People-watching

There is a spot in a coffee shop where I like to sit and watch people pass by. The shop is in a market district that has become (through a well-documented history, I'm sure) an eclectic little microcosm of this cosmopolitan city. As I sit there, I see almost every human type in North America pass in front of me. We have the students (of course), here for cheap stuff and shits and giggles, who breeze by on their bicycles with plastic bags hanging off the handlebars or stroll leisurely along as if the big man in upstairs didn't own all their time in the service of academia. We have burly mountain men in plaid shirts and flaming red beards who are making their way down to the rocker bar. They have probably returned from prospecting expeditions where they have spent years searching for cobalt or someting in Attawapiskat or some place like that. We have our dreadlocked rastas emanating from the cluster of music and clothing stores. Their beats are contagius, but more on music later. We have queers proudly unfurling their freak flags. We have anarchists blocking the streets to cars and delivery trucks, clashing with the stolid old Chinese and Portuguese and other immigrant merchants. Aging hippies in torn clothes and newer hippies who are still fresh take their seats on the curb. Little troupes of street urchins coming back from Catholic or Chinese or Hebrew school get into everything. Mad prophets come out of the woodwork form time to time. Recruiters for political parties stalsk the alleys. Homeless people with gimmicks approach passers-by with no shame.

The stores themselves are something marvelous. We have every kind of food, from Eastern Europe to the fruits of South America, the nectars of Italy and the spices of the orient, subsistence ingredients and crazy fusion cuisines. Trinkets from all over the world grace the windowpanes. Drug paraphernelia lines the walls of several stores. Musical instruments from Africa rub shoulders with fatalistic Russian balalaikas, to give an example. Idealistic literature of every ideological and linguistic stripe can be found. Clothes from army fatigues to priness dresses, from hand socks to fishnet stockings is there for the taking. Costumes and ironic t-shirts too.

Several styles of music clash with each other and vie for dominance in a subdued way. Eech personality type, I believe, gravitates to a different part of the street as a result. Chillin' island beats go head-to-head with the smooth jazz pouring out of the cafe up the street; the punk rock can sometimes be heard together with the pleasant, coffee-drinking ambient electronica of the coffee shops; mainstream classic rock pushes and shoves with mainstream new rock, whatever that means. Occassionally, guitar or drum circles spring up at the intersection where the coffee shop is locates, where I drink and watch the orgiastic bustle intently. I don't even think I like the coffee much, but it would be unseemly to use up space in the shop without helping them out. In the shop, people sit on jerry-rigged swings and talk. Occassionally, some concersations drift out and consume other tables as well.

There's more.

But what would I do if They came to bulldoze it all and turn it into clean square condos?

Consider: "I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I shall remain."