March 2014

     It's March 1st.  Saturday.  5 am.  I am at the bus stop across the street from where I live.  At the stop this morning is a guy who may perhaps be in his sixties.  Instead of some wasted lump on the bench, clutching a bottle of booze, this guy is standing up with a bottle of bona fide water.  What the heck is he doing here?  The middle of the following week, it began raining overnight and then snowing.  I am walking the last slushy stretch toward a train station shortly before 4 am.  Someone passes me on the sidewalk, carrying a gas can.  We both get to the station, where a pickup truck from the Public Works department is parked.  The guy with the gas can is talking to the driver in the truck.  It appears that they are here to shovel snow and salt the area.  Either the truck or a piece of equipment has run out of gas?  The guy with the can did not come from the direction of the nearest gas station.  These guys are from another neighborhod and don't know that there's one within sight of the station?

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     The following day, I am on a bus home after work.  I am sitting in the middle of a trio of people discussing being on probation, not supposed to be on probation, being put on parole, your parole officer telling you not to smoke pot even though you have a card allowing you to do so, one of the three being a guy with long salt and pepper hair and a beard and using oxygen who claims that the hospital won't fill a prescription for marijuana or Viagra "or anything," being accused by your parole officer of being a verbal abuser because your dad calls your parole officer to yell at her, having to pay for your UA, and showing up for your court date only to be told that your parole has been extended for another year.
     The following morning, I am preparing to leave my house around a quarter to three in the am.  I am looking all over the house for a hoodie which I had yesterday.  I write a lot about my neighborhood, and perhaps I don't mention much which may be considered good.  When I am out the door, I see that one of two things happened.  Either I dropped it on the fence, which I consider highly unlikely, or I dropped it in front of the fence and someone found it and put it there for me.  I doubt that someone would have done that for me in the neighborhood where I lived previously.
     The next morning is another Saturday.  I am on a bus to work.  Not long after I get on, a drunk guy gets off.  Another guy gets on.  He mentions to the driver that he is looking for another boulevard which runs parallel to the one we are on.  He falls into  a seat and goes to sleep.  The driver gets to a stop and puts the bus into park.  He wakes up the guy to tell him that he can catch a crosstown bus to his boulevard.  The guy tells him that he will just wait until the bus we are on gets to the end of the line and turns around, and comes back here.  This does not appear to make sense to the driver, hope against hope, and he tells the guy that he "can't ride around with me all day."  And the guy disembarks with dispatch.

     Early this morning around 1 am we were shot at by paintball guns as we were walking out of our car.  It appeared to be from a White [sic] Chrysler 300.  They continued to shoot as they drove up the street.  - Nextdoor Westwood, 3/9
     ...a neighbor...saw a van more than once scoping around the neighborhood.  It looked like a trash bag on the passenger side window.  Hispanic driver, acted like he was with a realtor when someone walked up to him.  - Nextdoor Westwood, 3/13

     ...the U.S. is experiencing a revamped pop revival through...Korean pop, or "K-pop", bands.  ...moving them into company dormitories.  The young recruits train  up to 14 hours a day, seven days a week for years...  These recruits are prohibited from owning a cell phone, hanging out with friends or developing romantic relationships before their debut.  ...after the company recoups its costs, there is little left for the artists...  For all their passion, home-grown fans are not paying enough.  The CD industry is stagnant, and digital music sites are seen as vastly underpriced...  "...at the moment, it's not sustainable."  - Asian Avenue, 2/2014

     ...totalitarian systems, yoking terror and ideology and claiming to dominate and shape the entirety of existence...in the name of a vision of a total utopia.  The bourgeoisie has...in place of...chartered freedoms, set up...free trade.   The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production...and with them the whole relations of society.  The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe.  It must...establish connections everywhere.  - Essential Works of Socialism, ed. by Irving Howe, 1970

     It's the morning after St. Patrick's Day.  I'm at the bus stop across the street from where I live, to catch an bus earlier than usual.  It's a quarter to four am.  Next door, at the gas station, there is a familiar guy standing in front of the door.  He appears as if he is waiting for someone inside.  He's a panhandler who used to live in a house just down the street from mine.  I haven't seen him in months.  Another guy comes out of the gas station, and the two head to his car.  He asks the panhandler, "What's your name?"

     SUNDAY MORNING AT 5:30 A.M. ...As I was walking out into Times Square from Port Authority, I ran into Busta Rhymes...  ...he was talking to some dude, so I just kept movin'.   ...out to the corner of 42nd Street and 7th Avenue, out in the middle of the street, there were top to bottom lights, cameras, stages, cops...  Merchandise is everywhere you look.  What do people really want?  FOX Sports Live had a stage where there was always a big audience around causing a commotion.  ...there was always a soundtrack of music coming from the studio ij the middle of 46th street and Broadway.  There are guys in red from the Times Square Alliance that [sic] are picking up trash.  It's so hard to hear myself think.  NYC food can get really expensive.  Homeless people are all over the place panhandling to travelers.  Some are living under tarps on the side of Port Authority.  Blondie played a set in the street for over an hour that had everybody really going.
     THE ELYRIA-SWANSEA NEIGHBORHOOD in Denver sits on an awkward residential-industrial intersection.  ...most of the neighborhood's 10,000 residents...lack access to banks, pharmacies, and grocery stores.  "We can't really afford to move to a nice neighborhood."  Some local gardeners are hoping to create demand...  "You have to get kids to taste produce, and you can't educate the kids without educating the parents.  ...you can't change from Cheetos to kale unless you appreciate the difference."  Education programs provide resources to make...gardens sustainable.  "It's long-term food security, not emergency-aid, for people in need."  "The purpose of food banks has shifted in the past 20 years.  Where they used to be primarily for emergency food assistance they are now a regular source of food that people depend on."  "Land is the thing that a lot of [urban] gardeners want and can't find access to..."  - Denver Voice, 3/2014

     Foodies flock to nationally lauded new restaurants housed in shuttered factories, while well-to-do college graduates  rent their first apartments...  ...out of the Great Recession and into a broad, rising prosperity...  "It's like high school with money.  We all know each other.  We  know the spouses.  We know the dogs."  On any given day...over deviled eggs and sugar bacon...there are reformers and politicians and bankers and artists and academics...figuring out how to use stories to create appealing lives and livelihoods.  - Time, 3/17/2014

Editor's Letter  HEAD FOR THE HILLS
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     Our homes not only reflect our personal style; they can also reveal our mindset, the way we make our way through the world, and even our innermost desires.  ...a project for a former Stafford Golf Team captain, who lives a very dynamic life, traveling all over the world with his wife, who was a news anchor.  The structure...with walls of windows that are concave to the outside, in order to highlight the golf course outside the home...  "Most of us want a sense of shelter and security, so we look for elements that speak of substance.  Some thrive on adventure, so there might be an articulation of forms, a wide glass wall across the vista or a soaring balcony that quickens your pulse."  The open expansiveness found in great rooms adds to a sense of psychological transparency...  - Vail Lifestyle, Spring 2014

     ...the giant multi-national transportation firm that owns Yellow Cab is attempting to buy Metro Taxi, which could result in a single company controlling a majority of the city's $70 million annual taxi business.  "What happens when Uber puts me out of business and there are fewer and fewer cabs?  Do you think those...left are going to be...picking people up at the hospital?  Not everyone has a smartphone; not everyone has a credit card.  We are not replaceable.  We are absolutely essential to the functioning of a city."  - Westword, 3/20-26/2014

     It's the first day of Spring.  I'm out the door and across the street to the bus stop.  I can see someone or something in the bus shelter.  When I get there, I can see that it's a guy in a wheel chair.  He is bent over asleep.  When the bus shows up, he wakes up and gets on with the rest of us.  His entire head is the same shade of red-brown, and he speaks with an unintelligble voice of gravel.  Monday of the following week, I am on the same bus at 5 am.  In one seat is a young woman putting on her makeup for the entire ride.  In a seat up front is a middle-aged guy talking to the driver.  "I remember you," he tells the driver.  "I met you on our first day."  I get off the bus and run into the deathburger.   Seated at a corner booth are three people, all dressed in the same dark shade of clothes.  There is a younger guy with a laptop, making use of the wi-fi.  Together with his watch cap, his outfit reminds me of the illustration on police shooting targets.  The other two are a middle-aged couple.  The following day I am back at my usual bus stop.  Of the people waiting for my bus, four are wearing what appears to be uniforms with name patches sewn on their jackets, as well as work boots.  Three of them are woman.  One has bleached hair and is smoking and coughing.
      The next day, I am working a late shift.  A couple of panhandlers are discussing their scores.  One guy, with a Harley T-shirt and weather-beaten face, tells the other, "The first guy gave me 23 cents.  The next guy gave me a ten, and the one after that gave me a ten."  The day after, I am again working a late shift, and I'm at the deathburger much later in the morning than 5 am.  A panhandler comes in and sits at a table next to another guy.  This other guy has what appears to be nails, screws, and other such items from a hardware store packaged in groups spread all over his table.  He tells the panhandler, who he appears to know, to "keep an eye on" his stuff, "'cause that's your job," he instructs him.  The guy with the nails appears to head out to a drug store next door.  While he's gone, the panhandler asks me three times, "How's it going?"  A young guy comes in, and the panhandler asks him if he can spare a cigarette.  When the young guy comes up with one, the panhandler asks him, "Gonna go smoke?"  He appears to expect this stranger to go outside and smoke with him.  After I leave, I pass the hardware guy on the way back.  With both a soda and a coffee back on his table back inside, he's coming back with a bottle of water.  The next day, after work, I'm on a bus home.  A guy is sitting next to a younger girl, telling her about his day in excruciating technical detail.  He makes a call to his work on his phone.  He's a security guard who is calling his boss to ask if he can take his "little sister up from (Colorado) Springs on a quick tour" of the building which he works in.  He makes a reference to the hour when he will begin his shift on "fire watch", at "sixteen hundred hours."  He says "Yes, sir," and then bids goodbye to someone with a female name.
     The next morning is another Saturday at my usual bus stop.  5 am.  An elderly gentleman comes shuffling along.  On a cold morning, he's without a coat, but otherwise appears as any other grandfather in a sweatshirt.  With a raspy voice, he asks me, "Hey brother, have you got a smoke or anything?"  When I tell him that I don't smoke, he shuffles off toward the deathburger.  This early morning, the bus stops are dotted with people waiting for their bus.  Mine shows up, and it has just begun moving before it again comes to a stop.  One last guy slowly climbs up the steps.  When the driver gives him a transfer, which appears to confuse him momentarily.  As he slowly, slowly steps down the isle, I see a middle-aged, grizzled face hidden under the hood of a coat and a rope for his belt.

February 2014

     I'm on a bus home from work on the Saturday before Super Bowl Sunday.  In front seat is a guy with white hair and a beard, and designer sunglasses.  On a day when it's snowing, he has on pants with the cuffs rolled up and shoes with no socks.  At one stop, someone tries to get on with a gas can.  The driver stops him, and the guy says, "But I just got it."  He agrees to depart, saying, "Cool, cool," before exiting.
     But the following Monday is the day after the big game.  Records were set.  It was not hype so much as hope which fueled expectations of a win for the city's team.  From nowhere, perhaps not even Sports Illustrated, as much as this neighborhood came a tangible messianic chorus for the team.  Not that they did not do well, setting their own records such as for most points scored in a season in NFL history, and the quarterback completing more passes than any other in same said season.  Then came late Sunday afternoon.  I'm gonna throw some football talk at ya now.  Quickest score in a Super Bowl came when the ball was launched over our quarterback's head and into the end zone for a safety.  Two points for the other team.  Because the other team's fans were so loud that our team couldn't hear the quarterback's instructions.  Which was well known all season by everyone (except our quarterback?)  It could not have gone better for the other team.  They rushed our quarterback, causing him to throw two interceptions, both resulting in touchdowns.  They hardly need our help however.  After shutting us down with their defence, they scored their own touchdowns.  'Twas one of the biggest blowouts in Super Bowl history.  Our team joined an exclusive club of Super Bowl teams to score a single digit total of points.  Final score, 8 - 47 for the other team.  I mention all this because I heard predictions along the lines of an opposite score with our team as the winner, or that it would be close but that we surely would be taking home the trophy.  I also believe that we could be witnessing history in the making, of a legendary football team who won this year's game.  Time will tell.
     The following Monday, I am at my usual bus stop at 5 am.  On the ground is a big crushed can of Bud Ice.  It has been printed in the colors of our football team, and is laying there flattened in the snow.  Fitting.  And along comes the same guy who was here yesterday to sweep the bus stops.  Down the sidewalk comes a guy who looks immediately out of place.  He has on a long wool coat, and is carrying what appears to be some kind of leather bag.  After what has turned into a 12-hour day, I am back in the same neighborhood which I left this morning, just like it is now.  Dark and snowing.  I am waiting for my last connecting bus by a shelter.  Standing outside the shelter with me is a white-haired guy in a plaid hoodie and gloves.  He is standing stiffly with his elbows pointed out.  Flurries are collecting on his head and his shoulders.  One guy in the shelter comes out to discuss which bus comes by when, and from where.  No one else appears to have any good idea of the bus route directions at this particular junction.  The guy in the shelter is speaking to a second guy, cursing one bus which passed him by.  "I checked the schedule and he (the driver of that particular bus) wasn't late.  He just wanted to be an asshole.  And I'm dressed like this, and my glassed steam up, and then they freeze.  I'm already late (passed curfew) for my halfway house.  It's a halfway house for rehab."  He tells the other guy in the shelter about being with a friend who was blowing pot smoke.  It sounds as if he's worried about having a hot UA.   A bus comes and stops at a gate across the street.  It's a route which will take us quite a distance up the street, easily as far as where the guy says his halfway house is.  I appear to be the only one who realizes that it has a brief layover before it will then turn at the next street and loop back around to pick us up before heading where we all are going.  I watch the white-haired guy go into the gas station and, as he points at the bus, speak with a guy behind the counter.
     A couple of frosty below-zero days later, I am at a bus stop after work.  I am in a neighborhood across town from my own.  From what I read, it's an enormous municipality which has exploded over the past couple of decades.   It is currently home to the largest and most diverse immigrant population in the metro area.  I'm at at one end of the place this evening, where trucks and Humvees are rolling down the boulevard.  As I wait for the bus, I am looking into a chain franchise coffee place in the distance.  Inside, under soft lighting, are some old stalwarts of any neighborhood: middle-aged, white men.  In sweaters.  Sipping coffee and looking at something digital perhaps.  I watch a truck pull into the parking lot.  It parks and yet another white guy gets out.  He goes in and it appears as if he has unexpectedly run into someone he knows.  They give each other a hug.  I take the bus to the train, which I take to another station.  When I get off, a guy comes past me with a bow-legged walk and a bulbous nose.  He wants to know if I have a dollar so that he can get something to eat.  For a dollar.  He wants to know when "the next Bus comes by?"  I wonder which way he is going.  He just stepped off a train, and when another comes by, he presses a button which opens the door.  Instead of getting on board, he stands there and stares inside.  The door closes and the train is on its way.  When my bus shows up, he asks the driver which train he should take to get where he is going.
     It's the end of another week.  I'm at my usual bus stop.  Some guy comes by.  He's trying to sell his bus transfer.  "You want to buy the bus?"  And a couple of days later, it's the beginning of another week.  I am working a later schedule for most of the week.  I rode the bus to my usual stop, much later in the morning than usual, with  a woman with has an expression of anger on her face.  As we prepare to cross the street, a connecting bus comes by before we can make it to the stop.  She futilely attempts to flag it down before cursing it.  "They do this shit on purpose!"  When we get to my usual stop, a lanky guy comes by.  He stands staring ahead as if he is not all there.  The angry woman recognizes him, shouting "Robert!  Robert, Robert, Robert."  After perhaps a full minute of this, Robert finally returns her greeting.  I hear the woman on her phone, telling the person at the other end, "I still love you.  I've quit drinking.  I'm talking about me, I'm not talking about you.  You do what you want, with who you want."  Robert looks familiar.  I've seen him around these parts once or twice before.  The woman I have not seen before.  She converses that she is "no longer going through the emotional things" which she has been.  She looks like a truck driver.  She' sounds completely honest about her problems with alcohol.  Her friend tells her that she wants help, that she wants money.  The woman accuses her of not wanting to forgive her.  The woman has something at a pawn shop which she wants back again.  "Okay!  Okay!  I don't want to live over there!"
     I am working this week in the neighborhood with the coffee shop where every big block engine pickup driver knows your name.  I get off a bus across from the coffee place, along with another guy who asks me what the time is.  As I follow him across the street, I notice that a driver preoccupied with her phone has pulled into the crosswalk.  So does he.  He walks up to her window and says, "Hey!"  I try to avoid him, but we wait for the same bus.  Back in my neighborhood, I wait for my last bus next to a Vietnamese restaurant with a big screen TV.  The Winter Olympics are on.  At the bus stop is a guy with a blue bandana around his head, on his phone and pacing back and forth.  The following morning, I am back at my usual bus stop at 5 am.  At the stop, I see another guy who I think I watch take off a surgical glove before he puts on a winter one.  The next day I am back on an afternoon shift.  I get on a bus where I hear a guy on his phone.  "Hey, asshole.  Haven't heard from ya."  It sounds at first as if he is describing a truck he wants to purchase.  Or is his own truck at the mechanic?  "'90 GMC half ton.  No I didn't.  I haven't got it out yet.  Do you have anything around?  As soon as I get it out, I'll call ya."  Or perhaps his truck is impounded.  The day after, I am on a bus home from working another late shift.  The driver of one bus is handing out tiny foil-wrapped chocolate hearts, one to each passenger as they come on board.  There is a passenger sitting up front, talking to the driver in a voice suggestive of drinking Draino for breakfast.  He has this voice, and he appears to be ten or perhaps fifteen years younger than myself.  I wonder what happened to his voice.  "Every Corvette made;" he is telling the driver, "the first one off the assembly line went on a truck to a museum.  And they dropped it.  Zero miles (on the odometer.)"
     It's the morning after Valentine's Day.  Another Saturday at 5 am.  I am headed to the bus stop across the street from where I live.  When I get there, a drunk on the bench gets up to say hi to me.  People don't get off benches to say hi to anyone which I've ever seen.  He asks me if I am cold, because he's got some whisky in an otherwise empty Pepsi bottle which he shows me.  he also shows me a knife given to him.  He tells me that he is "one of three assistant martial arts instructors."  He says not where.  The head instructor gave him the knife, a throwing knife which will "stick in a body.  But I don't stick people."  He tells me also that he was in the gas station next to the stop, and one clerk told him that he was drunk.  After work, I step off a bus back in my neighborhood, at a stop down the street across from a police station.  I see that there is a police car parked there and a police officer checking on a guy on the bench.  The guy is leaning over, passed out with his eyes open.  I don't think he is dead, I think I see his leg move slightly, but I'm not sure.  What strikes me when I see his face, recognize him.  I saw him months earlier, at a bus stop up the street, where he approached me for money.  When my bus comes, a paramedic unit arrives from the fire department, and we pass at least one ambulance.
     It's after work from a late shift, at the beginning of another week.  At the train station, a derelict guy with grey in his beard is shuffling back and forth on the platform, asking other people when the bus will be here.  He wanders up to a young guy with a high voice and a bright orange hoodie.  The guy is talking excitedly about seeing live wrestling, the kind on TV, at a complex usually reserved for rock concerts.  The two get on the bus when it comes, still talking about the event.  The young guy makes the bell, rung to ask the driver to stop,  go off by accident.  For reasons unknown, the driver gets angry, telling him that the next time he does that, he can get off.  I get off the bus back in my neighborhood, and get to a bus stop.  I watch a young guy cross the boulevard and come up to the stop.  From a distance, it appears as if he has a guitar in a case on his back.  When he gets up close, I see that it is, in fact, a samurai sword.  The following day, I am on a bus home with a guy who gets up from his seat and stands at the front.  The bus comes to a halt at a stop with a bench where a guy is slumped over.  Next to him is a police cruiser and an officer and a detective, both leaning on the cruiser.  The guy at the front of the bus yells out the open door to one of the police, who he recognizes.  He tells the driver that he himself was a volunteer police officer for five years.  With that, we leave the scene behind.
     It's the last week of the month, a foggy morning at 5 am. I stop into the deathburger.  While I am at the counter, I order in Spanish.  Suddenly, I see a Caucasian girl peer out from behind a corner.  It's as if she is reacting to hearing me.  She is staring at me with huge eyes outlined my mascara, her white face framed by a dark hoodie.  I think that I have seen her in here once before.  After watching me until I am out the door, and into the parking lot, she returns to her phone.  On her table is  what appears to be a designer purse almost as big as a backpack.  After work, on my last bus home, a white-haired guy gets on.  Though he is with a "care giver," he appears to talk only to himself in a gravel voice, and only makes unintelligible grunts.  Yet his beard is finely trimmed into a long wedge.  Later that night, I don't remember getting any sleep at all, kept up by a stomach ache.  After a day at work, where I shake my head to stay awake, I'm on a bus home.  A guy with a rolling suitcase with a handle, army fatigue pants, and missing front teeth gets on.  I wonder if he is prior service?  He has this compulsive sniffle.  It almost appears as if he is looking around for someone to engage.  He sees me with me head in my hand, nodding off, and he asks me if I have a toothache.  I tell him that I am tired.  He tells me that he got some teeth pulled, but that I probably don't care anyway, and "God bless."  We both change buses at one stop.  There's a frigid wind which has blown in and I head over the wall of a building to get away from both it and him.  He takes his rolling suitcase into the shelter full of kids who just got out of the high school across the street.  He says to them, "You mind if I come in here to get out of the wind?"  But he doesn't say in the shelter.  He stands outside of it, and he goes over to a trash can.  He pulls out of his pocket a tiny airline bottle of booze.  He unscrews the cap and downs the whole thing in a fraction of a second.  We both board my last bus, where he strikes up a conversation with someone else, about his teeth pulled, his food stamps ("Some times I don't eat for a day or two."  He does not appear thin, like other street people I see.)  The guy he is talking to tells him not to take medication with alcohol.

     ...smells kind of schwagy - piney and spicy.  Took me right back to 16 years old...a little limey and just a touch of that Trainwreck stink.   The high is a kind of "meh" - even as my first bowl of the day.  There's no body high at all...visible trichomes...  There's no parking in back...  If you're local...the point's kind of mute though.  No paperwork or anything - which I always love, 'cause it's useless anyway.  - Mile High Times, 2/2014

     The following day, I am working a late shift.  I get up the street and step off the bus.  Standing there at the stop is a tall guy dressed in black; black knit cap, black coat.  He has several silver necklaces around his neck.  He wants to know if I want to buy any of his joints for sale, $15 each.  He rattles this small plastic container, in which I see several of what appear to be big joints.  Though I don't know how good his stuff is, but they're big joints.  I decline.  I step into the deathburger for lunch.   There's a customer at a table, a middle aged guy, who I see here all the time.  Nice guy, but he has trouble speaking, and does it loudly and slowly, stretching out words.  I watch a young guy who I haven't seen before come inside, and sit at a table next to this other guy.  The young guy has orange hair and tank driver combat boots.  He notices the young guy as well, and asks him something about a "haaammburrrgurrr?"  When I get outside, I see another regular customer coming this way.  I've only ever seen him at 5 am.  It's Mr. foot-long grey goatee.  When I get to the bus stop, the joint guy is there.  The bus shows up, and a woman gets off.  I see him say something to her before she goes back around and in through the front door, to ask the driver something.  When she comes out again, she and the joint guy are on their way.  He contines to rattle his container of joints in front of passers by.
     On these late shifts, I get out of work...late.  When it's late, rather than during the daytime, the transit system runs less frequently.  It seems as though that, whenever I come home this way, it takes forever for this connecting bus to show up.   I'm sure that I have plenty of time to grab a sandwich from a pizza place in the corner.  I order, and am told that I will have a sandwich in "10 to 15 minutes."  I look at the time.  My bus will be here in 12 minutes.  A delivery driver comes in and says, "I went to two wrong addresses and I'm almost out of gas."  I am handed my sandwich as I watch my bus go by.  After looking at the schedule for another bus, I suddenly find another way home.  I hop on one bus to another going crosstown.  When I get on that one, there is a young guy in the back on his phone.  He is telling someone why he can't get a photo sent to his phone while he is speaking, and his opinion of game systems, and how he masturbates in front of his game system...
     The next morning I am at my usual bus stop.  Mr. foot long goatee is once again walking down the right lane of the boulevard instead of the sidewalk, headed for the deathburger.  Last night I came home in the dark.  This morning I am on the bus in the dark again.  For a minute, I can't remember if I am going home or going to work.