sidewalk again

category: sidewalk/kid quote/city living/where should we live/tiny ambitions

if you read this blog regularly (and the two of you know who i mean) you will notice that there are a lot of sidewalk and park posts. i think this reflects the urban nature of what i am pathetically trying to write about here, how we intersect and live in the public spaces of the
city.

i wish there were more positive sidewalk posts.


this morning walking past some stinky fluid on the sidewalk miles said "i wish we lived on garbage block (the other side of our block, which has some kind of wind tunnel of paper litter but is much much less travelled than potrero ave) so there would only be regular garbage and not so much poo and pee."

sigh

there are a lot of sick and homeless folks around lately. faces are becoming so familiar. the drunks at the walgreen's bus stop have moved somewhere else. sometimes the down and out people around here remind me of friends from my past in newark and philly. i had two different friends camping on my couch for a combined period of over two years way back when. rich just saw our homeless friend with the shopping cart downtown looking not so great. i know we are lucky. i try hard not to use the poor around here as lecture subjects for the kids "if you smoke cigarettes too much you can get too sick to have a job and end up not being able to pay for a place to live" but every now and then this kind of bs comes out of my mouth.

i guess the upside of all the nastiness on the sidewalk and crazy looking folks pushing shopping carts in traffic and tiny elderly chinese ladies carrying huge bags of scavenged recycling on a stick across her shoulders is that right outside our door the kids are learning about how varied everyone's living situations are. i guess it is my job to make that part of their education positive somehow. i will try my best...