It's Sunday; That Explains It.

Wouldn'tjah know:

It's Sunday night and you can walk by a bar on Monroe without picking your way through a crowd asking for a light, sneaking drinks out on the street, vomiting. You can hear yourself think. You see a panhandler or a crazy person coming you can light right out and cross the avenue without waiting for traffic to clear.

I'm down across Meigs and I walk straight by that bar they've put in down there, the Park Bench, without noticing it has opened, at last, till I come to the corner of the building where they have put out a sandwich sign pointing down it's side to the new front entrance.

I get what I need from the no name convenience store next door and the clerk and I agree there is a new bar in the neighborhood. Thursday night, he thinks it was that they opened.

"They are open now," he informs me in that quiet, careful sounding African accented voice of his.

Concerned only with making a living out of his little store and selling gas, it is apparent he hasn't taken all that much notice of his new business neighbor's presence.

I have no other reason to do so, but I cross to 7/Eleven because I can without interruption and because of something I was told the other night.

I was in Rite Aid Friday or Saturday and the subject was the crowds that were out in the bars and on the street with the fine weather we were having. The subject was mostly all Gitsis' and Mark's and the scene that we expected there would be out in front of those spots after hours. It was largely, too, remembrance of how it had been last summer before the shooting that shut down Gitsis' weekend night after one in the morning.

I recalled how the crowds that come on to Monroe for all-night eats when the bars all close in other parts of town took, after that, to going down to Mark's and raiding 7/Eleven for snacks, instead. Without mentioning it in particular, I remembered how, for a weekend or so, the crowd was baffled by the absence of Gitsis' to go to but, then, began pulling into 7/Eleven's parking lot in their polished street machines till there were traffic jams in there and party scenes started up among the snarls.

"7/Eleven," I only mentioned, "they had to take on that security guard."

"Joe, big guy; he was okay,' the Rite Aid clerk, Aaron, remembered him fondly.

"You know John?" he asked.

John, the clerk, is 7/Eleven after midnight.

"Sure. I started going into 7/Eleven late nights for John - and that guy Dave that worked with him."

Aaron looked baffled.

"I don't know a Dave," he said.

"Tall skinny dude with a beard, always cleaning his nails," I characterized Dave.

The subject stayed John - squat, hair to this shoulders and no neck you can see - since we both know him and how he manages the After Midnight at 7/Eleven. John, we both agreed, hates Panhandlers who hang around his store and sneak thieves who pilfer merchandise.

"The other night," Aaron told me, "somebody busted out the window over at Rent-a-Center and just started walking away with a flat screen. John was out there and followed the guy. The cops busted him."

Now, Sunday night, John, himself, remembers it.

"Oh, yeah, yeah," he says, when I mention it, "Wednesday night, it was!"

He is raking merchandise in under the UPC reader and making change with both hands. The 7/Eleven is busy if nothing else is on a Sunday night.

"Guy," he says, taking it up high, "was walkin' off here like it was nuthin'. I followed him down around there and the cops came and busted his ass!"

We agreed that was a very fine thing, should happen more often.

Back out on the corner of the store, overlooking Meigs and Monroe, the parking lot foreground is all fast arriving cars and vans and trucks that pull in and sit with their engines running, stereo systems rapping and rocking but the streets beyond are that dark and that empty still, that Sunday night. When I'm ready to, I can cross the long way through the intersection to the New York Stylee corner. I can stroll across that long way unchallenged by so much as a bicyclist with a bell. I can take my time doing that and check out the front of Rent-a-Center though there is nothing there now, of course, to see. I can glimpse that doorway down from there and be reminded of that zombie drunk Friday night who was a good ten minutes angling his key at his lock as I came and went from my beyond Meigs stops.

Coming up the dark block toward Woodlawn with its bright corner, Mark's Texas Hots, I'm thinking how it is around Closing Time and there is nearly no one out on the street. There are no gangs of kids pouring out of O'Callaghans to dash through traffic and get in line at Mark's front door. No one is spilling out to hang around in front of Acme Bar and Pizza or the Sports Page, either.

Holding the door open at Mark's, is this runty little guy a half inch higher than a midget. He has a small face that comes to a point at the tip of his nose ferret fashion and he is still dressed for winter yet in heavy jacket and a wool cap.

Coming through, in the light of the entry, there is this slim Pretty Woman with long straight hair and, instantly, I am hoping she isn't attached in some way to this ferret guy.

Then, as she slips out and sidles around the corner to stand and wait, the doorway frames a large tall dude in a bright yellow tee-shirt like two acres of sunflowers seen from a half a mile away. He and the midget are quite the contrast. He is wide as the door, itself, and tall enough to seem to want to stop coming through it. He is hauling a sack of take out that could feed a boat load of Somali Pirates but it is only a snack for this one guy. Slim has her own tiny sack she's holding on to and, I think, she'd better only pick at it when they get where they're going.

"Gonafiniszat, Hon? 'mm'mmm!"

Scripted in red high on the billboard of this tall guy's Carney shoulders as I follow them up the sidewalk is 'Got You Stimulus Package Right Here!'

I'm following the couple of them, but only as far as Acme Bar and Pizza, where they think they see someone they know through the window. Then, it's the reverse and they are coming along just behind me the whole way pass the Sports Page and Country Sweet Chicken and Ribs. I'm hoping that one of these cars parked along the curb is theirs because Hightower doesn't seem to notice there is any one else on the street and I definitely don't want to come between him and his diner.

But no such luck.

So, corner of Edmonds, I veer right and step off the curb without my usual caution. I don't look around dreading to see a bright sunburst of tee-shirt coming up over my shoulder one nano-second ahead of sprawling on the asphalt with a size nine imprinted on my back.

Otherwise I wouldn't be so bold.

Instead, this baby blue jeep jitterbugs around the corner just as I've got a foot down in the street. It comes careening off Monroe as though the parking space on Edmonds along side Sol Burrito were the last spot in walking distance of the avenue on a Saturday night.

I have to step back.

It is a close call - jeep or Sassquatch?

Only, as it happens, the Pretty Woman has veered left and taken her large friend with her out into Monroe to cross.

He is saying,

"What night is this?"

"Sunday, Hon, it's Sunday."

"That explains it."


May 4, 2009.