Category: The Friendly City

A woman comes striding toward me, bearing two onions in her outstretched hand. Like a personification of the season, she passes me with a jaunty step, her face gilded with light and an expression of unrestrained joy.

The city speaks through its signs. Can you hear it? We Went Solar; So Can You. Mutt-urity Matters: Adopt or Foster an Adult Dog.

Bowtie has finally entered the court!

The other day I was walking along College Avenue, a neighborhood I know well in all its seasons, when a perfectly unfamiliar house suddenly loomed up on one side of the street.

The desire path doesn’t listen to me or you. It heeds a need. It responds to hunger. It is not exactly against authority; authority doesn’t figure in its calculations. It is not interested in the plan.

In the Friendly City, it’s worth noting, a dead end is not always dead to a pedestrian.

The perfection, the absolute perfection of a golden September day in the Friendly City.

They tore down the Virginia Theater and put in a parking lot. But you can still see, she tells me, in the brick buildings downtown, the outlines of former architecture, the shadowy shapes of windows that will never open again.