Visitors Delegate Tofu to Others

He was standing in front of a food booth at the Los Angeles Tofu Festival on Sunday, wearing a Hawaiian print shirt, holding a shopping bag and surveying the scene with a perplexed look.

Surely, this must be a lost Democratic National Convention delegate. Probably from Houston or Council Bluffs.

Try Irvine.

“I guess the shirt looks kind of touristy, but my girlfriend gave it to me for my birthday yesterday and it’s exactly the kind of thing I would wear,” said Gauran Vij, a 22-year-old computer science student at UC Berkeley who was attending the 5th Annual Tofu Festival in downtown’s Little Tokyo.

The event attracted thousands of dedicated soy lovers from across Southern California over the weekend, but few conventioneers were in evidence, according to volunteers manning the food and ticket booths.

The festival usually is a part of Nisei Week, a Japanese cultural celebration held a few weekends ago. But organizers changed the dates this year to coincide with the Democratic Convention, presumably to take advantage of the city’s estimated 30,000 convention visitors.

They put out a big banner to welcome delegates. But if they were there--most delegates are easily identified by their convention badges--no one noticed. Was it the heat, the hassle of navigating around protesters--or is tofu just a bit too L.A.?

“California definitely sets the pace with tofu,” said Andy Nakano, owner of the very hip Jozu Restaurant, a Melrose Avenue eatery rated by some as one of the best in the city.

Nakano said attendance at the festival lagged this year and speculated that convention-related traffic and congestion may have kept some people away.

He did spot a few badge-wearing delegates at his booth--the tofu mousse with raspberry sauce was popular--and offered that there is no reason why a delegate from, say, Green Bay, Wis., should be squeamish about the protein-rich product made from the curds of pulverized soybeans.

He hopes not, anyway. He was preparing Sunday afternoon to begin setting up his catering equipment at Universal Studios for a convention event that was expected to attract 3,000 delegates. On the menu were sushi and tofu salad.

Perhaps stereotypes about visiting delegates and Angelenos are both old hat, suggested Bryan, a volunteer at the Tofutti Brands booth. Tofutti--a soy-based ice cream--is, after all, sold just about everywhere. He himself is an L.A. native and loves steak.

Another festival-goer--from Santa Monica--suggested there is a good reason tourists think of Los Angeles as the land of tofu burritos and Hawaiian print shirts: “Most of these people are from Southern California and they’re crowding the tofu burrito stand and wearing Hawaiian print shirts,” he said, looking smug in a green-print shirt bearing a pattern of lotus leaves.

But then he pointed out an older gentleman nearby who seemed to be lost. He was wearing a white Izod golf shirt, slacks, a baseball cap and had a camera slung around his neck. This has to be a delegate, he said.

“Hell no,” said Bill Dickinson, from Los Angeles, who described himself as a World War II veteran and senior citizen. “These delegates and the convention don’t mean a damn thing to me. They always talk about wanting me to vote but can’t do anything for me.”

Dickinson said that he was fed up with politics and that it didn’t really matter who was in the White House. And then he launched into various conspiracy theories, including how the tofu festival was crawling with secret agents.

A Los Angeles native, indeed.