Saturday, June 27, 2009

Michael Jackson Is Dead.

A storm had threatened in the middle of the afternoon - the atmosphere darkened, wind whipped the tree tops, and, long after, long unfolding black rumbles of distant thunder followed silent flashbulbs of lightning.

The storm never came but passed Monroe Avenue and the city by.

At the height of the storm that wasn't, and through the usual avenue traffic, a ladder truck and hose truck from Alexander Street station raced through the zone with lights and sirens and blaring horns at cross streets and went up and over the Expressway bridge to Upper Monroe. The sirens rivaled the wind, the horns seemed more threatening than the slow peels of thunder and the red flashing lights were more present and constant than the isolated instants of rare lightning.

As the red machines hurtled and bullied through the traffic in desperate rush, it was strange seeing their crews sitting up in them wearing such relaxed and workaday demeanors.

Five minutes or so later a Rural/Metro ambulance returned down the hill and avenue in the opposite direction with its lights and its thinly wailing siren but it wasn't certain whether the run was part of the same job or another emergency altogether.

Except for the inconvenienced drivers made to pull over and allow them to pass and a few pedestrians who waited and used the wake of the trucks' passage to cross a traffic-free avenue, it is unlikely Monroers paid the sirens any especial attention. They minded no more the seeming approach of a storm.

They never do.

Long before evening and the setting of the sun, the sky cleared. Mid-evening was serene on Monroe and foot traffic and cars passing up and down the avenue seemed to assume a leisurely gait in agreement with the long and transfixing sunlight. Anyone who recalled the afternoon would have found the leisure and calm remarkable.

The light even set in amber and isolated in place a near fight that threatened to break out at the corner of Boardman across from Oxford's Pub. It was between a two-by-four wielding angry man on the corner and the passenger of a mini-van pulled up to the avenue. The van's turn signal flashed and flashed as the driver leaned forward over the steering wheel peering for a lapse in the traffic and his passenger leaned out the door exchanging hot threats and excoriations with the Two-By-Four Man.

"Jus' Turn! TURN! Go On!" a woman on the other side of the avenue shouted.

And, soon, the driver did.

After, there was a flurry of comment from concerned parties lingering before the first house on Boardman and among the loungers on and standing about the chairs set out around the corner in front of Rookie's Pizza. Two-By-Four Man marched about and, eventually, tossed his lumber away in the alley behind the pizza place. He returned to the corner and passed through the gang in the chairs to go back inside the Greek restauant, Astoria, which shares an entry with Rookie's.

A big bellied lounger on the bus bench at the opposite corner of Boardman, commented with arms wide over the back of the bench,

"And it isn't even ninety degrees!"

A Rochester Blue-and-White cruised by and didn't stop.

The early evening crowd at Oxford's was largely made up of young people in bold shirts of several colors that had crests over their hearts. Their backs were white with the logos of beer companies and the crests read Summer Ball 2009.

"Kick Ball," one of them explained; with a gesture up and down the avenue, he added, "Bars sponsor us."

"Yeah, I saw a lot of you guys out here Tuesday night."

"Yeah, Tuesday the really competitive teams play, I think."

From a car pulling up to the curb a girl wearing one of the pink shirts got out. She had on especially tight, especially slight shorts and all the street eyes followed her into Oxford's door.

"Aw, that's healthy!" someone commented for all.

"Really!"

Thursday is not one of the major drinking nights on the Avenue but all evening long and into the night, crowds were coming out, walking down the dry pavements with their hands in the pockets of long, plaid patterned shorts and khaki cargoes making the bars their destination.

The people coming out had their reasons and seemed to treat the evening like any Friday or Saturday night.

After hours there was even a small but significant influx of Hip Hop thumping cars to Mark's and Gitsis' from other zones of the city. And, though they had been out in force Wednesday night when the bars offered their specials, the Blue-and-Whites were taken by apparent surprise, put in few appearances and were not needed.

Steve, the Old Guy, came down to the street from his room earlier than his usual and in a mood.

He walked down through the zone and made his late-night purchases early at the No Name Convenience at Averill and across the Avenue at the 7/Eleven.

Leaving the No Name place, he even commented,

"I'm out earlier tonight."

He knew that the owner marked his arrival as time to close for the night.

"Yes," the owner agreed in his accented voice. "You are."

The Comedian, one of the streets more entertaining panhandlers, circled about on the corner of Rowley and up on the sidewalk on his bicycle wanting to get through to the line up out in front of the Angry Duck. He had a joke for them but a stubby bear-like dude with a black beard and a ball cap was blocking his passage.

"DON'TCHA WANNA MAKE TEN CENTS," the dude was laughing combatively. "C'MON! Y'KIN LICK MY ASS FOR TEN CENTS!"

Coming back around and down off the sidewalk out into the avenue on his bike, the Joker almost ran into Steve and excused himself with his usual grin in his voice and on his narrow crumpled dark face.

"S'Okay!"

The line-up sucking on their cigarettes looked between embarrassed and amused behind the angry dude.

He turned to them and in the same loud voice proclaimed,

"Y'OUGHTA PAY ME KEEPIN' THAT BUM FROM HITTIN' Y'UP!" He was certain that, "'AT GUY'S NO CRACK ADDICT HE DON'T WANTA MAKE TEN CENTS!"

Faintly laughing, one of the Ducks sort of agreed, went along,

"It's such a sweet deal, too!"

"DAMN RIGHT! THAT GUY'S NO CRACK HEAD!"

It was still too early to judge the Last Call Crowd at Oxford's and Steve, the Old Guy, went on along to Starbuck's. On the deserted patio in front, he piled his bags on the metal corner table and turned a chair to be in the area light from the corner of the Plum House next door. Across Monroe and half way down to Oxford's at the other end of the block, the newly opened Standard Lounge was doing business inside but there were and had been all evening no crowds in front of its entry way. Perhaps its patrons were taking seriously that whole 'Lounge' thing. With Monroe Mart and everything else closed for the night, the Oxford Street end of the block is relatively quiet after the last bus of the night pulls up or passes by the stop in front of the convenience at ten to one.

Other than late arriving crowds with their hands in their pockets or beery singles, couples and crowds of early home-bound ex-patrons occasionally passing, there were only silently racing late night bicyclists and clattering, leg swinging skate board kids up there.

The Old Guy had brought a book in his back pack.

Eventually, as Steve should have known would happen, a passing beer-phased single came along. He was representatively moon-faced, curly haired and large size and his hands were in his pockets.

His step was slow, wandering away early from the bars, and stopped altogether on the sidewalk just the other side of the railing.

With empty confusion, he inquired,

"Wha'cha doin'?"

"Reading!"

His confusion continuing, Mr. Moon wondered, after a long moment,

"Why?"

"'Cuss there's no news on the cable!" Steve said in his mood.

Without blinking, Mr. Moon thought about that, could make no sense of it and wandered on alone homeward once more.

It was June 25th, 2009 and at Last Call at Oxford's Pub the last departing crowd of five or six young people stood about on the sidewalk until all of twenty after two or two-thirty. It was a mild night and conversation was casual among them. Few opinions of any note were expressed. Only a short round guy with big glasses was conversing, really, and he was grinning over his own brilliance.

"The guy grew up performing. He never did anything else. It has to have screwed him up, y'know? He has to have been screwed up."

He grinned, too, through a tale he'd heard about a concert in Africa.

"He goes over there - in the jungle and all. They don't even have electricity. And, they're setting up all this stuff. He puts on this show. They've never seen anything like him. They think he's a god or something. They probably still think he's a god over there!"

Steve watched them going away. They were going off to Gitsis' for garbage plates the way they always do after hours on Monroe.

Sunday, June 21, 2009

More.

Saturday night...

...well, Sunday now that it is coming on four in the morning, cars are still crowding the lot down at 7/Eleven.

Gangs are hanging out on the cars and around them and up on the walk that fronts the building and follows around its south side.

When not clowning with one another, guys are appreciating and shouting out the girls who go by them showing all that leg in tight short Saturday Night dresses that glitter and shine.

Coming back out into the night, the ladies hold their store swag above their breasts with fastidious slender hands. On high heels, they strut and sway as they walk through the lot in that careless slow and arrogant way they have when they know they are Saturday night.

Engines rev and idle and rap radio booms and declares.

Big Deal Pizza, Mark's Hots, North End News are the few other spots still thriving north of Goodman. South of that street, way up the Avenue, there are customers coming and going out of Gitsis' diner, too, a clot of crowd gathered about its door - guys shouting out girls and clowning with one another.

And the Pink Lady is still working there with her hand out.

All the time, perfect and quiet night is in place only a little way up any of the side streets of black tree tops and street lit wood frame houses sleeping off Monroe.

Even broad, cross-town Goodman Street, as soon as it is west of the Avenue, is out of what is still happening north and south on Monroe, now that the traffic to the Expressway bridge and South Wedge has died down.

Pass the end of Blockbuster, the Rite Aid is set back well off the street behind its black expanse of parking lot. The only car there, for the moment, belongs to the store security guard whose shift has something like another two hours to go before he can drive it home after dawn.

Alone, Aaron, the clerk, is out for a smoke. He is not up near the corner of the building where the drug store entrance and most of the light is, but sits on the sidewalk curb toward the west end of the building. There he is nearer the single row of dark trees along the fence line at the back of the lot just beyond the end of the store windows with his shoes on the blacktop and his knees up before him.

"Naw, I'm not hiding," he smiles in his quiet way. "I'm just out for a smoke."

"Not you; me. I'm hiding out."

"Crowds still busy on the Avenue?" he wonders, with maybe an envious, at least a knowing and interested smile.

"That, too; but there is somebody I'm trying to avoid."

"Oh!"

That requires some explanation, even if he seems ready to accept it without.

"I had a Monroe Moment just now. I was down at 7/Eleven...?"

This was when the scene at the convenience store was just getting started. The lot was already jamming up but it was before thee were gangs hanging out and partying. There were only actual customers hurrying in and out again. Maybe some few lingered at cars just parked or sat in them standing out front. But it hadn't gone epic yet.

"Coming out, there is this wad of bills on the ground...."

"Really?"

"No big wad. But more than enough that I feel wealthy at having found it."

His brows lift further, knowing there is more to it than just that.

"So, after, I'm walking around thinking I need to do something with some of this money - so the gods will know I appreciate the favor."

"Seems reasonable," he concedes.

"I was up around Gitsis' watching the crowd there and thinking about what's in my pocket. Do I want to go into Rookie's and buy a pie, offer slices to people on the street? Some such thing as that, y'know?"

"That sounds good."

That was back when the crowd at the diner, at Gitsis', was getting most active. The line-up of people waiting to get in for food stretched south from the door. Customers coming out and folk just hanging out were all over the parking lot the other way and jamming the sidewalk, populating the corners of Wilmer Street. Some wild girl was chasing a guy around through all of it all loud and emotional. It was hard to tell if she was truly angry or only pretending and it was harder to say if his laughter at her chasing him was merely mocking along with here or somehow nervous at each escape he was making and a little uncertain how long his luck would hold out. Everyone else in the crowd was laughing out loud at the spectacle.

"Then I see the Pink Lady - you know that panhandler, that tiny woman who hustles about everywhere with her hand out, wears a pink and white jacket?"

Slender and brittle as a long fallen branch; pointy chin and wide open eyes that are all that there is to a little bony face staring up in sad expectation and supplication while a voice squeaks a mousy plea -

"Excuse me, could you help me, all I need is...."

Appearing suddenly, in the middle of all that is happening, all the partying that is going on, her leaf-like and bone-veined hand outas she stares and asks,

"Excuse me...."

Aaron's brows lift and widen, his slow grin deepening with recollection.

"Oh, yeah! I've seen her," his mellow voice recalls; and, then, darkening a shade on reflection, he says, too, "People can get made at her."

Oh, yeah!

The woman out of the bars, especially, can be cruel, at times, can get hysterical angry even and go off on her. Or, seeing the Lady coming to intrude on their evening, they can beat her to the punch with wildly exaggerated mimicry -

"Ex-Cuse Me! Could you give me a doll-ar! All I need is a Doll-ar!"

They'll go right up in her face and shout. Bewildered, the Lady will stare with a suddenly terrified and amazed, lost look and, then, back off and hurrying away in her snipping, scissor-legged way.

The men are only ever testy and gruff but the women can be aggressive and mean-spirited with her.

"Yeah," Aaron recalls, "she's hit me up before."

"I'm passing through the crowd at the time when I see her there at the corner of the building. For once I see her before she sees me and, I figure, okay, there's a five in that wad I found so...!

"I slip it to her as I'm going by!"

"Well, that was nice."

"I'm feelin' good about it. I'm walkin' off, thinkin' I've taken care, I've done what I needed to do and we're square, y'know?"

"The gods, right?"

"'Xactly. Only, I'm almost through the crowd, just about to cross Wilmer and I knwo she's right behind me!"

Aaron's eyes arch wondering, anticipating.

"She catches me on the next corner, wants to thank me. And - "

Because Aaron seems about to say, again, how nice that must have been -

"She's got her hand out!"

"Oh!" he, now, knows.

The flat wheedling little voice that she has; the wide open sorry expressionless but pleading eyes, were all working.

"'But, cudjahmakit just a little more?' she says to me. 'All I need is a little more ...'"

"O, yeah!" Aaron grin and quiet laugh has got it. "She always does that! All you can do is laugh!"

"Oh, yeah! That's exactly what I did, too."

Head back and laugh out loud; all you can do.

"Waved her away and walked off, told her, 'No! That's it! That's all there is!'"

"She's done that to me, too!" he confesses. "That's way people get so angry with her."

"Persistent!"

"Never stops!"

"Tell me about it!"

At 7/Eleven, just now, cars arriving had to stop to find a way through the crush of traffic to find parking. At Big Deal scraps of crowd lined the walk eating out of pizza boxes and jawing before the light of the long windows with pie bakers and crowd inside behind them like a living picture of Saturday Night. At Mark's the bouncer on his high stool in the entry way was peering inside the diner to see if he could admit any customers and the slender security guard with the gun belt about him and the chrome cuffs hanging in the small of his back worked the hitched theater rope that keeps the crowd outside in line on the sidewalk.

And, up at Gitsis' the crowd might be thinner than it had been out in front but it was still to be seen from the corner of Monroe and Goodman.

"She is still up there, just now when I come back up the street. She was going after folks at their cars parked along the curb at Enright's."

"Y'know, y'd think she'd go home some time."

"I was going to cross and go back up the other side. But, then, I see her come out in the street headed that way, too."

Moving in her tight bee-line manner, she was cutting across the street angling to intercept.

"And I just knew!"

"I don't mind when they ask straight out for change for beer," Aaron allows and, then, thinks, too, of the ones he doesn't like to see coming, "We had this guy come in here one morning, real late. He has a white shirt and a jacket and he's carrying a gas can. Says he has just got a job here and needs gas to get home to Buffalo. But the guy's wearing sneakers. And who's just getting off work and going to drive all that way just to turn around?"

Oh, yeah!

"I got the gas can my first summer here. He was going to Syracuse - to get a job! And looked almost about to cry. Month or so later he came up to me again - still tryingot get to Syracuse and that job!"

Well, if you're on Monroe, you know; if you visit there enough times, you learn.

It is a street of panhandlers and small con artists. There is the comedian who rolls up on a bicycle and asks, 'Hey, hey, goddah joke for yuh!' There is the guy tall as a basketball star carrying around a fistful of plucked flowers for sale. Some day soon the Harmonica Man will return to the crowds out in front of O'Cal's or Oxford's or the Angry Duck, saying, 'Y'like the blue? See, here's the blues!'"

And all the time,

"Say, brother...."

"I don't wanna borther y'none....'"

If you live on Monroe, you know them; ifyou come there long enoug, you learn.