More Walking
For some reason, I’ve been noticing the sidewalk writing lately. I don’t know if it’s because we walk so often now that we don’t have a car, or if it’s because people hereabouts tend to express themselves more frequently by writing in wet pavement, but it seems more prominent. April 16, 1970 must have been a particularly inspiring and particularly empty day in the neighbourhood as it is the day that DANNY SCHUMACHER wrote his name and the date in at least 5 different places.
Several statements have caught my notice these days:
- Love Yourself
- Scott Loves Jason
- POOP (with a smiley face with X’s for eyes)
- Fuck Nixon
- Fuck Teeth
- Eat Your Acid, We Ate Ours
- Let Them Eat Cats
- The Joy of Soy
… and a home-printed poster taped to a tree in Golden Gate Park that was a memorial to someone’s dog named Dude- “he fought for a long time to stay with us but lost the battle in the end. So long, Dude!”
And while we’re on the topic, I can’t forget the out-of-the-ordinary folks that cross our path in the course of our walks: the guy wearing several random pieces of suede safety-pinned around his person in order to form a kind of neo-native-punk look, complete with feather-decorated mohawk and bead jewellery; the man singing the Star-Spangled Banner, opera-style, alone in his parking garage on a Tuesday morning so that it echoed into the street; the man walking down Stanyan carrying a large American flag for seemingly no reason; the woman who, half-way through walking across an intersection, stopped to get on her unicycle, turn right, and proceed down the hill; the man who asked me about Sam “How’s the baby-boy this morning?” He’s fine. He’d like to know how you are.