Stockton Street

Focal Length: 18mm | Aperture: f5.6 | Exposure: 1/125 | ISO: 100 | Post: CS1

When venturing to Chinatown in San Francisco, you are most often lead to Grant Street, where numerous shops and storefronts sling a wide array of all things China. Smells of Chinese cuisine drift towards the nostrils, camera batteries are sold, that beautiful Chinese calligraphy labels all of the shops and restaurants. Golden dragons, colorful lanterns, and vibrantly intricate garments are all there. Grant Street is the Chinatown for white people or tourists. The real Chinatown runs one block up the hill and parallel to Grant and that is Stockton Street. Here is where the SF residents of Chinese descent shop and eat and swap wares. It’s less glamorous and more genuine, it’s stinky and sticky and incredibly dirty, I love it.