I had a moment of "Am I a racist?" the other day. It was more like a moment of "I don't understand this culture." but I generally felt bad about it, or I felt like I'll never get it.
I was out with friends and we went to this trendy bar in Little Tokyo in downtown LA. When we were done with that scene we moved to this little karaoke bar a few doors down, not swanky by any stretch of the imagination, but it had swanky prices. $8 for a bottle of Budweiser and $5 for a coke, usually the designated driver is gratis, not at this place. So we're sitting at the bar, it's cool, we decide it would be nice to sit in a booth back by the karaoke machine when we're stopped by the bartender who yells "TWO DRINK MINIMUM!" It was very abrasive but I get that, they just communicate differently. So we go back to the bar. I decide to use the restroom and this is when I had my moment. So there's a sink to wash your hands, the whole place is spotlessly clean. On the sink is a basket of paper towels and a plant. But there's a ginormous white elephant in the room, a huge mop sink connected to the same plumbing. Obviously an afterthought in the design of the bathroom. Their solution to covering up this monstrous second mop sink, complete with mop and cleaning products, is to drape a piece of lace over it. Like the lace makes it all better. At that moment I thought, "I just don't get the Asian aesthetic and I'm not sure I ever will." As I was peeing it made me think of all the donut stores in town and how they could be so cool looking with some bold color and original professional signage, not wallpapered with donut posters. I dunno. Anyway, I'm not racist, I was talking with a friend about it and she asked if I didn't like the bartender or his wife (all the customers were white) and that wasn't the case at all, it was the lace over the mop as a design solution I didn't understand nor did I think I ever would. Does that make sense?
