So here I am, finally getting hip to the whole pho phonetics scene, when somebody brings news of a T-shirt for sale at a Vietnamese noodle shop in Catonsviille.
"I (heart) Phobama," reads the shirt sold at Pho 1, at 5764 Baltimore National Pike (in the shopping center that once housed Value City).
Cute pun, but one that works best if you pronounce "pho" like "foe." It's more like "fuh," a fact I only recently clued into.
No matter. Customers seem to love "fuh-bama."
"We sell a lot," said cashier Behai Nguyen, who said the message is less political for people really in the know. (He said in Vietnamese, "bama" stands for "papa" and "mama" for -- you guessed it -- "mama.")
The shirts cost $14.95, or $20 for two. Liz Kay, one of The Baltimore Sun's Consuming Interests bloggers, brought the shirts to my attention.
Liz was really after the pho, which she said was tasty if not quite as good as what's sold at Mekong Delta downtown.
Sun photo by Liz Kay