April 2014, The Rise of Mr. Footlong Goatee

     It's the morning after April Fools' Day.  5 am.  I must have been a fool for answering the call from my boss on the 1st, my day off, to work a closing shift just to turn around this morning to open.  I step off the bus just up the street from where I live.  It's cold and I'm bundled up.  At the stop is a little high school girl.  She asks me in Spanish if I speak Spanish.  It isn't clear right away what I speak, but she quickly switches to English.  She would like me to accompany her to my own bus stop and wait with her until it comes.  And this is why:  She sneaked out of her house to visit a friend, and she needs to sneak back in to change clothes before heading off to school.  But along the way (here in my wonderful neighborhood), she was pursued by some guy in a car attempting to give her a ride.  He ended up chasing her to McDonalds where she lost him, only to make it to her bus stop to find a tweaker lady who screamed at her, calling her a bitch.  When we get across the street, she points this lady out to me.  The lady has fallen silent.  This girl strikes me as telling the truth.  In fact, she's adorable.  I will admit it, she could be my daughter.  She says that my neighborhood has a lot of "creepers."  I like her description so much that I ask her to repeat it.  I tell her about the creepers; the guys who slow down their trucks when they happen across middle school girls on the sidewalk, the dispossessed zombies, the goddamned nickel and dime hustlers.  She's on her way to get her GED, and her dream is to attend the Chicago Art Institute.  She shows me her drawings on her phone.  They are detailed and interesting.
     She keeps telling me that the guy who chased her really shook her up.  I can see the nervous energy.  She tells me that she has learned her lesson about sneaking out of her house.  I like this kid's style.  On the streets of my neighborhood, the expression for redemption can sound as if it's just another hustle.  But this young kid is not another creeper.  And I believe that she is convinced that neither am I.
     That afternoon, I am on my way to a service for the daughter of a coworker.  Her oldest daughter was 24 years old and she committed suicide.  To say that it's been a tough week for her is an understatement.  Half of the way there, a couple of guys get on.  The one doing the talking is a young guy with short, blonde, spiky hair and sunglasses with fashionable white frames.  He relates to the other that, while on parole, he couldn't stand his halfway house.  Si he "went out and got high as a kite.  I came back and I told them that I wasn't going to finish my parole there.  I refused to take a UA because I didn't want to drop a hot UA."  So they sent him to the El Paso County jail.  "And let me tell you something about the El Paso County jail..."  (What's that, 'you don't want to go t the El Paso County jail?')  "...you don't want to go to the El Paso County jail."  He tells the other guy that he finished 45 days in a halfway house a couple hours south of here.  He was employed for fourteen months until he lost his job.  He had no trouble while he was employed, but since then, he's been in and out of county jail.  I step off the bus to purchase a rose, and I walk a couple blocks to the Funeria Latina.  I go inside and put my rose next to a bouquet on a small table next to the casket.  There's a tiny young woman inside, motionless.  I hug her mom and I tell her in Spanish that I can't stay, but that everyone from work will be here soon.

     ...a graffiti vandal...confessed to 118 and more acts of vandalism against our neighborhoods.  ...also gave scientific information on other vandals...  There will be a concentrated effort...in ticketing speeders...  They will also be looking for pedestrians crossing...illegally...  DPD is also working with the new Walmart...on...anticipated shoplifting at the store.  The manager of this new Walmart comes from another Walmart, which experienced 900 cases of shoplifting in the first year of operation.  ...the juvenile probation department  mentioned the burden that juvenile graffiti criminals have in repaying restitution fines...  The group was reminded to be careful of people coming to the door asking for help, and robbing their homes, etc.  - Nextdoor Westwood, 4/2/2014

     The next morning, I am at the bus stop across the street from where I live an hour or so later than usual.  With me are a middle aged guy and a younger one.  Wet Spring snow has been falling all night and continues to come down.  The two are bantering back and forth about the bane of the working man.  It takes forty dollars to park downtown.  If it wasn't snowing, they'd both be on their bicycles.  The commuter train didn't used to let you bring your bike on board, so as far as your bike, "you had to ride the motherfucker all the way to work."  Any place they work now, they get less than 32 hours per week, so that the company they work for isn't required to pay health insurance.  And the temp places...well, don't even get them started.  When we get up the street, I get off and head over to the deathburger.  It's only an hour later than I am usually in here, but there are one or two more homeless here by now.  You can spot them, bot by unwashed skin or clothes.  Not at all.  I see one guy in a clean coat and shoes.  But he is sitting at the table with no food.  He is staring out the window at the falling snow.  He is looking at it with an expression; it's as if he may just as well be here as any place else.  He looks through the glass toward no future at all.

     This badass...bartender will first surprise you with her shock of pink hair.  One of the most frequently spotted drag queens in Denver...always evokes a laugh.  ...Denver's own gay cowboy bar...  Featuring two dance floors - one pop, one country...  ...with an atmosphere prime for Denver's drag queens and queen wannabes.  PLACE TO GET CRAZY  ...it's Thursday's underwear night...   -  Out Front, 4/2/2014

     Today was a short day at work.  I'm having a late lunch at a delicious Italian lace just down the street from work.  A middle aged couple are sitting with another middle aged guy, in the booth in front of me.  They went somewhere, Vegas?  They did some gambling and the husband was comped for something.  He mentions friends from Sweden who couldn't make it.  There is some kind of dessert they enjoyed so much, they had it every night.  "Every night, every night..."  I am unable to get ice for my soda because the machine is empty.  I see an employee come out with a huge basin of ice to refill the dispenser.  The other guy is showing the couple video on his phone, of someone's infant.  I can hear adults applauding and baby noises.  "Hey look he stuck his arm in something," the husband says.  "Look at him now!"  The wife mentions something about declaring bankruptcy to get a divorce.  I hear more baby sounds followed closely by laughter.  The guy with the phone tells the couple that his phone can hold 558 pictures.  "Unless I move them to I-File," so his wife tells him.  "Then they go somewhere else."
     "Go to an Apple store," the husband tells him.  "Or Verizon, go to Verizon."  The next morning, I am back at the deathburger at 5 am, Mr. Foot-long Goatee is at the counter.  The woman behind the counter asks us to giver her a minute.  He replies, "I got 24 hours."  The only people within earshot of his joke are a young couple who appear to be Chinese.  If they get it, they don't laugh.  Close to twelve hours later, I step off the bus after work, back in my own neighborhood again.  Milling around is a guy with short salt and pepper hair, mirrored sunglasses, baggy pants such as a teenager would wear, and a cane.  He's milling around back and forth.  He wants to know if I have a quarter.  He recognizes someone he knows behind the bus shelter.  She asks him how he is doing.  He tells her that he was hit by a car.  "I got a pin in my hip, a pin in my femur, a pin in my jaw..."  The next morning is another Saturday, at 5 am.  At the us stop across the street from where I live is a guy who is talking to himself, berating an imaginary person as if they are there in front of him.  "You pussy ass piece of shit.  I'm gonna kick your ass."  He goes on to say something about not listening to your father.  I catch the bus up the street and am in the deathburger, where Mr. Footlong Goatee wanders up to the counter.  He jokes with an employee who knows him. I'm mad at you," Goatee says, "'cause you fuckin' let this guy sit in here a three o' clock."  Over the speakers plays "You Make Me Feel Like Dancing."

     ...Wax Wednesdays - when you can take $5 off the per-gram price of hash - and free-joint Fridays.  ...free THC suckers...  ...some edibles companies have been busted in recent months for selling pot-infused foods with little to no pot in them...  ...you've probably...walked out the door and left your bag of herb sitting on the counter next to a freshly poured travel cup of coffee...  Westword, Best of Denver 2014

     Another week begins at 5 am.   At the deathburger are two soda machines.  Mr. Footlong Goatee and I each use one, but he is unable to make his work.  For the first time ever, he speaks to me.  "How come yours comes out right and mine doesn't?"  Looking at him, I discover that he has no teeth.  Over the speakers plays, "Thunder only happens when it's raining..."  I take the bus to the train, to another bus.  When I get on, a little guy with white hair and a white beard in one of the front seats launches out of it.  He makes the sign of the cross, holds his right arm in the air, and walks off the bus quietly singing.  The next morning, back at the deathburger, Mr. Goatee comes in right after me.  He tells a kid behind the counter that he was several blocks away, by a liquor store, where he "saw a cop."  The following morning, I am at the train station around 5:30.  Once in a while, among the forlorn-looking masses going to their grocery or Goodwill or construction jobs, there is someone who appears out of place.  Today, it's a tall guy in a white cardigan, beige slacks, and loafers, holding a binder in his left arm.  He chooses to look at me from across the track and say, "It might be cold now but this afternoon it's going to 78."  Great.  I work in a dry cleaning plant.
     A couple of days later is another Saturday.   I am on a bus to the train station.  We pass a small handful of shops.  On the sidewalk in front are a couple of guys curled up asleep.  After work, I've come back up the very same street.  At the corner is my connecting bus, which is parked.  The passengers are waiting for another to come along.  When it does, we all get on.  The driver of this bus asks the first driver what happened.  He answers that, a passenger came on the bus and asked the driver to call an ambulance.  We head off on the new bus, and coming the other direction is a fire truck.
     Sunday.  I am coming back from seeing a movie.  I'm on a bus with a woman who asks me the time.  A couple of drunks are in a seat next to me.  One has his arm around the other, gently shaking him, asking, "Hey, are you awake?  Are you awake?"  We pass a cathedral, and the woman who asked me the time crosses herself.
     Monday.  5 am.  Deathburger.  Mr. Footlong Goatee is coming out of the men's room.  He's stretching his arms.  He does his thing, which is look at every table for trash, throw away any he finds, and look in the trash for anything he may want.  Over the speakers comes "Heaven knows, it's not the way it should be..."  A couple of mornings later, I am there again, but he's not.  I ask a lady behind the counter where he is, and she replies that he doesn't come in on Wednesdays.  His day off?  I take the bus to the train, to wait for a connecting bus.  When it shows up, I see something which I can't remember the last time I've seen.  It's a Caucasian guy with Eurospecs in what is perhaps a Goretex zippered sweater.  He's in a hurry to catch a train with two boxes of doughnuts in his hands.

Left at the Station
A Civil Rights Perspective on Transit Justice in the Front Range, January 2014
     ...data was collected including 221...surveys...from the Westwood neighborhood.  Of data from multiple neighborhoods, (58.1%) reported an annual household income under $20,000.  ...(72%) of residents stated that they could not afford monthly passes.  27.1% of those residents from Westwood.  ...directly impacted women and people of color.  ...discounts only benefit those able to pay for a lump sum of passes at once...  Multiple families reported reported...RTD security cited their child, but because of a language barrier for parents, parents unable to get off work...a bench warrant and eventual arrest of the child.
Community Focus: Westwood
     The neighborhood is 81% Latina/o.  35% of Westwood residents live below the poverty line...  ...the...neighborhood has...lack of safe sidewalks, crosswalks...the large number of shift and service workers.  ...a mother of two young children stated that her children had to miss school...to prioritize - groceries instead of bus fares.  ...transit deserts such as the Westwood neighborhood.

     The basic idea of Marxism on...the state.  The state is the product...of the "irreconcilability" of class antagonisms.  ...the royal power, resting upon...the aristocrats and bishops, is opposed by the bourgeoisie and the squirearchy.  ..the conditions...now created, for the single rule of the Presbyterian bourgeoisie.   But before the royal power can be broken, the parliamentary array has converted itself into an independent political force.  It has concentrated in its ranks...the craftsmen and farmers.  This army powerfully interferes in the social life...as a Praetorian Guard, and as...a new class opposing...the rich bourgeoisie.  - Howe

     ...noticed twice now a group (6-8) of teenage [sic] males on bikes others walking in alley checking out closely the back of properties and vehicles not far from where I live.   - posted to Facebook, 4/11/2014


     After work, I am back at the very same train station where I saw the doughnut guy.  It's now just about eleven hours later.  I get on a bus and sit across from a guy in a backwards baseball cap, work boots, and a rosary around his neck.  He has with him what appears to be a CD player that plugs into the wall.  For the next few days, I am taking antibiotics in preparation for a root canal.  I open the bottle, and the guy says to me, "Pardon me sir, may I have one too."

     On October 2012, a state investigator discovered multile illegal, afterhours sales of medical marijuana at the medical marijuana place across the street from my usual bus stop.  The place has a recent sign posted: "closed for remodelling."  ...last week...state regulators moved to shut down the business, sending notices of denial...also were ordered not to sell or transfer marijuana...  The businesses have 60 days to request a hearing...  ...VIP has not sought a court order that would allow it to remain open.  VIP owners have expressed a willingness to get out of the business...  - Denver Post posted to Facebook, 4/15/2014
     Back in 1984...right across the street.  What is now a liquor store used to be a Skippers' Seafood.  - comment on post
     This explains why that liquor store has what appears to be a dock surrounding the building.

     The stink from the marijuana grow facilities along the Platte (River, to the north of here) waft up into the neighborhood next to mine on occasion - reminds me of a humungous skunk that got ticked off! - Nextdoor Westwood, 4/17/2014

     I'm on a bus home after work, at a train station under the disarray of construction and relocated bus gates.  A young woman in shorts and holding a blanket around her shoulders approaches me on my way to catch a bus home.  She asks me which direction, east or west, her street is.  When we get on the bus, a supervisor is instructing a driver.  At first I think I smell month-old body odor.  Then I think I smell marijuana.  The supervisor tells someone in back that their marijuana needs to be sealed tight enough that it can not be smelled.  I hear a kid tell her that "It's okay."  (Just mellow out, right?)  After a minute or two of helping the driver navigate a parking lot which has become a new part of our route, the supervisor again tells the kid that the odor is too strong, telling him that the smell of marijuana gives her "a headache right away."  I'm not sure that he is sympathetic.  He tells the her that he just got his medical card, and that he's preparing for 4/20.  I'm not sure how sympathetic she is.  She tells him that "people don't want to smell it.  It gives them stomachaches and headaches."  Hey, I know we aren't teenagers anymore, but we ain't exactly over the hill.  The girl in the blanket comes up from the back and sits in front of me.  With her in a shopping bag, she has a small dog.  Perhaps it was getting a stomachache from the pot odor.  The kid with the weed comes to sit in front of her.  He appears to think that he is hot shit.  He tells her that his name is "Blaze."  What he lacks in originality he makes up for in...nothing at all.  Rather than with an appearance of a stoner or a gangsta, he's exceptionally ordinary-looking.  A woman two seats behind me complains to the supervisor that a middle-aged guy between us is spitting on the floor.  When she comes to investigate, Blaze says, "He's an old man.  Leave him alone."
     It's been an interesting weekend.  On Good Friday, I was downtown purchasing the next month's bus pass.  I stopped into a deathburger there, when the lunch rush was at its peak.  I stepped past a big dog on the floor, with a silver water dish.  Six registers were going.  An employee with a broom came to the front of the line and began directing customers toward open registers, including me.  I stood inches away in front of one cashier, who ignored me as she took five customers' orders.  I wanted to see how long she would go on ignoring me.  I decided that she thought I had already ordered.  I was caught in some kind of trap.  I asked to speak to the manager, who was behind one of the registers.  I told him the situation.  He told me twice, "You didn't tell her you were ready to order."  No, it didn't occur to me.  A couple of days later, on Easter, I was downtown again for the nation's first legal 4/20 rally, or something like that.  I was back at the same deathburger, ordering lunch from the same cashier.  This time, she saw me.  This time, I didn't see the manager.
     The following morning, I catch a bus for the short ride up the street.  The usually crowded bus, full of people on their way to work, is virtually empty.  Was everyone partying too hard on Easter, or are they sound asleep after celebrating 4/20?  I head to the deathburger.  I see what appears to be a young guy and his girlfriend, outside the place.  Mr. Footlong Goatee is inside, gesturing for them to come inside.  I will put real money down that he has never seen them before.  They do not appear to see him.  He looks like a Mongolian truck driver.  When the pair come inside, I realize that they are one guy with a BMX bike, and another guy with a skateboard and hair past his shoulders.

     You know, folks.  A few short yards from where I live, there is a middle school...  Kepner Middle school...will remain in its current state for the 2014-2015 school year.  ...four new schools are applying to take over...due to the school's continued poor performance on tests and the falling stature of the school in the area.  "Kepner has not been meeting the needs of...the community..." said...chief officer of family and community engagement for DPS."  A DPS spokeswoman...also noted that 69 percent of incoming sixth-graders are "chosing" out of Kepner...  "The community was telling us something."  Parents serving on the committee to pick new schools said the time is right...  ...the school...still has issues with bullying, fights and lack of leadership.  - Denver Post posted to Facebook 4/22
     One person, who makes it sound as if he was at a meeting about this, commented on the post:  It was almost crazy to watch people talk to you like politicians doing verbal gymnastics...to win your vote...  I liken it to a nuclear meltdown...toxic as hell and you'll never know the truth until things have cooled off for 1000 years.  For my blog's sake, I hope not.  But never mind the goddamned politicians.  The kids can;t tell us what goes on there?

     I'm on a train to the next station.  I'm sitting next to a couple of guys who sound as if they both drive for a living.  One is talking about being tracked digitally by the company in his vehicle.  He mentions another employee who was tracked to a location where he decided to eat lunch, and was told "You can't take lunch like this."  At the station, I grab a bus for the long haul to work.  After a little ways, the driver announces, "Hey man, this is Florida."  (As in Florida Avenue.)  In both seats in front of me, on each side, is a guy asleep.  One of them hears the driver, and he reaches over to wake the other guy before he goes back to sleep.

     ...the Turkish city of Antakya...  Anyone here who is not a spy or a soldier is a deal-maker.  The place has has become a sprawling bazaar dedicated to buying guns, loyalties, and occasionally journalists.  Polish intelligence agents, al-Qaeda recruiters, Scandinavian hostage negotiators, American medics, Canadian security professionals, and fitfully employed freelance journalists...sometimes in the same hotel.  - Vanity Fair, May 2014
     If any street defines Denver, it is Colfax.  From the eccentric homegrown shops...to the melange of legislators and street people...  Playboy magazine once called it "the longest, wickedest street in America."  If the neighborhood festival gets its way...Colfax will gets its due as a destination neighborhood, without need of gentrification or "new urban" swank.  "My long-term goal is to identify this area and keep it that organic visceral Colfax feel, but market it for people to come and enjoy."  - Life on Capitol Hill, April, 2014

     I step off a bus after work, a short walk from home.  I glance down a side street.  I see a truck with a snow plow on the front, pushing another car along.  The next morning, I am at the bus stop across the street from where I live at 5am.  There is a middle-aged couple there who I've never seen before.  They are dressed perhaps as though they are natives of Tibet.  When the bus shows up, the lady gets on. as the gentleman stays behind.  At the train station are a couple of guys.  One is wearing a hat and sport coat as though his grandfather may have worn.  The other is staring bewildered at a ticket kiosk.  I jump on a train to another bus.  In the back of the bus are a couple of guys discussing "Fuckin' Jessie," and "I should've fuckin' called in today."  It must be the shit to be down and out.  I think that I hear one of them mention "cookies," and that "someone should go in there and spill all the fuckin' popcorn."  When I get back to my own neighborhood after work, I walk past the bus stop across the street from where I live.  I see a couple of familiar-looking drunks in the shelter.  They are standing next to a small grill on the ground as they look for customers coming out of the liquor store next door, to ask them for change.  The next morning, I am back at this very bus stop on another Saturday at 5 am.  I watch the deathburger behind where I live.  It's closed for construction.  A police car has pulled up and is shining it's mounted light at something.  An officer with a flashlight gets out.  From across the street come running the couple from Tibet.
     Saturday mornings of late, I wait for a bus on an embankment at a train station.  Below, the concrete expanse of the station is lit up like a stage.  I watch as a train snakes it's way slowly down the track.  Downtown is lit up as well.  A crescent moon rises through a cloud above the state capitol.  Dawn is just rising over Sports Authority field.  When the bus comes, I get on and become engrossed in a magazine, missing my stop by a couple of blocks.  On my way back, I pass a restaurant empty except for a pair of police officers.  The train takes me to a bus, carrying a middle-aged guy in a windbreaker with some kind of racing stripes on the sleeves.  He has slicked-back hair and a face too weathered for his age.  A guy in his twenties gets on.  The two appear to know each other.  The young guy is travelling by bicycle.  It sounds as if he tells the other guy about finding a place to live and what the kitchen is like, about his W-4 form.  I wonder if the two met in prison.  The young guy bids the older farewell and departs.  A ways down the road, the older one takes his coffee cup, grabs a bus schedule which he sticks in his back pocket, and gets off at a deathburger.

     3rd time in the last 30 minutes (to the west of where I live)...one shot every 10 or 15 minutes since 8:30 (PM.)  Called police but they said busy night and they will check it out.  - posted to Facebook, 4/23/14

     I'm off to grocery shopping on a grey Sunday spitting rain.  I get on a bus, which has a couple of middle-aged women.  One has on a T-shirt with what looks like native Inuit designs.  She is holding three completed puzzles mounted to cardboard and varnished, all loosely wrapped in transparent plastic which extends around her back.  She asks the driver if a particular bus runs on Sunday.  The other woman barks, "All buses run on Sunday."  She has a fold-up shopping cart with a box in the bottom which has her purse and a jar in it.  When she gets off the bus, she wheels away her loudly squeaking shopping cart.  When I come out of the supermarket, I sit next to a middle-aged guy on the bus bench.  He has on sunglasses on this overcast day.  He calls someone on his phone, and says, "Are you alive?  I'm over here at the grocery store.  No dumb ass, across from the Walmart.  When I get there, we'll get a couple of beers."  (It's 10 am.)  A couple of hours later, I am at my usual bus stop, headed across town.  I'm there with a guy who is pretty quiet, until he walks over to the bus schedule attached to the outside of the shelter, and stretches back his fist and gives it a punch.  He's in and out of the shelter, looking down the avenue for the bus.  He screams "NOOOOOO!"  He lights a cigarette.  When the bus comes, he gets on and rides to the train station without incident.  An hour later, I am in a deli.  Sitting at a table is an elderly guy having a sandwich.  He is meticulously folding up his trash.  He has a bag, the out side of which is printed with "The Sopranos."  On the bus home, we stop at a red light, where we are flagged down by a young guy who claims that his friend across the street needs the bus.  "How often does the bus come," he asks, "every hour?"  The driver tells him this bus comes by every half hour.  The guy looks across the street at his friend, he looks at the driver, and shrugs his shoulders.

     While in...underground hip-hop - a radical critique can be found...  If 24 was the...ticking-time-bomb scenario...and its constant stream of one-dimensional terrorist enemies - Homeland is...said to be the president's favorite program.  ...a white American marine, is captured...by Al-Qaeda in Iraq (later this becomes the Taliban in Afghanistan - the two are apparently interchangeable)...  He then plots to get elected to Congress and...subvert US foreign policy.  ...he agrees to work as a double agent.  ...the Al-Qaeda leaders who recruited him, enters into an implausible alliance with Hezbollah...somehow manages to enter the US with teams of heavily armed commandos...  ...Homeland presents radicalization as closely tied to Islamic culture and identity.  All of the major Muslim characters are terrorists...a Palestinian television journalist based in Washington who has easy access to the corridors of power and secretly plots on behalf of Al-Qaeda...  The series' lack of concern for the differences between Hezbollah and Al-Qaeda, or between Iraq and Afghanistan, coupled with its ridiculous portrayal of Beirut as a terrorist enclave, give an impression of terrorism as a general cultural problem in the Middle East disconnected from specific political contexts.  ...a battle between American values (symbolized by...family life) and Islamic values (presented as implying terrorism).  Implicitly, Homeland is suggesting that the more culturally Muslim you are, the more likely you are to be a terrorist.  ...in Homeland...the only Muslim voices raising political issues do so as terrorists.  ...involve characters trying to justify terrorism...political dissent and terrorism are collapsed into each other...  - Extra!, April 2014

     It's a Monday on the last week of April, 5 am.  I'm at my usual bus stop across the street from a medical marijuana establishment.  It's a place which has been in the news as of late.  This morning, a TV news van is parked in the lot, and a couple of guys are wandering around.  I am at the bus stop with a middle-aged guy in work boots who I've never see before.  he asks me, "Hey, you know what time the bus comes man?"  The following morning, I am going past the same bus stop, headed for the deathburger.  Coming the opposite way is a girl in hose carrying her shoes.  They are sparkly high heels.  She has on plaid shorts.  When I get back to the stop, she is there putting on mascara.  The bus comes and she gets on.  She puts in some change, and the driver tells her that she needs more quarters.  She appears surprised, and makes a general request of the passengers for a couple more quarters.  Someone gives her two, which she puts in the fare box, and the driver tells her that she needs three more quarters.  The same person gives her three more.  After a short distance, she rings the bell for the next stop, and then tells the driver that she needs the stop past the next two.

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?

     ...we innovate, inspire and support, we create an authentic space...  ...Conscious jewelry, United Healing Modalities and DNA, ETs to Enlightenment.  ...the Angelic Realm of Light.  She shares photography, revealing this reality as it appears on digital images.  ...prepare a spiritual cleansing bath using items that are common the kitchen [sic] and personal items.  - Body Mind Spirit CELEBRATION Fair

     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
     Everyone comes out for Spring...  Some want to find steep terrain and untracked glades; others are in it for the apres ski.   Our job...is to dig in and experience Vail...and then tell the tale.  ...pursue the latest in kids' gear.  Follow...one daring duo's quest to ski seven resorts in one exhausting day, and then create your own plan of attack for this, that and the other.  Just make sure you enjoy it...
     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.

January 2014

     ...it's the fear of yet again being jumped and robbed by other homeless men.  "It's definitely getting worse out here."  ...homeless people say since Denver banned sleeping on the streets in 2012, popular, secluded sleeping areas have become more crowded, increasing the odds for trouble.  Those who live on the street learn where...to avoid trouble...  "The only ones who harass me are the police."  ...prostitution became too dangerous.  - Denver Post, 1/3/2014
     I have felt this before when I have published stories about alternative lifestyles.  Or about sexuality.  I am afraid some readers may feel squeamish...when confronted with people...quite unlike them...  And Burning Man has...some people who are into drugs, nudity and sex.
     ...it's clear that  art patrons among Silicon Valley's aristocracy have contributed adequate funding to many of the projects.  Black Rock Radio broadcasts an enervating program of monotonous loud music and inane interviews.  I wanted to talk about recovering my wits.  ...I went off alone and found the Shaman Dome, and waited to talk to a practitioner.  I waited with...souls for a "purification" rite...  My assigned shaman, in shorts, Hawaiian shirt and organic jewelry, looked and spoke like a psychotherapist from a California beach community.  After my visit to the Shaman, Lucky and I pedalled out to the Temple of Whollyness.  I may have become too parental - Dina told Lucky that her friends wouldn't allow us back to her camp, ever again.  Flocon shouted..."I left my bag behind!"...and sprinted back...  With no lights on his bike.  No water.  In the middle of the desert at night.  - Nexus, January/February 2014
     ...the 5,000-volume library he's amasses on topics such as Buddhism, astrology and scripture,...paintings, sculptures and crystals he's collected on his world travels.  ...teaching him to seeks out signs of order in the disorder all around him.  ...found the final pieces of a pattern he'd been struggling to understand from a young age...from the existential crisis...watching the trauma of the 1960s...countered by...yogis with supernatural powers.  Between the 1960s and 1980s, Western yoga practitioners worked hard to downplay the spiritual aspects...that led to xenophobic backlashes in the past.  This was a true internet-based scandal,...allegations, renunciations and atonements were posted online...with much of it flavored by...dharma, chakras and other colorful examples of yoga-speak.  For some gurus, it seems, yoga's tantric undertones - the lure of spandex-clad, endorphin-fueled bodies...has led to trouble.  - Westword, 1/9-15/2014

     After work, I get on a bus some twenty blocks north of where I live.  The bus driver lets the passengers know that the police have blocked off nine blocks of the boulevard.  A day or two later, I am off work early on a Saturday; at a deathburger for a late lunch.  In the lobby, all the sudden I hear somebody loud, a local tweaker.  From what I can make out, he has no money because some kind of bill came due or some expense.  He is telling the manager behind the counter that it's "all gone, all gone."  He tells the manager that he has four sleeping bags.  I look out the window and there they are in a shopping cart.  He then addresses a customer in line by name, before the guy gives him some coins.  He thanks the guy, telling him that he is "an officer and a gentleman," and that he deserves "the Congressional medal of Honor, and a 21 gun salute" before he leaves (presumably to do some panhandling) before coming back in to purchase a coffee.

     "Blank miles from here is the Alamo, where brave heroes blank...  ...communism must be expunged from the clean, free lands of the Americas."  It's odd to see that rhetoric now...my conviction...that the problem of Central America...was the place where communists would...advance...creating a wave of foot people...  - Noonan
     ...the Westwood neighborhood was...selected by the Colorado Health Foundation to participate in Healthy Places: Designing a Healthy Colorado.
The initiative aims to reduce obesity...promotes an active lifestyle.  ...a group of national experts from the Urban Land institute...touring and interviewing over 100 neighborhoods stakeholders...  Westwood is now eligible to receive $1.000.000 to implement recommendations...
     "I'd like to see something done before I die."  ...longtime Westwood resident...waited nearly 6 decades to have the alley behind her home paved.   - An update from the Office of Councilman Paul D. Lopez, Winter 2013

     It's the beginning of a new week.  The nation is under some kind of "North Pole drift," and frigid air and snow are blowing across the nation.  We don't have it as bad.  Rather than below zero degrees F, this morning is 3.  I am at the bus stop across the street from where I live.  From the direction of some apartments which appear to be some kind of halfway house, I hear someone slowly shuffling down the sidewalk in the god-awful frigid air.  It's so cold you can taste it.  I see a guy in an insulated jumpsuit with a hood.  He is wearing his scarf in a way which I have never seen.  It's rolled into a thin band and tied around his head in a way which only covers his nose.  He has a plastic bag with something square and flat in it, such as a styrofoam takeout box.  I watch as he puts it down to get inside it.
     I get up the street, but I watch my bus pass me by.  This one has arrived early.  I catch the next one, which I never have a chance to take, and on which is a middle-aged guy with long curly hair under a British cap.  He is looking at the newspaper and talking non-stop to the woman next to him about the city's basketball team, about his car which is smoking.  "We paid over a thousand..."  I wonder why he is balancing the paper on his lap and turning the pages with one hand, until I notice that his left arm is either missing or inside his coat.  Another woman gets on, who appears to know him.  He immediately asks her, "Did you go to jail?"  (?)  She replies, "Not until February."  Okay...  He mentions that his "daughter is a brat."

     There was...I believe, a bit of ye olde class antagonism at work...  These fundamentalists and...their I VISITED HERITAGE VILLAGE T-shirts.  To be on their side was to play...in "Inherit the Wind"...the hero of the movie...Spencer Tracy.  The Heritage Foundation's Gary Bauer saw an America in which the habit of religion...tends to be a civilizing force...  ...he saw...the America we've always been until things went crazy, an America of decent, understanding people who'd been stunned and disoriented by the Carrie Nations and "their" crazed attitude.  - Noonan
     ...now an Occupy Denver coalition of protesters is going after...the store's...lack of position on...Denver's...ban on urban camping...  ...with signs and bullhorns...  "They paid and continue to pay membership dues to the Downtown Denver Partnership, which fees were used to lobby for the Ban..."
     ...his...Consulting firm is in high demand around the country...helping would-be MMJ dispensaries ...and advising politicians...  The night before sharing a dab of hash with us, he was dining with the governor of Illinois...  Grabbing a small capsule...with...cannabinoids...  "I take these before I do any kind of public speaking, because I get nervous..."  ...later dressing up in a chicken suit to harass "Chickenlooper" for then-mayor John Hlckenlooper's refusal to debate marijuana policy.  - Westword, 1/2-8/2014
     Members of the surrounding neighborhood...can...cross examine witnesses...of...  Mandatory public hearings concerning...a retail marijuana license...  ...can request to have the public hearing scheduled on or after 5 pm, allowing for working families to participate in the process.  "We refues to become a neighborhood of liquor stores, payday lenders and pot shops."  - Councilman Paul Lopez  - An update from the Office of Councilman Paul D. Lopez, Winter  2013 
     ...my concern is that southwest NOT become a haven for more marijuana stores considering the number of liquor stores we already have.  My wish is for...a diverse commercial community that will lift up our neighborhoods...  - Nextdoor Westwood 
     ...asked pot smokers whether they could identify the moment of transference from "straight" to "stoned" (they couldn't)...so much depended on setting, mood, and the user's own psychic structure.  ...he tells me as the late afternoon sun filters through a curtain with a pattern of serene seated Buddhas.  If you learn the salient provisions of the Treaty of Ghent while smoking marijuana, you'll forget them...unless you show up for the test similarly stoned.  "I can envision a expanded psychology of the future in which we give a person a batch of tests and tell him , 'Kundalina yoga would be good for your type of personality, but never do zazen; your type gets psychotic half the time.'  But our culture is not ready for it.  - Davies 
     "The populists were...not poor but...often lower middle-class or working class...with just enough money to stick their heads up, look around, and feel certain things.  They...always though someone or something was keeping them from getting ahead..."  "...it's almost in the gene pool by now, part of the national genetic makeup."  He nods.  - Noonan
     One way of looking at some religious aphorisms is as a system of progressive psychological noise reduction.  Purity, poverty, contemplation, and so on...  are methods of removing sensory distractions which eventually culminates in "samadhi", a transcendental state in which the normal boundaries between the self and others disappear.  It may not be so dissimilar to what people on marijuana experience when...staring at the wallpaper for twenty minutes.  - Davies


     It's the middle of the week.  I am up the street at my usual bus stop at 5 am.  I hear sirens.  A police car and an ambulance turn the corner.  For the fifth time in the past couple of weeks, the same guy with the pickup truck and plow shows up at the bus stop.  Today he is...clearing the remaining snow of the curb.  Really?  Cleaning snow off the curb?  This is the first time in five years of waiting at this stop when I've seen this.  Is this guy really under contract to the transit system, or some kind of agent?  On the bus, a middle-aged guy sits down next to me.  He's in a camouflaged poncho and leather, fingerless gloves.  On a connecting bus is another guy.  He has with him in the seat a Jack Daniels bar mirror.  The following morning, a handful of people pass before me.  While at my usual stop, a little guy who is bundled up shuffles down the sidewalk before he stops to check his fly.  Across the street a guy is slowly strolling along in his hoodie, bottoming up his coffee mug.  Someone comes onto the bus, a cigarette butt between two fingers.
     It's almost the end of the week now.  I am working a late shift in a predominantly Caucasian upscale neighborhood, stopping into a deathburger for lunch.  I am watching something which goes by the name of Lifeminute TV, coming out of a wall-mounted flatscreen.  The content consists of movie reviews, trivia (how many minutes will it take the Earth to go around the sun in 2014?), as well as brief profiles of up and coming musicians.  The clientele in this neighborhood's deatburger are, without exception, to a soul groovy in appearance. a guy in a grey and green striped knit eighties Polo shirt with a pin on the collar.  His grey hair is neatly trimmed around the bald top of his head.  He uses a toothpick.  The delivery guys appear groovy.  The young bohemians are groovy.  Also mounted on the wall is a bell, with a instructions to ring it if you are satisfied with your "experience."  When it's rung by someone as they leave, the bohemians reply with "woo!"  Sitting to next to me is a couple.  The wive is wearing groovy skinny jeans and a groovy flowered-print nylon knit jacket.  There's a bald guy in a jersey for the city's football team, a guy in a black leather coat and black boots.  The Ad Council is now on Lifeminute TV.  The woman in the print jacket goes up to the counter for something else.  She's rapping with the manager, who has horn-rimmed glasses and grey hair which is slicked back.  She is telling him that her husband used to work for this deathburger.  He tells her that he ran this one previously before running another one.  I am laughing, not at any of the patrons, but at both the names and the song titles of the bands on Lifeminute.  None of these musicians appear to have ever been anywhere a prison.  I am out on the sidewalk now, next to a boulevard and under the bridge for the interstate, on my way to the bank.  There is a wind gusting.  SUVs and huge pickup trucks are accelerating at green lights as if they are street racing.  I glance at one driver in a sport coat and yellow turtleneck.  On my way to work, someone else is coming up the sidewalk, on her phone.  Even she appears somehow to be in a hurry.  I duck into a restaurant.  A couple of guys, one of whom holds the door for me, are in sweaters and sunglasses.  They remind me of astronauts.  I wait unnoticed as a couple of parties are seated before someone notices me, so I can ask the time.  I am in a neighborhood of strip mall after strip mall of exclusive franchise shops and exclusive franchise restaurants.  This is the playground of the upper class, complete with an appearance by snow bunnies at a sports bar on the middle of the month.
     After work, I am on a bus back in my own neighborhood, and a world away from the gleaming traffic of those dust-swept winter streets.  We pick up a guy who tells the driver, "No lies.  No bullshit.  I gave my transfer to some kids who asked me for a dollar."  Honest to fucking god?  Really?  The transit system is now operating on karma?  Why not find the kids and let them on instead of this guy.  No lies and no bullshit, just a day late and a dollar short.  The driver hands him a transfer.   "You know what would be cool?" he asks the driver, "Monster truck buses."  If you are going to masturbate your way on to the bus, why don't you sit down and shut up?  The driver asks him if he knows who Sammy Hagar is.  "You know, 'I can't drive 55.'"  The guy has "heard the name..."  He pulls the ear bud jack out of his player and plays the driver some Police.  The driver tells him, "No Talking Heads..."  We both get off at the same stop, and he walks away mumbling to himself.
     The following morning is another Saturday at 5 am.  I am on the sidewalk in front of where I live.  I guy I haven't seen before is going my way, and he begins speaking Spanish to me.  He's speaking quickly and I have to slow it down in my head.  He wants to know if the buses run five days a week.  It doesn't sound as if he is from around these parts. 

     Father Joseph's work includes integrating the Vietnamese community in Denver further into the community.  He also wants to...encourage tourist [sic] to...learn about...this group of people who have populated southwest Denver since the 1970s.  ...District crime...system they are using...NBR...developed by the FBI.  ...a new city DA hopefully should be more inclined to treat...violations of the graffiti laws...more seriously than in the past.  The former Westwood Telephone exchange building right across the street from where I live has been purchased and is being renovated.  ...vandals broke into the building during the cold spell...and did major damage...  - Nextdoor Westwood
     ...taken alone, a drink called ayahuaiscca, made from..."Bonisteriopsis", will produce visions with a dark bluish-grayish-purplish background interrupted by flashes of light.  These...figure in the Indian myths and iconography.  The Yukan believe that the plant, a bestower of semen...was born in a flash of light.  It would be difficult...to appreciate...cultural intricacies without knowing...hallucinogenic plants and their use.  - Davies
     ...the university would like to see the surrounding commercial districts better reflect the school brand.  ...looking to help in any way it can to stop the revolving door of restaurants in the...intersection.  "Businesses come in that don't really understand that we are basically gone during holiday vacations and during the summer.  ...then to keep seats filled the offer ridiculous  lunch specials, then all the beer you can drink after 10p.m., and then there's new owners.  The town and gown relationship is important.  We recognize that 18-year-olds rent houses and apartments and do dumb things in the neighborhood.  Our code of conduct follows them off campus.  That's a big stick.  We also pay for neighborhood patrols...  ...the major part of the building boom that started in the '90s is behind us.  Now, we've just to keep our eye on our students..."
     "The city has said they're not going to fix the gridlock - they'll try to force people to alternative transit.  ...the city is rockin' our world with their lack of concern...  ...renters don't become part of the community in the same way as homeowners."  - Washington Park Profile, 1/2014
     To meet her is to feel nostalgia for the disappearing Protestant ascendancy, for the members of a society that had rules every bit as demanding as the rules of the Old West, the first of which - answer the cards, sit with the elderly, draw out the dull bachelor, invite the homely cousin - was an awesome self-discipline.  I was getting married...  I would join life.  I'd been a lone cowboy riding by...long enough.  Now I would stop by the camp fire, pass the coffee, and watch the flames against the fellas' faces...  ...where the president says, "Reach for the stars"...that got a very positive response.  The word "free"..."free mankind from the prison of nuclear terror."  ...the best way to judge our welfare system is the extent to which it frees its people from welfare.  ...where the president spoke of the freedom fighters...they didn't know where these countries are...  ...the language was so powerful it put them on edge.  It made them feel "down."  It wasn't positive.  - Noonan
     The school was later exorcised, with the exception of a single bathroom.  The  bathroom was exorcised, which apparently had the effect of driving whatever it was into the passageway outside where the servant girls kept their bicycles.  - Mysteries, by Colin Wilson, 1979

     Another week has begun at 5 am.  I am across the street from where I live.  A minivan turns the corner.  The driver has his window rolled down, and is bundled up.  I see this once in a while.  I wonder, if the window isn't smashed out, why have it down in the winter.  A woman is parked at the gas station.  She has her door open, and she is standing and having a smoke.  A small chocolate Lab is next to her, and she can be heard from a distance yelling at her dog to "Sit down!  Sit down!"  The bus headed up the street is usually full of quiet, middle-aged folk.  One guy is, this morning, on his phone.  "They all have phones.  They should be able to set their alarms."  He must be speaking of his kids.  "They were selling cows.  They were auctioning them off."  In the neighborhood.  Really?  "They had the Mexican rodeo."  Ah, he was at the annual National Western Stock Show.  "What did you do yesterday?" I'm at the train station now, listening to a couple of guys behind me rapidly firing off a variety of self-conscious gang metaphors and inflections.
     The day unexpectedly turns in a ten and a half-hour one.  I am on a train home.  In a seat is a guy in a winter coat, a towel around his neck, and a hoodie draped over his head and shoulders.  I spotted him outside before the train showed up.  He was staring through wasted eyes.  On the train, he lifts his left pant leg and slowly scratches his calf, before he suddenly exclaims, "Oh leg don't fail me now!"  He pulls out a fifth of whisky and takes a gulp.  I get off the train as he is telling someone about how the nation is isolated "in a bubble."  The following day, there I am, back in the land of ties and trucks.  I do see plenty of trucks in my own 'hood.  But there, all manner of truck and SUV with their large engines, they sound as if they are accelerating, when in fact they are in low gear.  And in my part of town on occasion, 30-year-old guys in T- shirts will slow down for middle school girls at the bus stop, and posture with their vehicles.  Back where I am this afternoon, the trucks with guys in suits and ties appear oblivious to the world.  Guys in their fifties in wide-brimmed hats are discussing business.  Young couples manicure their rebelliousness, or their ambitions toward a cutting edge, or whatever.  Here among, not the dispossessed but rather the hyper-possessed, there is a distinct lack of hopelessness.  And what would happen should the twain ere meet?  The morning after, at 5 am, I am back at my usual bus stop.  Across the street, at another bus stop, the cleaner is back.  Today, the plow is gone from his truck.  On the train, I see that the transit system is running ads promoting an expansion of its light rail, known as FasTracks.  These ads make me wonder if the transit system feels as though it is in need for public support for the project.  "I'm a grandmother," reads one.  "I'm a caring neighbor.  I am FasTracks.  I am RTD.  I get out every day and get involved in my community."  Personal stories from supposed patrons of the transit system, alongside posed photos.  Folks just like...you and me.
     The following day is the middle of the week.  I am at a train station, awaiting a bus home.  The station is located at the edge of a community college campus.  Here's a new one for ya.  A mellow, middle-aged guy  in sandals and socks wanders up to me and asks, "Excuse me sir do you smoke?"  Now this is how to bum a smoke.  The following morning finds me across the street from where I live.  Joining me at the bus stop is a young guy with ear buds on, which does little to prevent him from making his witness.  I happen upon him standing out in the street, looking down, down toward the direction of any approaching buses.  He has nothing but curses for the bus, as it has not yet arrived.  As it approaches, he can barely contain his indignation.  "C'mon, make that light.  C'mon, drive that piece of shit."  He mentions something about this being "another bipolar day."  When the bus comes to a stop, he remarks, "I appreciate it I appreciate it."  Yet, on the bus he is silent.  When we both get off, he has the patience to wait for the 'walk' signal before crossing the street.  Here, up the street, the same guy is back cleaning all the bus stops on this corner.
     It's another Saturday at 5 am.  At the bus stop across the street from where I live is hovering a guy who I've never seen before.  He's Caucasian with a red handlebar moustache.  I watch him cross the street, over to the opposite building.  With a slow, upright stride, he looks in a trashcan before heading for the one next to the gas pump.  Along comes a car through the parking lot.  He is right in front of the pump, and the car slows to a stop before he gets out of the way.  He must have spooked the car because it then leaves.  Over on my own side of the boulevard, the bus shows up.  As it comes to a stop, another guy I've never seen before walks up.  He says out loud, "All you have to do is walk away from the bus."  He has a Harley Davidson do rag on his head.  He gets on with the rest of us.  Hey, I get it.  A Harley rider who rides the bus and talks to himself...(?)
     At the beginning of another week.  I am on a bus to work, much later than usual.  Along the short ride to the train station, a young mom and her daughter get on, each with a doughnut.  She daughter says something to her mom about wanting to watch TV.  Her mom tells her how good it is to watch a network called EWTN.  This is the Eternal Word Television Network; Catholic teachings and sermons broadcast out of Atlanta. I discovered it on a local UHF channel some two decades ago, and continued to watch the same station up until a few years ago, when broadcast TV was taken off the airwaves.  I wonder where she is able to watch it?  After she mentions the channel, she crosses herself.  I jump on a train to a station where there is a small coffee shop.  Outside is a young couple sitting at a table.  It's a very nice day for January.  The guy appears to be both older and louder than the girl.  He strikes me as possibly homeless and perhaps with mental issues.  Next to the table is an American flag mounted on a plastic pole, wedged into a crack in the concrete.  I don't recall ever seeing it here before.  It has to be his.  While I am inside the shop, he comes in for some complimentary water.  The girl behind the counter asks him if his water is cool enough.  He waits for her to put more ice in the water cooler.  After work, I get off of a bus back in my neighborhood, along with four other people.  As they head my direction to a bus shelter up the street, they all move together, next to each other.  Three guys and a girl.  The girl and the guy who does the majority of the talking appear to be a couple.  As loud as the guy is, I still can make out only a bit of what he says.  He mentions "a string of robberies" somewhere in town.  When we all get on a connecting bus, I get a look at the couple.  They each appear as if either they have mental issues or may perhaps be drug casualties.
     The following morning, I watch a guy shuffling down the sidewalk.  With his weather-beaten face, he almost disappears inside of his coat.  In his right hand, he is carrying an open cereal box.  As I am digging through my bag, another younger, healthier guy comes along and stops to ask me, "Can you spare one?"  He thinks I am reaching for a cigarette.  I show him that I only have dental floss.  I take the bus/to the train/to a stop for another bus.  When it comes, another passenger comes from the back and sits down on the seat up front.  By his appearance, I am almost sure that he is a college kid.  He looks at me for a spell with contempt.  (?)  He then returns to the back.  When he gets off, he very quietly says to me in my ear, "Go - to - hell."  He immediately gets off.
     'Tis the following morning.  I step off the bus at my usual stop up the street.  Around the corner comes someone who is...not inebriated and not homeless.  He gives off a completely different vibe, or should I say lack thereof.  Moments after, I am across the street and passing by my usual bus stop, on my way to the deathburger.  In front of me is a little guy who takes a seat on the bench.  When I go by, he says, "Morning!" in almost a shout.  When I get back to the stop, I see the guy who I saw yesterday with the cereal box in his hand.  He shuffles past again, this time with a plastic grocery bag full of cans.  I suddenly recognize him as the regular from the deathburger, who I saw ithere looking in the trash.  Perhaps he was looking for cans.  He pauses at a flagstone wall to pick up and examine a discarded can.  After work, I end up at a train station.  I stand waiting to get on a bus.  Talking to the driver is someone with an expired transfer.  Everyone has a story.  "I just got out the hospital," he says.  Yeah, and also...your transfer is expired.  The driver has convinced him to pay the fare to get a new transfer.  The driver then has to tell him to sit down.  The guy has been hustling and bullshitting the driver so long, nowt he driver appears concerned about staying on schedule.

     "This is America: The Knights of Columbus...The Business and Professional Women of America...the Bible study group.  ...a thousand points of light in a broad and peaceful sky."  That litany of organizations - reading it still gives me a chill.  That's the America I know, maybe the America you know.  That's what they went to on Wednesday nights...  - Noonan
     ...the Palm Springs Chamber of Commerce awarded...the Athena award - a predominantly straight, white organization of business "men" were honoring a lesbian for being a "warrior for business."  - Out Front, 1/15-31/2014
     ..."how" is it possible to have meaning and honor in work? to put wealth to some real use? to have a high standard of living of whose quality we are not ashamed?...to have a use of leisure that is not a dismaying waste of a hundred-million adults?  ...perhaps...create a culture again.  Since we have the technlogy, the capital, and the labor, why should we not have livable cities?  The essence of human nature is to be pretty indefinitely malleable.  "Man," as C Wright Mills suggests, is what suits a particular type of society in a particular historical stage.  This fateful idea, invented from time to time by societies...  - "Growing Up Absurd", by Paul Goodman, 1956

     On Saturday morning, at 5 am at my usual bus stop, the grey goatee guy is coming along and headed toward the deathburger.  Only rather than carrying a cereal box or a bag of cans, this morning he is walking in the street instead of the sidewalk.  The traffic behind him is making a right.  Fortunately, none of the cars require "his" lane.  The following Tuesday is less than a a week before Super Bowl Sunday.  When the temperature drops to single digits in my neighborhood and there is snow everywhere, the trucks and SUVs which have raised suspensions and huge tires come out to practically drag race.  I read somewhere that, down my street, a telephone pole has fallen down.  I haven't heard of such a thing outside of a town hit by a tornado.  And also, of course, my own street.  The district police commander warned the residents not to leave their vehicles idling on cold mornings.  One such vehicle was stolen and used in a homicide.  At the deathburger this morning is a guy who is sometimes there at 5 am.  He claims to be 73 but looks younger.  He used to drive an old truck with Jesus stickers.  Today, he is talking to a couple of young guys who he has just met.  He tells one guy with passion, "They're not doin' it.  They need to stop...what is it?  The Tariffs!"  When he remembers the word 'tariffs' he claps his hands together.  "Small business doesn't stand a chance against the imports!  And they're not doin' it!"  He then asks the one young guy his name.  A couple of mornings later, he is back again, chatting up the girl behind the counter.  On top of a knit cap, he wearing backwards a baseball cap which reads, "Jesus is My Boss."  I have to lean in front of him to place my order.  He sits down with another regular and mentions that he listens to Mark Levine's Wall Street Report, "On 700.  Radio channel.  AM.  He comes on at 7 am.  Boy that's...a really good business report."
     I get off work early.  All our customers are in New Jersey, for a long weekend watching our city's football team in the Super Bowl.  I grab a late lunch at a fairly new neighborhood steakhouse.  It's my first time here.  The menu has steaks and burgers, as well as 39 flavors of smoothies.  The flavors are written in chalk on a big blackboard.  The host and cashier both appear to be Vietnamese.  The other patrons are a Mexican family.  Behind the counter is the establishment's name in lime neon, as well as a shelf with a big glass sculpture in a transparent case.  Other than the word "cow" in the name, the place is void of any reference to the old west, or any notices of the annual Western Stock Show which ended just three days ago.  Not a horseshoe nor a prairie landscape.  There is a single directory in Vietnamese which the host reads as he sits and waits to seat customers and serve food.  On one wall is mounted a flat screen TV tuned to ESPN.  The place has few windows, and is illuminated by small wall and ceiling lamps.