I heard there was trouble overnight on Goodman - trouble near Goodman and Monroe.
It was nothing too bad; nothing that would rate mention on the news or in the paper, though, maybe - it should be mentioned.
After hours on weekends, as everybody knows, the place most of Rochester goes is Monroe. Everyone's out for Gitsis' and for Mark's Texas Hots, for Country Sweet and for Mr. V's catering cart alongside the back of the Chase Bank.
Everyone comes to eat after the bars close but they come, too, and maybe even more, to be part of the crowd, the show that goes on.
Any party night, the Avenue after two a.m. has an audible pulse from the bass reverb. Monroe's thousand faces wear a grin that shouts with laughter and the street sings with the growl of low-ride and high polish street machines. Its riptorn through from time to time by the passage of gangs of motorcycles.
Man, it gets crowded, too! Traffic jams at Goodman sometimes so that the avenue is more a parking lot that people walk around in and visit from car to car. The Exxon at Amherst would be parking, too, if a cop didn't pull up and sit there like a pit bull in the yard.
And, then, the parking lot at the Chase Bank - that becomes a fairground. Picnics on fenders and impromptu dances that break out; people take rides at times on the hoods of cars departing and arriving.
These hot summer nights, there can be light in the sky before all the restless folk go home from the Avenue on a party night.
But...
I heard, last night -someone brought a gun to a good time. Shots were fired into the air in front of Mr. V's - and, then, that was all the good time there was for the night.
That's what I heard.
June 7, 2008.
