Here’s a funny thing about this city: everything is so gimmicky. Everyone wants to take something so different from a city so far away to bring to a place where people spend $8 on a coffee. As I sat outside fugazi cafe drinking the 8.5 after tax concrete brew, i spotted at least 5 guys with patchwork tattoos on their legs. They have an andy warholesque print wall of Sua Ong Tho cans. Who am i to tell the vietnamese american owner dude that the grab bike helmet on his display shelf looks like a joke?

 

Surely, commercial rent is expensive unless ur a male fashion influencer teaching about clothes on youtube. Ocean Vuong keeps spreading false information about Vietnamese people and the language. I will never forget him saying “chinh xac” means “clear as corpse” (it doesn't). He spelled a few words wrong on the Helmut Lang FW24 by Peter Do runway. screw the authentic representation, how about an accurate one first? I did feel chills running down my spine the first time I saw vietnamese words making appearances on a major fashion runway show, and i did feel excited spotting ca phe sua da on the menu.

 

Maybe the city is a bit absurd, the way it treats design as an attack on aesthetics. have they seen the reason viet people eat on plastic stools on the side of the streets? do they know how people sell coffee from their motorbike, a few chairs tied to the bike’s sides, as ready to make seats for customers as to pack everything up and speed away when a police comes at them for “doing business without permission”? do they know the vendors will come back right after the police zoom past the street? do they know the police won't actually arrest these vendors? do they know how grab bike drivers will park under a big tree during lunch hours, lay back on their back seats with their feet dangling off the front of the bike to catch a quick nap? during this shuteye, their helmets would be used as a headstop, a makeshift face cover, or simply left hanging on the handlebar. helmets that are tattered from Vietnam's harsh tropical weather. they look off on a shelf of a coffee shop selling $8 drinks. It's funny to see a culture with none of its people in it. Like seeing a body without a head.