I finished "Deus Lo Volt!" It was a shaggy-dog story. I ended up liking it a lot. Then rewarded myself by reading a dumb mystery and a chapter of the Arcades Project. Now I have a pile of books to read. And I also read some of the short-story collection "San Francisco Noir." A couple things about this: first and as usual, it made me miss San Francisco, the way the end of "Lady From Shanghai" does. Second, the only Asian writer, at least judging by photos and names, was Alvin Lu. The book seems to have been edited by a New Yorker. But the stories were well reported, and they gave me the feeling of being in some of the situations I remember myself.

It might be that San Francisco has an easier narrative to enter, in reality, than Philly, and thus is an easier city to construct an easy-to-get narrative around. Someone like Michelle Tea sees herself as part of a continuum of a character -- the lovestruck lesbian prostitute -- who is more or less celebrated in SF along with the hated yuppie couple, the smart Latino/a in the wilderness, some other sex-worker characters, the geek and the Rainbow shopper. Where, aside from the Onion's dead-on item this week about the girl who never runs out of quirky things to do, I'm not sure there's an accessible Philly character. We have the cop, the grumpy South Philadelphian, the earnest North Philly church person. A Philly noir story wouldn't involve nice, relatable people who were drawn to drugs, crime and sex work because of personal quirks and flaws.