Cape Town is a very, shall we say, shallow city at times. Everyone is more concerned about their looks and what other people think of them, than anything else in the world. This is true for all of us probably. Maybe…I don’t know.

I remember when vida e caffe opened in Cape Town and suddenly everyone and their dog was drinking coffee. People who never drank coffee were going “No bru I can’t walk if I don’t have my triple screaming foaming skinny mocha choca latte with wings from vida e”

To me this was always a little bit over the top. It’s not that I don’t think vida e are brilliant, it’s just that I don’t think the untrained palette can taste the difference between vida e and Seattle. However, vida e were(are) clever and created a young lifestyle brand. Vida e became a part of people just like Levi’s and other famous brands have over the years. But because we are shallow, and don’t like to admit it, we would always say

“No I only go to vida because they make the best coffee. No I don’t go there to be seen”

Yeah, AND THE POPE IS JEWISH!

This is rubbish because before vida e you never complained about Seattle. However, all the models and fashionistas attached themselves to vida e and to reaffirm your coolness you had to drink coffee there. Because all the cool people were going there and if was the place to be seen. Whenever I go to Seattle I see an older crowd there, and they don’t seem to think the coffee leaves a bitter taste in their mouths.

The coffee trend has died down a little bit and suddenly none of my friends seem to want to “go for coffee” anymore. Honestly, from someone calling every day saying “Let’s go to vida for a coffee” I have had no calls of the sorts in months.

You see, your shallowness has now been replaced with sushi, this seasons hot ticket.

“Bru do you want to go out for sushi at Beluga? It’ll only cost you like R150″

“No I don’t want to go to Beluga for sushi, but I’d love to take your MOTHER Jenny out for a nice seafood dinner and then never call her again” I’m tempted to reply.

Again, it’s not attacking any coffee or sushi brand, or coffee the drink, or sushi the food, it’s attacking the shallowness of people. Just like Cape Town girls had the whole Gucci shades and Vuitton handbag craze a while back, it seems to have died. Jeez Louise, what next?

Well, SUSHI is it for the moment!

Sushi has been around for ages, but once people caught onto it and it’s worldwide “cool factor” it became all the rage. The best thing about it is the fact that people actually think it’s cheap.

Like R13 for a sliver of salmon wrapped in rice is value for money! Jesus, I can buy an entire bag of rice for R20! For an extra R20 the Chinese kid who farmed it gets thrown in as well. And the tiny piece of salmon is hardly worth much itself. People will complain that a burger these days at a place such as Gourmet Burger or Forres is around R50, but they will happily pay R30 for a “plate” of sushi. To those of you aware, a plate for R30 consists of a piece of salmon wrapped in rice, maybe with a bit of mayo and seaweed. My God, are we all on drugs? Are we smoking the crack pipe and taking ketamine?

“You WON’T believe it” people say, as though they have discovered that the petrol price has dropped to R1 a litre, “but I ate like 10 plates of sushi today and it only cost me R150, they having a special on at the moment. Normally that would cost me like over R200″

Well I will be damned, R200 to eat? I can buy a chunk of salmon for R100 and a bag of rice for R20 and make enough sushi to sink the Titanic.

“R35 bucks for that is cheap!” They say, all giddy. “Yeah but your moms still cheaper” I reply.

What are these “specials” actually on? A special for all the stupid people out there that think R150 for sticky rice and raw fish is cheap? Since when did R150 for this become “cheap” I will smash a steak for that price. I will smash you for that price.

What is sushi cheap compared to? Gold? Heidi Fleiss in her day? Brent crude oil? Kryptonite? A trip to the moon?

And since when has sushi suddenly appealed to all our taste buds? What is SO great about it that has everyone talking? I mean, what specifically gets people in a big wank fest about it? Is it the plain rice? Is it really the raw fish? Personally I think people just dig the mayonnaise. But then a chicken burger is also a bit shit if you don’t have that nice big piece of mayonnaise in the centre.

I enjoy sushi, but I’m not tempted to pay R150 for lunch just because it’s cool. What do I gain from this other than to advertise my wealth on Facebook by saying “Sean has just eaten himself sick on sushi at Beluga”

Do I really care? Does anyone really care? Why don’t people put their Facebook profiles as “Joanne just ate herself sick on burgers”?

You know why? It’s because burgers are not cool and they don’t boost your status. It’s not the “Cape Town thing” at the moment.

I mean, for the love of child slave labour, it’s RICE and RAW FISH. Come on, get over yourselves.

You see in Cape Town we always have new ways to guage our success. You were not cool or successful if you didn’t drink coffee. Now you are not cool or successful if you don’t shout your love of sushi form the rooftops.

It’s like in todays blogging world in South Africa, everyone is suddenly an “online marketing guru” or “tech geek” or my favourite, which I gathered from Shaun Oakes, everyone is a “Web 2.0 expert”

Come on guys, the only thing you’re an expert at is being a fully fledged idiot. Just as the blogging world has it’s “cool things”, so does the city of Cape Town.

Not that I’m immune from all this. After all I do live in a consumerism based society and we all have our flaws.

But come on, let’s get over the sushi before I blow a gasket here. Someone get me a quadruple gin and tonic before I overheat and die or at the very least go burn down every sushi bar in Cape Town.

Honestly, you don’t understand how the sushi craze makes me feel inside.

As a little side note here, just to do the whole Cape Town name dropping thing, the first time I NEVER tasted sushi was on a movie set called Ask the Dust. I was a stand in for Justin Kirk, and one day they started walking around on set offering everyone sushi and I was asking people why they were serving such shit food because I did not eat raw fish.

That turned out to be the blindest thing ever said as Colin Farrell’s stand in let me know that Colin had in fact bought that out of his own cash as a treat for everyone on set. Whether that was true or not I never found out, but it sure as hell wasn’t craft service that made it! Once again…you can take the boy out of Claremont, but you can’t take Claremont out of the boy. I’m pure class!

Sean Lloyd

Editor