On The Road

There have been quite a few people running in and out of my life lately. Some of them from out of town, others from out of the country. Two in particular, one from somewhere around London and the other from a place called Rio de Janeiro had me hopping around The City and showing off some of her best vantage points.

I love having people visit. Unfortuately, since I live out of my car, I can’t play as much hostess as I would like to, but I do my best. While they were in San Francisco I took my friends to one of my favorite bars in The City, Tosca, where we had lovely Lemon Drops and a made-up drink without a name. We went to galleries, museums, bookstores and did a lot of street hiking. And through all of this was placed conversation about place and identity, habits and culture (which I didn’t think Americans had), and a lot of silent contemplation.

That is the beauty about travel. Being confronted with one’s own culture. If you think about it, there is so much that we do daily out of habit that is marked as different to someone from somewhere else, that we don’t even notice it. Some of them are little things …

Like double-dipping.

Who would have thought double-dipping being a no-no would be something that seemed uniquely American and differed from culture to culture? But hey, it is and does.

One afternoon we were sitting in a taqueria chewing on our yummy burritos, each with their own stash of chips and a group of little containers of each kind of house salsa spread across the table. Pico di Gallo, Salsa Verde, the other green kind made from avacados, and a hot red one.

I told my friends that the salsa was for everyone, and they eagerly dipped, at the same time mentioning how strange it was that the other Americans they had eaten with didn’t seem comfortable in sharing food and dipping sauces. It seems that us US Americans are germaphobes. (I say US Americans because, as I was politely reminded by my friend from Rio, she’s an American too and then Canadians and Mexicans are also North Americans … well, you get the picture). I replied that most US Americans will share dipping sauces, but that it is double-dipping that is looked down upon. What, is double-dipping? they both looked at me inquisitively. It was then that I realized that I had been asked a cultural question about being American. It felt odd.

So I explained about dipping a chip, munching it, then dipping it again.

We wouldn’t think twice about that, they both said, from opposite hemispheres of the world.

Because the US is made up of so many different cultures and has absorbed many of the traditions of these cultures, it’s really hard to find something that is culturally American. But there you go. Double-dipping. I like learning these things about my culture, such as it is, and as weird as it is sometimes.

Oh, and by the way, here’s a tip if you travel to France - when eating in a group, and a large cheese plate is placed on the table, never cut off the point of a triangle of brie.