Speaking of big feet ...

File this under interesting sights: A guy walks into a bar and sits down next to a....Chinese giant. No joke. Yesterday was chilly and I was headed to the downtown Seattle Koolhaus to do some library work. I dropped in at Shucker's restaurant in the Fairmont Olympic hotel because I remembered they have a really good chowder (I remembered right). I sat at the bar and next to me was Yao Ming, the Houston Rockets' basketball player who is 7-foot 6-inches tall. He's tall enough to be slender at a listed 310 pounds. (Now I know how tall I need to be to be HWP!)
File this under interesting sights: A guy walks into a bar and sits down next to a....Chinese giant. No joke. Yesterday was chilly and I was headed to the downtown Seattle Koolhaus to do some library work. I dropped in at Shucker's restaurant in the Fairmont Olympic hotel because I remembered they have a really good chowder (I remembered right). I sat at the bar and next to me was Yao Ming, the Houston Rockets' basketball player who is 7-foot 6-inches tall. He's tall enough to be slender at a listed 310 pounds. (Now I know how tall I need to be to be HWP!)

File this under interesting sights: A guy walks into a bar and sits down next to a....Chinese giant. No joke. Yesterday was chilly and I was headed to the downtown Seattle Koolhaus to do some library work. I dropped in at Shucker's restaurant in the Fairmont Olympic hotel because I remembered they have a really good chowder (I remembered right). I sat at the bar and next to me was Yao Ming, the Houston Rockets' basketball player who is 7-foot 6-inches tall. He's tall enough to be slender at a listed 310 pounds. (Now I know how tall I need to be to be HWP!) I presume Yao was in town for tonight's Sonics game, and fresh off a victory over the Sonics down in Houston on Monday (Yao had 30 points). While some might marvel at his playing, I was struck by the geometry of his eating style. I'm pretty short, but counter tops usually come up to my rib cage so it's a relatively short distance from my plate to my mouth. But what do you do when the bar comes up your knees and your head is somewhere near the ceiling? Yao pushed his seat back several feet to get the right angle, then lowered his torso like a crane so that his mouth hovered directly over his lunch. He ate at a slant. It seemed to work just fine.

  

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About the Authors & Contributors

Knute Berger

Knute Berger

Knute “Mossback” Berger is Crosscut's Editor-at-Large.