Thursday is the 1st. I'm coming home from work, turning onto the block with the open field. Coming down this block this morning, I saw the last lonely camper here. Someone in a grey hoodie, a little guy with his hood on and tied tight, was working on the hitch where the trailer is attached. It's early evening now and the sun is just disappearing. Once again, a final camper has made its disappearance. The block is yet again empty, save for a single lonely 2-liter bottle, half full of Pepsi. I'm stopped and looking at this scene as another cyclist, this one with no helmet, comes whipping around the downhill corner on his electric bike. Along the train tracks opposite the field, a locomotive has arrived. The cyclist asks me, "Think I can make it?" As in make the crossing before the train does. I don't think all the batteries in the city will outrace the train. The following day I have to work open to close. And I've been staying late after close again. This will be a good paycheck. If I can keep from spending it. I awake sometime around 3 AM. I've come to the realization that I don't want to ride naked in the dark. I'm not interested in exposing myself. It isn't sexual. I think that, instead of the idea that no outfit is a statement on neon Lycra cycling gear, something like a Speedo is more on target. It's the least amount I can wear, and comply with the law. Whis is something I much prefer to do. Perhaps I can do some shopping this weekend. As for this earliest of mornings, I decide to see who is out on the trail at this hour. There are still people out there, even this early. I pass three different cyclists, and a homeless couple. On the connecting trail to work, I'm coming along the long park below the waterpark upon a hill. Before I go through an overpass, I hear a dog whimpering. I spy a pair of homeless walking in the grass. A guy in shorts and a denim jacket has a leash in one hand. Something is on the other end, which must be the dog. The other figure is wrapped in a white blanket, making it difficult for them to walk. The overnight lows are in the 50s F. 'Tis a ghostly figure who passes through this park before sunup. On the other side of the overpass is a cart which must belong to them. It's piled high with blankets.
Saturday. I wake up early again. I can't believe that I'm not too tired to crawl out of bed. On the way home from work yesterday, I watched a developing thunderstorm. I've seen plenty of these of which nothing comes. But after I get home, about an hour before my bedtime, I hear raindrops against my back sliding glass door. I look through the door to see lightening all over the lace. The rain turns to hail. There wasn't any thunder that I recall. I think about my Speedo idea. I have the XXL bike shorts I purchased on sale which began falling down. I decide to cut the legs off up to the padded crotch. When I then try them on, it appears as if I'm wearing next to nothing. I may as well be naked. This isn't going to work. But I have one pair of old bike shorts left, and I have a simpler idea. On my way to work down the first stretch of trail, I try the practically non-existent pair of bike shorts just to see what I think. Yeah, I think I look like I'm naked. I stop in the dark before sunrise and change into my regular bike shorts. Skip ahead to an hour and a half later. The connecting trail to work ends at the end of a street, upon the corner of which sits a house. It has a big pasture and horse stables. A horse is outside by the fence. It's around 6 AM and four teenagers are petting this horse. I'm riding without a shirt, but I'm long back into my regular bike shorts. But it's only here and now that someone, one of the teenagers, asks me, "Why you naked?" Why are you guys petting a horse at 6 AM? Fortunately for you, you don't know I was naked already. Something out of character for me, left of center, out of the box such as riding naked has come back around to just another irony. Such is my life. You people!
Well, the last holiday for the next couple of months is here tomorrow. Today, Sunday, I hit the waterpark before lunch with the sister, who is back home from rehab and out of the wheelchair after a year. Then it's back to the waterpark for another swim. During the first swim, I'm in line at the drop slide. A grade school aged girl in front of me asks me if I'm in lie. I confirm this, and she instructs me to stand closer. When it's my turn, she instructs me that it is indeed my turn. During my second visit today, there is one particular kid of many with the mission of jumping into the shallow end. This kid pretends to sneeze, ("Ahh ahh ahh...CHOO!") before jumping in. He does this over and over. Then it's off to the train for a ride to the station closest to the pizza place, a short ride away. When I get there, I notice a customer coming out of the yogurt place next door with yogurt. This the same yogurt place which, a week ago, had a sign in the window informing myself and a family that they were now closed Sundays and Mondays. Or so we all interpreted. When I first enter the place and ask the clerk about this, she informs me that today is her first day, and she has no knowledge. Oh, I see. I'm in a Twilight Zone episode. I go next door and have my slice of pizza, and then return to the yogurt place. There is now someone who appears to be supervising the first clerk, as well as another who also appears to be brand new. I ask the one in the know, who simply informs me that the sign only refereed to Sunday and Monday of last week. I knew they would get me...I just didn't know how. Labor Day is a repeat of the day before. Only I don't stop at the supermarket along the way to pizza and yogurt. This may not have been the best year for the waterpark. But, as usual, I had better keep my mouth shut. The entire summer, I had the chance to swim every weekday before work, with the exception of Mondays. And the final Monday, today, the park decided to be open. So, farewell until next year. I always joke about the weather turning south as soon as September arrives. On Friday, the earlier part of the week's 100-degree F temperatures will drop to a high of 55. And an overnight low of 35. Four days after Labor Day and I need to make sure I have a new furnace filter. But it's been a summer which has brought stability. My Sunday pizza/yogurt routine is working with the new diet. Don't ask me how. I always wanted to try that pizza place, and it takes ma back some decades just to be in there. They're called Cosmo Pizza. After my second swim I head downtown to the traditional final summer festival. It's held in a downtown park between the state capitol and the state house. On one side of the park is the main branch of the public library. The back end is closed for construction and the bike racks have been removed. I head to the front where bike racks remain. A festival security guy is attempting to shoo me away from there as he tells me this is the exit for the festival. I finally convince him that this then is the perfect spot to lock up my bike. As for the festival itself, it's the most pathetic thing I've ever seen. This is the traditional summer city blowout. I saw Blues Traveller bring the house down here. And only half of the park appears to be used. On one stage is a terrible local country music act, two guys with matching burlap cowboy hats. But, like I've said, it's been a fortunate summer for myself.
It's already Friday of the new week. I'm coming home under an overcast sky, sometime after 7 PM. Right before the last golf course, past which I exit the trail, is a bend along the river. It has a big playground. It also has a relatively new public art installation. It's a giant silver diamond shaped piece of metal suspended by cables between a couple of poles. It's one of those public art commissions which appear more as engineering exercises than works of creativity. Under the giant diamond is a little plaza area. It's a sometime favorite place for the homeless. This early evening, there appears to be a hibachi on the cement, in the center underneath the diamond. There's a small gathering around the flaming hibachi, which include at least one guy who appears homeless as well as a middle-aged woman in a black pant suit. I wonder if it's some kind of social service rep/homeless get together. It's in the 50s F. out here, under a gloomy evening sky.
...fiction...evolved to accommodate...unprecedented changes... The rise of industrialization fostered...large manufacturing towns and the spread of cities. People were obliged to live among strangers to make their living. ...a middle-class fiction...the Gothic fantasy. One strong Gothic theme is that of descent from a "natural world" to inferno or incarceration...in search of a secret, an identity, or a relationship. - B. W. Aldiss, Trillion Year Spree,1986
[As for the] downtown...scourge of speeding [electric] scooters [available for use for a fee], the Denver Department of Transportation and Infrastructure is planning to grapple with the problem. DOT also plans to test out technological ways tom restrict or slow scooters in certain parts of [downtown near the baseball stadium.] "I saw people struggling...because their scooters had cut out and because of the no-scooter zone - but the kicker is there was no [baseball] game," says [a member of] the Denver Bike Lobby. "...I've noticed scooters dying when crossing the [downtown pedestrian] Mall, and sometimes they are still in traffic."
...a community of immigrants and refugees...who land in Denver often live [in proximity to] a relatively large stock of affordable housing [near] many resources... [They describe] a long line of senseless killings and shootings... They talked about being hung up on when they called 911 or having to wait forever. [Around there,] safety is never guaranteed, [with] violent incidents at least once a month... [One resident] was 38 when he came to the U.S., he felt like a kindergartener because...he had to learn...the language and the culture. "The questions that come in blow our minds... 'If I call 911, is my immigration status going to be questioned?' 'If I get stopped by a police officer, am I going to get deported?' ...there's a steep learning curve." ...a woman from Burma and her two children were struck in a hit-and-run...in 2013, soon after she moved [to the neighborhood.] ...her two children were killed. "...that woman...went back because of how bad it is." ...the cost of living keeps them [in the neighborhood. She] gets home from work around 7:30 p.m., and...starts hearing gunshots about an hour later. "It's always somebody dying or somebody getting beat up...and it's always us refugees." - Westword, 9/8-14/2022
...now corporation land, here named Government, took over state preserves, straightened crooked narrow roads...removed unwelcome...highway signs...till the young Pop eye of Art wept...where are our old friends?...and the streets of U.S. cities, gave of Urban Renewal, would be difficult, to distinguish... For years he had been writing about [totalitarianism's] need to render populations apathetic, its instrument...the destruction of mood. ...being sliced, cut, stamped, ground, excised, or obliterated... - N. Mailer, "The Armies of the Night", from Reporting Vietnam, 1998
Amazing how you can adapt to a life surrounded by thievery. How you can accept as part of your lifestyle that fact that a huge number of people you live near would steal anything you've got lying around... I ask you: What kind of man picks over the bones of a destroyed life? ...a few junkie burglars are inevitable in any society... - Rose
On Aug. 9, the Ace Hardware [just a city block across town from me, where I would once in a while shop] announced that it would be closing. "It is an exciting time for Denver's growth right now, and soon our location will become a multi-story residential development,"...the store's owner...said... - Life on Capitol Hill, 9/2022
Sunday. I decide to grocery shop along the way to the sister's, and store a few things in her fridge. I leave my home and cross my boulevard, turning the first corner to the long street just a block from my own. There's a brand new broad winding sidewalk along the open field which runs the length of this street. I'm out late on this sunny morning. There are a couple of handfuls of Caucasian people who are gathered at particular spots along this new sidewalk. There are some kids here as well. A couple of the men have post hole diggers. WTF? With the exception of the masses at the tennis courts to play pickleball, this is the most Caucasians I've seen in my 15 years in this neighborhood. After lunch and helping her repot some plants, I head home with the groceries. I took the train down toward her place, but I decide it's less hassle to ride home. I get back home shortly before 5 PM. I put away the food and head back out again. I'm chasing down some kind of mural art festival in a fancy schmancy downtown art district. I follow one of the city's main arteries north. It takes me past the state capitol. Out on the edge of the capitol lawn are a couple of signs. "Atheist Iran." "Democracy for Iran." There's an Iranian flag draped over a low wall of flagstones. But the site is abandoned. It's not far by bicycle to the site of the festival. I may arrive just as it closes. I'm along the sidewalk, rolling through a small homeless village. It has spilled out onto the sidewalk. In the last remaining space on the sidewalk through which to pass is a guy in a T-shirt and jeans. He's got a beard and hair down past his shoulders. He could have stepped right out of 1973. A homeless woman alerts him that I'm coming through. He steps aside and hold his arms straight up in the air. He acts as if I'm arresting him on suspicion of a crime. "It's not me," he says out loud. I turn down the street with the mural festival.
This used to be a historic turn of the century neighborhood. Five Points was an African-American community in Denver through two world wars. The street I'm coming down late in the afternoon is one with bars for young Caucasian couples and massive condo units. There are indeed murals on several buildings, and the murals are huge. Very arty. A couple of corners along the street have barriers blocking them off. But there's no one out in the street except the occasional bar hopper, or scooter rider. At one of the sectioned off corners, I stop and query a young woman packing up clothing she had for sale. She appears and sounds as if she's a kind of nomadic hipster. She tells me that she had heard there was supposed to be a mural festival. She says, "It's nexus was" the direction from which I came. I thank her and head back thatta way. About this neighborhood, I'm obviously not tuned in to what the big deal is about Lower Downtown, or LoDo, or why it's at all artistic. This street with the murals has a barren vibe with condos and bars. Perhaps it's perfect for its current residents, I can't say. I turn down to the next street and take it back the way I came. This street has trees, lawns, and single family homes. It's the adult reality behind the hipster faux depravity. Soon I'm at my Sunday pizza and yogurt places. At the pizza place, a couple of guys dressed in black come in. They're young. They don't order anything but just sit down. I notice in the parking lot, what surely must be their car. It's an old 1980s town car of some make, with tiny cruiser wheels. The curious thing is, hanging from the rearview is a little Iranian flag. Not long after, I'm coming back home after sunset, back down the same long street a block from my own. I'm actually up on the new sidewalk now, to avoid the cars even now still out on the street. I pass the spots where the handfuls of people were gathered this morning. There are some new metal stands, with flat metal frames on top in the shape of music stands. They appear as if they are waiting for information of some kind, perhaps historical, to be inserted. Again, WTF? Two mornings from now, I will be on my way to work back down this same street. I will notice that one of them already got tagged with graffiti. The struggle between the children of the original ethnic residents and the Caucasian pickleball interlopers and apparent financers of big winding sidewalks with possible historical markers has begun.
But that's on Tuesday. On Monday, I'm out the door and headed for the bank. I'm at a corner a block away when I watch a minivan pull up to the stop sign. The passenger side window is open and a young guy tosses a can out of the window. I go through the intersection and watch a homeless cyclist pull out of the supermarket parking lot across from my bank. His left hand is steering the bicycle. His right is holding onto a stolen shopping cart as he pedals. As with other homeless, he has no helmet. he does have a straw in his mouth. This will come up again late the next afternoon. The cart does not have groceries in it. It has what appears to be a pair of coiled garden hoses. The shopping cart is not from the supermarket, but from a Sav-a-Lot up the street. Clever. Neither the hoses nor the cart are from the supermarket, so don't bother him pulling out of here, right? The following afternoon after work, I detour from the trail to hit the gym. I exit the trail into a parking lot for those neighborhood residents who wish to walk, run, or ride said trail. It's been closed since perhaps last month to vehicle traffic. I know not why. A long chain bars the lot entrance and a sign alerts drivers to its closure. I am able to ride from the lot onto the grass next to the sidewalk along the street on the other side of the chain, and then down the slanted curb onto the street. Approaching the closed lot are a homeless couple on bikes. Again, no helmets, and again the guy has a straw in his mouth. He approaches the chain with a perplexed expression. I've exited into a residential neighborhood. Just around the corner I climb a hill. A guy on some kind of motorized skateboard comes up behind me. "He says to me, "How do? I have a shirt just like that." I'm wearing a neon yellow sleeveless cotton shirt. I own two. He's followed by a guy who appears almost identical to him, on his own motorized skateboard. The motors sound electric. They both are middle aged, tall, and have handlebar moustaches. And neither has a helmet. I say to the second one, "He says he has a shirt just like this one." He ignores me, turning his head four different directions as he enters the other street. I climb to the intersection and turn downhill to a busy street with warehouses on both sides. A couple of blocks along and I turn again into a residential neighborhood. At the next corner are perhaps twenty young guys in slacks and Polo shirts. They're gathered around a map of what appears to be the surrounding six blocks displayed on a stand. I hear one guy tell the others, "Okay, let's get started. I know everyone is still signing in..." I'm guessing they aren't with the homeless couple or the electric skateboarding twins, one of whom owns a shirt like the two I have.
Wednesday. I'm back on the street a block from my own, on my way to work. There's grass between the new winding sidewalk and the curb all the way down the street. The grass is lined with cherry blossom trees. This morning, a group of four people are sitting around the base of one tree. They are planting wood chips around all the trees. Another group is gathered around one of the metal stands. Everyone has green T-shirts. Who the hell are these people? The ride home from work is through some rain. I think the shirtless rides are over until next year. I get home after riding in my rain poncho, which keeps all bags covered. Their contents are nice and dry. The following morning, I'm getting out the door late, as I have for most of this week. I'm actually leaving an hour earlier this morning, but need to be at work an hour earlier to cover for my coworker. Today, I'm starting so late that my only option is the train to the bus, which will take me directly to work. I get out at the station and wait at the bus gate. I'm there perhaps ten minutes when a northbound train pulls up. I suddenly hear someone say, "Go, go." I look up to watch a shirtless young guy with long dark hair cross the tracks. He sits on a bench and begins eating out of a small container. Immediately a southbound train pulls up and he gets up to stand at the door. He came north only to go back again? The train stops and the doors don't open. The conductor says through a speaker, "You have to put a shirt on." The guy begins pacing and saying, "Fuckin 'bitch. Fuckin' bitch. Fuckin' bitch." The conductor repeats, "Sir, you have to put a shirt on." He opens the doors and the guy gets on. Through a window, I can see him siting and eating. He still has no shirt on. My bus arrives, and the two guys who come on board with me are not as bad. One guy spends the entire ride looking though his backpack for bus fare. When we approach the stop for the other guy, he says to the driver, "Thank you sir." He realizes that the sir is female and says, "Thank you ma'am." The driver says nothing. He then says, "Thank you...okay? Thank you...okay?" Shortly after I get to work, I run over to the bakery for my usual, diet soda and yogurt. There's a typical local resident sitting at a table. He has grey hair and kids with him, and he's reading a book titled, The Art of When to Trade. Later on, per my new diet, I run out to the grocery in the shopping center for bananas. I ride behind the rest of the center where there's no hustle and bustle. There is however a lone middle-aged guy on a BMX bike. He isn't sitting or pedaling. He has his right foot on a footrest on the rear axle, and he's using it like a scooter. I wonder if it's stolen. he says to me, "Have a good day." I should have replied, "Thank you...okay?"
Friday. The cycle of the late starts and chronic taking the train to work has again been broken. I out riding the entire distance. I arrive at a point along the first trail where river surfers and assorted kayakers and spectators gather down by the diver. Late in the morning there are a few parents and toddlers sitting on some semi-circular stone seating which I haven't noticed until now. They are facing a woman who appears to be dressed as a wench from some old barkeep. This in itself is strange enough. I believe that she is in fact supposed to be a pirate. She's standing in front of an easel, with the word "PIRATE" spelled in primary colors. She speaks through a mic which is received by a small amplifier as she teaches the kids how to spell the word. This is even more odd than the Surfin' Sasquatch cutout just a short few yards away. And now ladies and gentlemen, a brief pair of asides if you will. I don't enjoy throwing curve balls, perhaps such as admitting to riding naked. But I want to mention having noticed for perhaps a year now, for the first time since 9/11, American flags on poles in the beds of pickup trucks. I saw one this week or last on my own boulevard. What is brand new are the pickup trucks out on my boulevard with Mexican flags, on poles in the beds. I don't know if this is some kind of neighborhood war of the flags. Speaking of street culture. I've been working next door to a woman who cuts hair for perhaps a year now. Her voice is so loud, I can hear her through the wall. Recently, I've heard a dog barking inside her place., but have never seen it. I once saw her in her doorway on her phone, using profanity. And I see her walking to and from her vehicle on a regular basis. She strikes me as being of a particular personal opinion; she thinks she's hot stuff. She may be older than myself.
I believe this afternoon I see her son. A woman who isn't a customer came into work to inquire about getting a bridesmaid dress pressed today. I told her it was unlikely we could do it. So..she opens the door to exit....as the guy I believe is the son of the loud female barber is walking past. It appears he may have just exited her place. A dog is with him and begins to come inside where I work through the opened door. The dog is not on a leash. He tells the dog to come out of there. Then something unexpected happens. I've never seen this, and it takes the young woman exiting my store by surprise. He kicks the dog, who yelps. She tells him not to kick his dog. I'm not surprised by the following reaction by either of them. I wonder if by kicking his dog, he was trying to impress her. He gives her a string of "fuck you'' and 'mind your own business bitch'. She replies by telling him again not to kick his dog and calls him a piece of shit. I watch her get into a BMW, not at all unusual for our clientele, and drive off. The neighborhood is full of BMWs. It has no other loud female barbers nor sons who kick dogs who come to mind. The neighborhood is encountering the pair for the first time, in this particular way, by witnessing her son in action, just being who I assume is himself. After walking the dog, her returns inside her place, and I can hear his voice now through the wall, complaining loudly about having been told not to kick the dog. This is followed by the dog barking loudly for a long time. I then watch him get into a truck with new temp tags from three months ago. In the back is the dog. In the seat next to him appears to be a twelve-year old girl. The next time I step outside, it appears as if she's closed early. As usual, she left the OPEN sign on. The following day, it appears that someone turned the sign off.
Sunday is another day of transport by bike only, instead of using the transit system. I have no festivals of book sales to attend. Laundry and grocery shopping is done. No lunch to make for tomorrow. I have nothing else to do after lunch with the sister, except get back home and complete some housekeeping chores. Including installing the new supposed "allergen removing" two-dollar furnace filter. Everything is so much prep for the coming week. My new doctor, in our discussion about my return to an actual diet, asked me if I had experience preparing meals for work. Is she kidding? She has no idea how long I've been a bachelor, and the extent to which I've had to do everything for myself. I concur with the sister, it's another beautiful day. Three days before Autumn it's another week with highs in the 80s F. I decide again to ride all the way to the pizza place. While there, I come to realize that this establishment is headquartered in the city of Boulder, less than a hour's drive from Denver and home to a popular public university up there. This explains the hippie vibe here.
Forty percent of the city's streets have either missing or substandard sidewalks, the city reported in 2019. If passed...the Denver Deserves Sidewalks campaign...would make the building and maintaining of sidewalks - currently a responsibility of private property owners - the city's problem. It would also impose new fees on property owners...to repair and build new sidewalks across the entire city in just nine years. - Washington Park Profile, 9/1/2022
"I was so open to what would show up in the desert." With no one in sight [, he] took off all his clothes and spent hours walking naked. "I would just have my pushcart without my clothes."
[The street I ride, from the train station closest to my home, to my home]
While it has...mixed-income and public housing, schools, [run down] grocery stores and a high-end bus route [actually, it has a pair of bus routes], it "largely ignores all aspects of pedestrian mobility"... [I refer to it as the "bicycle superhighway" as it's one of only two or three avenues upon which one may even traverse the highway along the route described. You must be tactical to cross the east one-way side of the divided highway with a bicycle, unless you cross these highway lanes from the other side of the avenue. I wouldn't want to attempt it on foot.]
[The street I ride home from my Sunday pizza place]
...a transit/commuter corridor ..."one of the most dangerous" and "high-speed" stretches in Denver; it "largely neglects and dismisses the needs of pedestrian mobility as a connected, complete network"... And the intersection [of two main arteries just a handful of blocks north of my home] is possibly the most dangerous in the city... - Westword, 9/22-28/2022
I have a history with the first route going back to the 15 years I've lived on this side of town, and a transit system history with the second route going back 28 years. I thought my own corner was considered the most dangerous, according to some city report. Not only is my neighborhood pedestrian unfriendly, but I've lost my street cred. That's life in the big city. Don't do the crime if you can't dot the time, oh baby. And keep your eye on the sidewalk...
It's Saturday before the last week of the month. Yet another month has all but gone up in a puff of smoke. 'Twas only last Monday when I was lamenting no extra hours which I could see materializing this week. And this is how extra hours materialize, out of thin air. Tuesday evening, I stayed 2 1/2 hours at work after close. The following evening, 3 hours after close. Thursday I work all day. The following morning I get called in 2 hours early. It's a chilly ride there, so I wear a long-sleeved shirt, my new windbreaker and long pants. I stay another hour and a half after close. The ride home is much warmer and I carry the three items in a tote bag on my back, along with a couple of plastic bowls of chopped vegetables from the shopping center grocery where i work. I'm on the exit ramp from the bike trail when I stop and take out the long-sleeved shirt to put on. I put both the tote bag and my messenger bag with my wallet on the concrete. With the warmer shirt on, I make sure to put the messenger bag back on, as I have forgotten it once before while removing a windbreaker. It's perhaps 15 minutes to my front porch, where I realize that I left the tote bag and its contents on the exit ramp from the trail. I'm too tired to return this evening to get it. The following morning, I leave earlier, and it's colder, so I put on my warmer riding pants and another windbreaker. On my back bike rack is the larger bag I take during the colder half of the year. On the way to the trail, I approach the exit ramp. Even in the dark I can see my tote bag is untouched where I left it. When I leave work this afternoon...on time today...I will need every last inch of space for two windbreakers, two pairs of riding pants, an extra sleeveless shirt which I thought I would need, as well as the long-sleeved shirt. Then it's off to the Black Eyed Pea for an early dinner. A mom in the parking lot is speaking Spanish into her phone, attempting to determine if a family member is there at the other end. Inside, I sit behind a pair of elderly women. One is teasing the waiter about hiding the cornbread from her. She then begins to tell her friend about her husband not appreciating being moved from one care facility to another.
...had the hippies met...the cutting edge of all primitive awe, the savage's sense of explosion - the fuse of blasphemy, the cap of taboo now struck, the answering roar of the Gods...connections made at the rate of 10th to the 10th exponent of the average rate of dialogue...had all the...nuclear transcendencies...exploded in some devil's cauldron from the past? - was the past being consumed by...nuclear blasts...into the collective living brain by the way of all [alcohol and narcotics]? - Mailer
"We call them food apartheids." ..."a...policy of...political, social, and economic discrimination"...an area not being invested in...for many years... "People should have food sovereignty." ...many food rescue organizations do not request personal information... ...insufficient government assistance... ...a variety box filled with unfamiliar foods. "Many food pantries didn't have fresh produce...what most immigrants and refugees prefer." ...community members...speaking with local legislators about establishing neighborhood co-ops... ...food rescue journey..."understanding where you are coming from. ...to live in a country without knowing the language"... - Washington Park Profile, 9/1/2022
Tuesday of the following week. My trusty bike is down to one brake, the high gear shifter is sticky. And the last tech to work on my bike suggested that I bring it in for a tune up at the end of this month. Well, it's the end of this month. Three strikes, and I'm out. So, after work I catch a bus to a train downtown. I get out at a stop just yards from a trail to the sporting goods supercenter. The stop is also across the street from a deathburger I used to frequent, back when I was coming this way to catch the first train long before sunrise. When I worked for a previous employer. Even when I was hired by another company here downtown, I still found myself across the street there. Or at another deathburger or a Starbucks just a block away at a tiny strip mall. Since then the homeless have migrated here. That deathburger and the shopette have been "scraped" for some dazzling future development, of course right across the street from the train. I decide to try and fit something from the remaining deathburger, next to a big gas station, into my new diet. Then I'm off to the supercenter. The trail there runs along the west side of downtown, below street level in a viaduct along a creek. Mosaics and murals line the concrete wall enclosing the viaduct. Homeless sit along the bank of the creek on this cool September evening. The trail gets more crowded as I approach its intersection at the confluence of the Platt and Colorado Rivers, a place called Confluence Park. It's a recreational area for the young urban crowd. I'm across the bridge and wait at the front door of the supercenter for everyone to finish holding the door open for everyone else. Out front is a mobile trailer with several doors to outdoor restrooms, each door with a light above it. I don't know what this is about. Children's chalk drawings cover the cement walkway.
Inside, there's no line for the service department on a Tuesday evening. The tech asks me if I am going to remove the bags on the bike frame. I tell him that's my plan. He gives my bike a once over. He says there's grime in the front gears. The gears and the brakes need "some love," says he. Should be ready the 4th of next month. I pack the bags into larger bags and hike over to the train station. Along the way I navigate more people with dogs on leashes. I climb the steps over the train tracks with a couple of guys, each with a dog on a leash. Out on the train platform are a collection of folks in slacks and dresses. They appear to have occupations in offices, and perhaps are out on the town. On the high block, where the handicapped board, is a lone guy playing Mowtown hits from a mobile device. Below him stand two or three couples. One of the men asks him if he's taking song requests. The guy tells them he just came from a convention he organized of 200 vendors. "Adult film, cannabis..." he describes the exhibitors. He also mentions that he organized the first local 4/20 festival. (In 2014?) Over the platform speaker come announcements that trains along the east line will be delayed thirty minutes. It's yet another adventure with this station, coming back from dropping off my bike. Trains are pulling in on both the outbound and inbound tracks. The first two trains are westbound. I could take one of these out to catch a bus straight down my boulevard. Lately, I've been avoiding that particular corner out there. Drug sales, drunks, homeless, and the street racers who love them. A recent weekly newspaper article described this intersection as "inaccessible to pedestrian traffic." Surely the least of its problems.
The couples bid farewell to the adult film, 4/20, Mowtown guy and board a train for parts west. I elect instead to take the other train, south to a bus which will then take me west. The other way around, if you will. I admit I'm more comfortable going by way of the train station I'm more familiar with than the drug deal corner. My train pulls up and it fills with passengers. Including a couple of homeless guys who take a seat on some steps in front of one door. You ain't supposed to sit there. The homeless appear not so much to behave proactively against the rule of law, as much as they appear not to see themselves in the society governed by it. They will stick together, but apart from the rest. When we reach my stop, I have to step over them. They apologize to me but make no mention of their presence on the steps. At the gate for my bus, I'm approached by a young woman. "When does the bus get here? From which direction? I'll help you watch for it. My stomach hurts. That's what happens when I drink. I'm usually home 2 1/2 hours earlier." Someone more brilliant surely could arrange her statements and questions into a manifesto. The bus is ten minutes late when I get the feeling it may not show until the next scheduled arrival, which is another fifty minutes. I elect to walk home. I get to the next stop when I see it head toward the station. In no time, it has "turned and burned," which means it has no time for the scheduled layover. Onboard is the young woman, along with a guy she met at the station. They are both in back yakking it up. She gets out at a cheap apartment complex, what the newspaper article refers to as "affordable housing." She thanks the driver for saving her "from the crazies." Bus drivers: don't leave your affordable housing without them.
The following morning, along the block with the open field, a newly arrived hybrid SUV is parked. Twenty-four hours later, it will be gone. Friday. Last night, the coworker called me. She needs me to work her shift. The next morning, I wake up to my alarm clock. I almost never need it to wake up early, so I set it for the exact moment when I would otherwise be leaving the house to get to work with a comfortable margin of being on time. I glance online at the transit system schedules to see what my options are. I opt for the train...again. I get to the train station and miss one train by four minutes. The next one will still give me a fighting chance. And in fact, I make it to work with 6 minutes to spare. After a full day at work, open to close, I get out on time. I'm stepping out the door and I have to step out of the way of a homeless kid. He's in a mismatched collection of garments. And...he's carrying a couple of golf clubs, called drivers. I've seen other homeless with golf clubs. No, i don't get it. The guy is making his way along the line of businesses. I briefly watch him as he turns a corner. he appears to be checking trash cans. We must have really good garbage.
