...the most bustling, population-rich core of the city... Capitol Hill is the densest neighborhood in the city. Eight of the 15 D 10 neighborhood tracts surveyed...have a population density that exceeds 15,000 residents per square mile. ...the number of people on our streets is significantly higher than the 71,000 residents who live here. We have more arterial commuter through traffic in our neighborhoods than other districts... - Life on Capitol Hill, 12/2019
[During] his second to last meeting, before protesters forced councilmembers to move rooms, one activist called [the outgoing mayor of the municipality of Aurora "a fuckboy"] and presented a cake that said "bye mayor [fuckboy]." [The outgoing mayor responded with,] "Thank you. I hear from other people...saying, 'What in the hell is happening in this city?' And, 'Who are these people getting up and speaking...?' ...with...council members...there's some that I never got through to."
[The new mayor of the municipality of Aurora was sworn in on December 2, and] said he would lead meetings with a "big gavel"... [A member of] Abolish ICE...created [a] five-foot long gavel [brought] to city hall [with which the new mayor posed for photos]. During the last meeting [some] city council members wore...t-shirts, often association [sic] with the Blue Lives Matter movement. In apparent response [a party chair] passed out t-shirts with...silhouettes of...two new [progressive] lawmakers... - Sentinel, 12/5/2019
... peasants flocked to the cities... But this did not make them "urban." "The values of a civil society are...created by citizens, and one or two generations...in the cities under a totalitarian regime had no chance of becoming citizens, politically or culturally."
It was "COWGIRL Night"...in [one] section of Bangkok. [From children to twentysomething women wore] sheriff's badges, high black-suede boots, and [denim cut-offs revealing their bare] buttocks. The evening was sponsored by Pepsi Max, whose...logo appeared on the [children's and] girls' cowboy hats. A voice over the loudspeaker announced that all major credit cards were accepted. The [children and] girls ran their...hands over...Western oil riggers, stockbrokers, and tourists... One girl with...overdeveloped breasts...wore a red kerchief... "I'm Khmer Rouge, darling, Aren't they cool!" referring to...guerillas who murdered over a million [of their fellow countrymen and women and children] in Cambodia...around the time she was born. Hostesses [were] marveling at each other's sheriff's badges. ...they were all looking for...foreign businessmen...to set them up in apartments. They lacked the hard mouths and cash register eyes...among the prostitutes in...Samarkand. ...the girls put their hands together and bowed in Buddhist supplication before they mounted the bar to gyrate... ...44.2 percent of Thai prostitutes worked in the agriculture sector before entering the sex industry. - Kaplan
...soldiers who...return to...peacetime, often describe combat as the peak event of their lives. After an experience like that, "everything is anticlimactic." …"everything" is all that [most] have ever experienced: work, love, children, family, friends... ...women have inhabited a world that warriors happily leave behind, or arrive at - only to destroy. [It's} as if [the] Warrior Caste had a kind of historical inevitability, transcending...everything we know as culture. - Ehrenreich
...loud children, their faces covered in sores; their heads shaved against lice. The dust of old carpets and the soot of coal fires blended...as though I were seeing a...lithograph or daguerreotype of Kashgar. Kashgar was populated by Turks...whose culture had been ground down by Mao's awful threshing machine. ...hippie back packers and similar Western travelers. Kashgar was...a nexus...of this 1990s hippie route. There were...packs of young men and boys...with hardened...faces...robbed...of their childhood innocence. The China one-child policy...had already collapsed in the minority areas. Overcrowding, unemployment... ...a Moslem resurgence... ...the lack of a burgeoning middle class... - Kaplan
A week or two ago, I was out at the corner where I live. I noticed a bicycle chained up to a pole, a bike I hadn't seen there before. It was spray-painted white - a "ghost" bike - placed somewhere in the metro area where a cyclist was killed in a traffic accident. Yesterday, I noticed that it had been moved to another pole some yards down my street. I can't think of any reason it should have been moved...unless it's stolen. The homeless are nothing if not resourceful. But if this is the case, it's nothing short of insidiously brilliant. Or perhaps simply the mother of invention. I don't know that someone homeless wouldn't realize that a ghost bike is supposed to remain in the same location, never mind that to be seen riding one couldn't make a bike more obvious that it's stolen. Or perhaps it would suggest that the rider must also be a ghost. The mother of invention - there's little room in the dynamics of survival for social opinion. Nothing surprises me in this neighborhood anymore. Today is Sunday, the 1st, and I am across the street at the Chinese place for lunch. From inside, through the window, once again I see my neighbor's grown son at the trash can. At first, he's simply having a smoke. When I turn around again, he isn't merely poking around the top of the can. He has his entire arm inside.
On Tuesday, November 26, the full fury of a [snow] storm struck Denver...exceeding two feet in height. ...plenty of Denver residents are angry about the snow-removal efforts... [The storm lasted from] "the wee hours of Tuesday...until early afternoon - about an inch an hour. [After plowed cleared a full circuit,] there were several more inches...and traffic packed it down - and the temperatures were quite cold." Once a layer of ice has formed...the options are...limited... "If you're looking at melting, [salt] would be so expensive that any benefit...would be minimal." - Westword, 12/5-11/2019
...downtown is family-friendly, right? Are we going down there to view the homeless of get stuck or fall on the ice and snow? There was snow everywhere. In the streets, in the open parking spots, all along the pedestrian mall...even where the Xmas market was being held. Why did my street get plowed over and over and downtown did not? - Westword, 12/5-11/2019
December 7th, a date with will live in infamy. This year, infamy falls upon a Saturday. I would have had this one off, but was offered the chance to work today. The snow and ice have mercifully been in retreat during a week of temperatures well above freezing. I'm pedaling up the sidewalk of a busy thoroughfare of industrial shops. Beyond the opposite side of this roadway is the interstate highway. I happen upon a point where the rest of the sidewalk, beginning across one side street, is occupied by a long line of who appear to be homeless. They are standing in between metal gates set up on the sidewalk, monitored by someone in an orange vest. The line leads to a large parking lot of a large brewery, where food trucks fill the lot. Rather than make the suicidal attempt to ride in the street...the wrong way up a one-way 45 mph zone...to pass a line which is so long I can't see the end around a corner, I choose the only alternative. I take the sidewalk of the side street, because the street itself is blocked off with a barrier and a police cruiser. The street is full of metal gates, along which the belongings of the homeless are lined up on the ground. I get to work on the first weekend of a Christmas sale around the corner. Past my work, all day long, stroll endless groups of apparent family and friends, some carrying various purchases.
...in...Cherry Creek State Park...a local political party activist stole a homeless man's tent and possessions before a recent snowstorm. On any given day, there's usually about three tents set up illegally in the state park...more than in recent memory. In a Facebook post last week, members of the Arapahoe Tea Party group argued they had an ethical obligation to remove drug addicts...because these people cannot get themselves the help they need. ...the man would be charged with theft if he did take certain items under the guise of park cleanup. [The perpetrator] did not respond to a request for comment. It's unclear whether the local Tea Party affiliate aims to...rid the state park - or area - of homeless people. - Sentinel, 12/5/2019
Our culture in general is experiencing a major disconnect from our environment... Shoes inhibit the ability to use our feet like a ground wire - passing negative energy to the ground and receiving positive energy from the earth. - natural awakenings, 12/2019
A massive statue of Mao loomed... Rather than the father of Asian communism, here he symbolized the conqueror from a...technologically advanced civilization. ...hippie backpackers...went in droves to places...moving too quickly from a medieval culture to a modern one...suddenly exposed to outside influences. ...two backpacker demands: that a place be "wholly exotic" accessible to Westerners. [Such places] were likely candidates for upheaval. In [Pakistan], it is a sign of manliness to pass other vehicles o blind curves... …"this is why...Pakistan is going places. Because we are ambitious and dynamic..."...as if...fatalities were a reasonable price for...social and economic dynamism.
Malthus...in 1748...propounded...that population, when unchecked, increases [faster] than food supply… Malthus...worked among the poor...and was in constant conflict with utopian[s] who believed social ills were exclusively the fault of a coercive state. He failed to see the [future abundance of Western resources.] - Kaplan
"Sobriety is awkward. There's ten minutes of awkwardness that you need to push through... That's what we've learned. We need to have cornhole or whiffle ball...or we need to have a TV that's got the sports games on. How to get through to the other side of that is definitely talking about it, figuring out a plan... ...to support anyone who's afraid they're going to feel like the only ones there not on drugs or alcohol. ...'find a sober wingman and charge up your battery.'" - Westword, 12/5-11/2019
...spoke English. My DJ was on acid and I think the rest of my crew was on shrooms - I think I was sober at the time, and I don't do psychedelics that much anyway. My DJ met us outside looking bizarre - he has this marine knife, bigger than a Bowie knife that he carries with him. I don't know how he gets it through security. Maybe because...he looks like he's white. He got that into Universal Studios. He had pills, a fucking knife, and some weed on him and all they said to him...was, "you have to leave that here." - (Salt) Magazine, Issue 13
Two different men's hats
Monday. I'm on the way back at the doughnut shop on the way to my gym before work. Along the way, I cross a busy thoroughfare. On the opposite corner in a shadow are a couple of homeless guys. One of them is a guy who could be in his twenties. He's a dead ringer for someone in a photo I remember seeing, taken during the Great Depression. Even his winter cap strikes me as the same one in the photo. I get to the shop at 9 AM. A succession of local Caucasian neighborhood residents come along. The guy behind the counter converses with them, and everyone is speaking at a rapid pace. I feel as though either they are on speed or I am on downers. The sound system is playing its usual droll contemporary pseudo-indie rock music. One couple in their thirties comes inside, with their son who appears not quite old enough to be in kindergarten. The dad is in a tan, felt, short-brimmed hat. The mom is responding to each sales pitch from the clerk with a perky, "Sure!"
We live in crazy times...art & culture can be curated by the masses... Localization is a reality... The old way of thinking is a world of hurdles and barriers, ones that breed discrimination and segregation of talent, aesthetics and personality. We will make this market competitive and shirk the old hurdles and barriers [and] build our own regional school of art. - (Salt) Magazine, Issue 13
It's the Friday before Christmas. I arrive at work and spend a few minutes before clocking in with a coworker on break. We get to talking about her bizarre family troubles with two seventeen-year-olds and a twenty-five-year-old stranger beating up her cousin, who is a child. Because the cousin has a sibling who is a popular hip hop artists on the internet. I believe that she lives in a neighborhood where this is an old story. She relates an attempt to rape her by a twenty-year-old when she was eleven. She mentions where it took place 30 years ago, an alley on a street corner. It's in the neighborhood I pass through every day on the way to and from work. Speaking of work, on any given day, individual groups of different downtown residents will saunter past the windows. A group of executives, followed by a group of homeless, followed by a group of hipsters. This afternoon, someone who I think is a man in his thirties comes stumbling along. I suddenly realize that he's not wearing any pants or underwear. I expect to be confronted by a penis when my brain tells me that something is missing. This may be someone who appears to be male above the neck, but it's indeed a woman. She stumbles along, leaning out of the way of our driver before lumbering past him and down the sidewalk. I wonder if she has been sexually assaulted. My coworker wonders if she has been given meth by some homeless and possibly raped. Our driver watches as the building's concierge gets on the phone to the police. After work, I'm on the way home in the dark. In the neighborhood between the bike trail and my boulevard, in a school parking lot, a street racer is doing doughnuts. A "woo-girl" goes "Woo!" Saturday. The stop for the bus to the supermarket. On the bench is an open bag of cookies. A familiar middle-aged guy comes shuffling along. He spots the bag and takes a couple of cookies before he is on his way.
...Sukarno...his acquiescence to the Communists' demand...that he introduce...political commissars in the armed forces. ...the Indonesian Women's Movement. [They] would not be difficult to train...for participation in the coup... ...a Revolutionary Council...would take over from the progressive Army elements...then dismiss the Cabinet and rule the country... - Time out of Hand, by R. Shaplen, 1969
The following week, I work Monday, Thursday and Friday at our newly acquired plant. It's a special and a transitional week for our company. I meet the manager of this plant who I immediately come to recognize as one of my professional contemporaries. On Friday, one of our drivers bring in the remnants of the supplies from our old plant. It's a signal of the end of that plant. Last week brought me good news. I got my first energy bill during a full billing period when my furnace hasn't stopped running during cold days and nights. It's not as large as I feared. Today, more good news. It's payday, and my check s large enough for me to pay the rest of my root canal, to pay for next years annual gym membership, and even to get a calendar for 2020. Those are bills I am happy to put behind me. Saturday is my turn to work. Small snowflakes are blowing in and have already accumulated more, I think, than the three inches predicted. It's enough to cause me to take caution, but it isn't as bad as the previous Hell On Ice! I make it across my boulevard and I'm making my way past the bus stop where I used to catch the first bus in the morning, now five years past. I still roll past the occasional character in the shelter. This morning, around 8 AM, there is a small, out of place group here. Three elderly Caucasian guys in what appear to be the same navy down coat. One cranes his neck to peer outside the perforated wall, to spy the bus. My back rim slips slightly on the sidewalk, and the one closest to me speaks up. "Get of that bike. You'll break your neck. Lord have mercy."
Sunday. I decide to purchase a wall calendar from this paycheck. The bookstore is steps from the downtown train stop. I wouldn't be doing much bike riding. I may as well take the transit system. My transfer from this morning's grocery shopping is good for another hour. I head out to the bus stop where, yesterday morning, I was told by who I assume was a waiting passenger to dismount my bike. Instead of a trio of elderly white guys, the shelter's occupants include a couple of guys in jerseys of the city football team. There must be a home game today. Two express buses roll past through the melting snow, exclusive for those residents of my boulevard headed straight to the stadium up the street. Eventually, a bus with an actual route then collects us there, and onboard is a drunk in a wheelchair. He's conversing with a couple of middle-aged guys in a seat across from him, who appear to know him. His brakes are not locked, and he slides back and forth according to the acceleration and braking of the bus. At one point he slides backwards into another passenger in a wheelchair. One of the drunk's two friends asks him if he has seen his sister. He hasn't. "You know James West died?" the drunk asks him. "He was killed," he responds. He tells him that the drunk's sister came into town to "investigate it." From the bus to the train, to the downtown transit hub. On the platform, next to the free pedestrian mall shuttles, is a crazy who is attempting to sing. His voice sounds as if a metal rake is being pulled over asphalt, and it resounds throughout the station. His style is one of someone in physical internal pain. The only intelligible words coming out of his mouth are "puppy love". A couple of transit security officers show up to ask him how he is getting along in life. They also ask him if he is going to board a shuttle. He acts as if he suddenly remembers to do so. Before long, he's in a seat on my shuttle. He returns to his painful singing/scraping, at a relatively lower volume. I'm out of the shuttle, inside the bookstore, and have tracked down an interesting wall calendar. I order another and purchase this one before I'm out the door and back on another shuttle. This one takes me to the old deathburger homeless central. I'm at the front of the line. Directly behind me is a homeless guy who is watching the security guard handling food packaging behind the counter. "He shouldn't even be doin' that," I hear him say. "He don't even have no gloves on." A friend of the guy behind me suggests that they make their exit. The guy goes ahead of me to ask for some ice water. I order food, head out, and grab a shuttle back to the train. Onboard this one is a silent guy in a seat. His face below his eyes are covered on this winter day. He's in khaki pants with faded magic marker uniformly down the front of both legs, forming rows of "666"s.
The following day, I'm back at our newly acquired plant. In the morning, I'm on my way to my own store. I stop first at a 7-Eleven down the street from work. I'm inside and back outside when a guy hanging out asks me if I know anyone with bicycles for sale. Then I'm off, stopping for the light across a busy downtown thoroughfare. A guy in a hard hat, orange vest, earphones, and a plastic grocery bag crosses on the red. He tells me to be careful. "I busted my ass a couple of times (on my own bike.)" he reveals. I arrive at work and head down the street, for a beverage from the restaurant next to our old plant. Parked outside of this plant are two flatbed tractor trailers. Buckled onto one is all of the remaining machinery from inside which we no longer need, including our drycleaning machine. I remember the first modern drycleaning machine I ever saw, that one newly minted and coming into the place where I was working at the time. It was the only previous time I saw a drycleaning machine on a flatbed, some 28 years ago. Here at the end of this year, we're finished inhabiting this old building. The new property owner has also purchased the restaurant next door. He bought the business as well as the property. He wants to expand it. The owner of the restaurant jokes that he now needs a job. At our current plant, after the day's work is done, I have a discussion with the longtime manager there. She's an old school drycleaner and spotter like myself, and we discuss spotting chemicals. She has one which I used to work with way back when, and haven't seen for a while. These are reminders of how long I've been in the business, and how many people I've seen pass through it. And then there is this. I've been living where I do, coming up on 13 years now, as long as the previous home I rented. During which one of my neighbors has a family, including grown children. One is the guy I've mentioned, who strolls the neighborhood extra slowly. And I wouldn't call this place, with it's discarded tires and carbon monoxide, exactly a strolling kind of neighborhood. But I digress. This month, I saw him panhandling for the first time. He was outside the Chinese restaurant, manning a usual panhandling spot for various rotating characters. I mention to one of the staff that he's my neighbor. They reveal to me for the first time during these years that he's been doing this since before I got here. One time, he came in a bought food with a $100 bill. He took the change and handed it out to random passersby. They say that no one knows their neighbors anymore. I guess they don't...
Speaking of which, New Year's Eve, I'm out collecting my neighbor's recycle cans. My big neighbor comes out of his back gate. I believe he's the guy I saw being frisked by the police some weeks ago, a few feet from where he now stands. He tosses or kicks an empty shooter bottle across the snow and ice. It comes to rest next to another empty. He pulls out his phone and looks at it. The last can I take out of the way of the parking lot entrance turns out to be his neighbor's. He tells me, "You shouldn't have done that for her. She's a piece of shit. You shouldn't have done that for her." If he recognizes me from the first time we met just a few short years past, he doesn't mention. I ask him if the can belongs to a "her." "Yeah. She's my neighbor." Later on, I realize that I've seen her for the first time just this year. "And you definitely better not touch mine," he adds. I don't see the recycle can for the condo I've seen him come out of. Neither does he mention the last time we spoke. Again, I was bringing in residents recycle cans. That time, he was questioning whether I was putting the cans next to the correct condo units. I'm not sure he holds me in much regard. You see, I'm his neighbor also. Walking back to my unit, I hear the sound of a tumbling can. A few minutes later, I'm out at my own gate taking down my Christmas lights. I see that he knocked over her can. It's sideways there in the snow. After sundown, I head across the street to grab a bite to eat. On my way back, I see his gate open. He's crouching down over at the corner of the townhome complex. The end of his cigarette glows orange in the dark.
...a judge ruled...the city's urban camping ban...ordinance unconstitutional last week... Denver County Judge Johnny C. Barajas...said the ban amounts to cruel and unusual punishment. Earlier Friday, Denver police...officers stopped doing...street checks for unauthorized camping...after learning of the ruling, "pending further guidance" from the city attorney's office. The city appealed the case Monday morning... - The Denver Post, 12/31/2019
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