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| - The BEST people watching Arizona has to offer. Don't tell me such and such nightclub in Scottsdale is where the action is. Lee Lee has it all: blondes with botox galore, European men speaking Spanish, and Vietnamese fathers humming to the sound of "All the Single Ladies" playing discretely over the intercom. I wasn't shocked by the contents of the store - anyone who watches the extreme food channel knows that delicacies such as silkie chicken and fish eye soup really do exist. What I was surprised by, however, was that for just a flicker of a moment, if I really stretched my imagination, I felt like I could be in downtown Oakland, perusing the streets, with smells of raw fish and seaweed and botan rice candy permeating my being. In those few minutes that I walked the aisles of Lee Lee on a kidless Sunday afternoon, I yearned for the culturally diverse places where I grew up - the Oriental Market south of the zoo in Land Park seems such a long ago memory. Living in Arizona can sometimes lead you to believe that there's nothing left in this world but dust, palo verde, and an occasional scorpion in your attic. Lee Lee changed all that, if only for a brief moment. I will be back - likely only out of sheer boredom known as the suburbia of Peoria. But I will be back.
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