Good cheap fun listening to Cannibal Corpse

Perhaps you have noticed, in this holiday season, that the snap on your wallet is getting worn out and that your credit card rarely gets cold between usings. Whatever you’re spending, it’s small potatoes, pals.

Rent.com reported a few weeks ago that the most expensive rental apartment in San Francisco was going for $49,528 a month. It’s off the market now, but this luxury aerie, as described, had two bedrooms and 980 square feet of space, cozier than you’d think for that price. Apparently, it wasn’t the footage that counted, it was the amenities. The building was said to include a yoga studio, catering kitchen, private wine storage, interior dog park and bike repair room.

So imagine that you’ve just moved in, you’ve got plenty of air in your bicycle tires and you have placed every lamp on the table where it looks best. You might be ready for a night on the town. A study by EliteSingles says that San Francisco is the second most expensive city in the country, with the average cost of a date night amounting to $140. (New York is highest in the nation, Oslo highest in the world.)

The cheapest city is Indianapolis, where a date will be about $100, and which the official city site says it likes to be called “Indy” (no “Frisco”-hating nickname snobs there).

If you thought I was going to make some joke patronizing the Midwest, you are mistaken. The events one could have attended on an Indy date night last week included a concert by Cannibal Corpse with Hate Eternal and Harms Way. So they’re just as obsessed with politics in Indiana as we are here.

The Chronicle Chats event, Art Without Borders, served up some rich ideas and meaty conversation, and Mourad Lahlou, owner of the restaurant Mourad, had generously brought along some hors d’oeuvres for the reception beforehand. The crowd gathered on Tuesday, Dec. 4, was large and hungry; every tasty bite was eaten. Quickly. Let’s say this was a metaphor for human scarcities that have often influenced immigration. The sustenance of the evening wasn’t intended to be dinner; it was shared experience.

Editor Kitty Morgan moderated a discussion in which four artists — musician Diana Gameros, ballerina Yuan Yuan Tan, chef/restaurateur Lahlou and cartoonist/graphic novelist Thi Bui — talked about their experiences as immigrants, and how those experiences had inspired their work. Among the many high points of the discussion:

Bui, who left Vietnam on a boat at age 3, declared herself a refugee rather than an immigrant, and said that her purpose is “to make people uncomfortable.” She was the only person on the panel who had come to live in a country that had made war on her homeland.

Describing the determination required for success as a principal dancer with the San Francisco Ballet, Shanghai-born Tan talked about the physical challenges of doing that work for 25 years: “Every day you have to fight with your body.” Mexico-born Gameros opened and closed the evening with songs that evoked the immigrant experience in general as well as the current situation at the border. It’s an educated guess that most people in the audience were sympathetic with her views. Skillfully, she beckoned the audience to sing along with her at the end, leaving the crowd with a glow.

Less beckoning was Morocco-born Lahlou, who began with a declaration that he wouldn’t put a label on himself. Later on, it was his tale of opening Aziza, his first restaurant, that was perhaps the most engrossing of the night.

When he’d decided to open a restaurant, he said, the first thing on his mind was making it successful. “Forget about being authentic,” he said. “I wanted to survive.” Most Americans’ idea of being Moroccan included belly dancing, rose water sprinkled on the hands, sitting in a tent.

Knowing all that was nonsense, he nonetheless featured those experiences in his restaurant. All the waiters, he said, “would look like Aladdin,” there were belly dancers and there was water-sprinkling. ”We were very successful. I made so much money.” And then he thought, “This is bulls—. I never had a meal in Morocco where a woman was dancing naked in front of me.”

They gave up the hand-washing. The belly dancers were out. “The stereotypes were there, but I had to break away. It takes courage to get out of that box.”

PUBLIC EAVESDROPPING Woman: “How’s your cat doing without her tail?” Man: “She’s fine. She’s OK and dealing with it.” Conversation between co-workers, overheard at San Francisco Public Library by Beverlyn Jackson