurgence of Ybor City, I got a sense of its enduring spirit. A man behind the counter at S. Agliano & Sons Fish Co. (which closed its doors 15 years later) told me that, when he was in the army, people would ask him where he was from. “I always told them Ybor City,” he said. “Not Tampa. Ybor City.”