Glancing Blow

I was walking up Vine in Hollywood, which is not quite as romantic as it might sound, but it's not bad either. There are a number of great stores and restaurants around there, one of which is the Trader Joe's at which I bought the bottled water that I wrote about yesterday. I was leaving there when I was addressed by this guy. It is often not a good thing to engage in conversation with a stranger, but sometimes it can work out passably well.

I thought it was going well. He complimented my hair. This happens sometimes, and what I can't figure out is why it happens when I've taken proper care of my hair and also when I've just rolled out of bed and gone out. Maybe the hair is lower maintenance than I think. In any case,  my hair was well looked after on this occasion, and I was ready to believe that he honestly liked my hair and just wanted to say so. Maybe the first part was true.

Passing Through, But Of Course You Knew

Something I've mused about in the past is what it feels like under different sets of circumstances to travel by foot. I've written about walking through well-to-do neighborhoods where I feel as if I might be picked up by police on the grounds that my presence is suspicious. Yesterday I found myself in that scenario again. In fact, I walked through an awfully nice neighborhood twice, to and from my Toastmasters meeting.

It's a novel thing to travel slowly along a nice residential street. It's very quiet and inactive, and yet being there for a while gives you the opportunity to see what actually is happening. You see the one or two residents walking dogs or jogging, and you see the armies of service workers who make the neighborhood go. You see some of the nice cars that people who live there drive, but mostly you see pickup trucks and delivery vans.

Hollered At

I'm reluctant to brag, always fearing that others will perceive it from me in the same way that I perceive it when it comes from others, which is to say not kindly. On the other hand, I really do like attention, and I do telling people about the good things that happen to me. I just try to keep it to the things that most warrant it. I like to think that people will hear me out on such things if I have a good track record on all that.

Yesterday something happened that in my eyes was rather remarkable. Other people might disagree, and maybe this kind of thing happens a lot to some of them, but for me it remains a novelty. I was walking down the street in Hollywood, already feeling proud of having resolved something at the DMV. Minutes after that, I hear raised voices coming from the road. I've gotten used to friends spotting me while driving around, so I thought it was that.

My Road And Otis

It's funny the things you see when you are watching. I am at greater liberty to do so than others perhaps, because they are driving and I and riding or walking all the time. I don't have to concern myself with the road, and I am often traveling slowly enough that I can watch things play out instead of zipping by them. That happened the other day, when I would just as soon have been in a car, but found myself walking up a hill.

I was on my way to a gig, and found that the bus did not go up the hill. Rather, it stopped at the bottom and turned. That's sensible enough I suppose. I started walking, and found I was making better time than I guessed. Maybe it felt that way because I had company. There was some guy walking up the hill for reasons of his own. He wasn't there for the reason I was. Maybe he was there for one of the industrial-looking businesses around. He walked on one side of the road and I the other.

Some Scenes

You see some interesting things out walking on the street. Typically I see these things when I'm out walking for a purpose, but every now and then, I find myself feeling compelled to go for a walk. It may be because I'm bored, or as in a recent case, because I was trying to conceive of ideas and was having no luck cloistered away at home. When the ideas do not come and find you, my thinking is, you must go out there after them.

I for one am perfectly willing to do so with vigor, although if I had known that there would be a sheen of mist falling on the streets, I might have been less eager this time. Sometimes they're not really out there, no matter how much stimulus is out there- and on this occasion there was plenty to be seen and heard. In truth, this recent sojourn did not have any really clear-cut textbook ideas that I would come to and say, "Here is something worthy of my writerly attentions!"

Walkawalk

When I think about it, I do an awful lot of things based on a whim. Women find such spontaneity appealing, right? It must be a good thing. Something I often decide to do on a moment's notice for little reason is to walk someplace. It's free, and when I have the time and energy it sometimes seems like the most logical expenditure of both I can imagine. If I'm going to be alone in either case, the more social thing would seem to be a walk.

I'll do it anytime. Sometimes I'll feel the urge to go down to the lobby. I'll look out the front door and want to walk out to the street. I'll look up and down the street and walk out to the main road. I'll repeat that and start walking down the main road. I'll then develop a plan to walk some circuit which may take a few minutes or a lot longer. There's really no objective except that I feel compelled to walk around and look around.

Turnaround

In such extraordinary times, one sees extraordinary things. When you consider that most people will do what is necessary, and sometimes incredible things are necessary, then you can react very calmly, as I generally do. When you act like everything's no big deal, peoples' estimation of you tends to rise considerably. So it must have been that I was quite impressive when I reacted with nothing more than an arched eyebrow to what I saw a number of days ago on the street in North Hollywood.

Now, I've commented on derring-do in the course of crossing the street before. Nowhere is there anyone more brave bordering on foolhardy than those souls who can't spare the time or the effort to reach a crosswalk in order to reach the other side of the street. What of those who do the right thing and use the crosswalk? Surprisingly enough, they sometimes find a way to introduce that spice of life danger into the equation, as I saw. It really was a sight to see, and I shall do my best to do it justice so that you know I'm not deliberately blowing something out of proportion just to make a worthwhile post.

Buttons

As I don't drive and often find mass transit less than efficient for certain trips, I do a lot of walking. Probably I walk with a purpose other than fitness more than anyone I know, so I feel it's fair for me to consider myself something of an authority on the matter. Take my usual Thursday, for example. The nature of a public transportation grid is that it handles straight lines a lot better than it does trips that have very many turns, so you wind up with itineraries like the one that brings me to my Toastmasters meeting: a bus ride occupies the first ten or so minutes, and walking the remaining twenty. On the way back from the meeting, I tend to walk the whole way, which amounts to an hour or so.

I cross a lot of streets in this way, and most of them legally. Sometimes the 'Walk' signal is controlled automatically and you must surrender yourself to its inscrutable will. Other times, you are granted free will in the form of a button. It's been suggested that the button is often a mechanical placebo, but let's say that it does what it claims. I'll tell you what I do. I approach the intersection and locate the button. I search out any people waiting to cross from my side, and if none are there I look across to the other side for people going the other way. If there are none, I then can assume that no one has pressed the button. I then hit the button hard three times if it is of old construction, or just once if it is a newer model.

Alley Oop

Every once in a while, I'm seized by the urge to go for a walk. Lest you draw the wrong conclusion from that fact, I will say that it has nothing whatsoever to do with my health. Any such benefit is purely ancillary. The real motivation comes from my fairly strong spirit of exploration. I'm a curious guy, and sometimes I just like walking around, looking around. It's not necessary for there to be any practical discoveries, but they do sometimes happen. One did in fact happen on one of my earliest excursions in my present neighborhood.

I now live in a building just off the main road in this area. It is lined with more or less bustling shops and restaurants. Customers access them from that main road. Proprietors do so by way of the alley behind them. I love that alley. It's an excellent short cut in certain situations provided I am alert enough to avoid the occasional car and truck traffic which sometimes clogs it up. Even if it weren't a handy way of getting places, I would play it up as one solely so that I would have something to be in the know about. who doesn't love being an insider about something?

World Street

I happened to be dropping off a piece of mail in my building's lobby when I chanced to glance out the front, which is mostly glass. Since I can easily go many days without leaving my apartment, I seized the opportunity to be able to say that I had gone outside today no matter how things transpired. Once I stood outside, I decided to go a little further and make a complete circuit of the street I live on, or at least the single block of it. It was an edifying experience.

I started thinking about the multiple concentric shapes that constitute one's home at different levels. I say 'shapes' because they really aren't circles, but irregular shapes. At one end is one's own bed and at the other the universe itself. In between there are many 'homes', but one in particular interests me at the moment, and that as I said is the street my building is on. It only took a few minutes to walk the entire thing around, but it's astonishing how much there is in it. At one end is the busy main road, populated by various businesses. The small burger restaurant with only outdoor seating is most prominent from my perspective. On this particular day it was closed for no reason I could discern. Opposite that is an alley that goes on for some blocks and ends at the next major intersecting road.