another morning
today i had a very "san francisco" (read: surreal) morning. odd things always seem to happen to me waiting for the 26-valencia. this morning i wandered over to the bus stop around 10 after 8 in the morning. as i waited at the curb, i couldn't help noticing a heated discussion under way over at the bus shelter.
at the bus shelter, a young african-american man (about my age) who appeared to be either drunk or maybe on an upper of some kind, was giving ebullient directions to an older woman (maybe 60 or so, though she was the type of woman who looks older than she is). the woman began speaking to man (who i thought was Latino) sitting next to her in what sounded like Russian, but that man, maybe around 50 years old, responded in English with a heavy Spanish-accent. they continued their dialog, of which i only caught snatches, but involved vegetables and busses. at one point, the younger man screamed, "here's what we did: we killed him, and then we left him there," and i felt like i was in a scene from a b-movie for a moment as i eyed the unlikely trio.
after some time the young man approached me and asked me about my shoes. i told him i paid $12.99 for them (in retrospect, it may have been $14.99) and he admired them, telling me they were superior to his $50 pair. i was amused by the dialog, and carried on, when one of the burly Iranian men who works in the convenience store across the street from the bus stop approached me and asked me if i was ok. i was so startled by his question (and mildly insulted, since i'm pretty good at taking care of myself, and really, if he ever saw the area where i work, the guy asking about my shoes would seem like a minor character vis-a-vis the other people i encounter every day) i only answered, "of course" and left him to look worryingly at me and go to his store.
of course, the implication that a drunk black man talking to a nicely-dressed white women necessarily constitutes harassment is too-often borne out by experience, but the blatent racism in that assumption still shocked me.
in any case, our strange city is always interesting in the morning.
at the bus shelter, a young african-american man (about my age) who appeared to be either drunk or maybe on an upper of some kind, was giving ebullient directions to an older woman (maybe 60 or so, though she was the type of woman who looks older than she is). the woman began speaking to man (who i thought was Latino) sitting next to her in what sounded like Russian, but that man, maybe around 50 years old, responded in English with a heavy Spanish-accent. they continued their dialog, of which i only caught snatches, but involved vegetables and busses. at one point, the younger man screamed, "here's what we did: we killed him, and then we left him there," and i felt like i was in a scene from a b-movie for a moment as i eyed the unlikely trio.
after some time the young man approached me and asked me about my shoes. i told him i paid $12.99 for them (in retrospect, it may have been $14.99) and he admired them, telling me they were superior to his $50 pair. i was amused by the dialog, and carried on, when one of the burly Iranian men who works in the convenience store across the street from the bus stop approached me and asked me if i was ok. i was so startled by his question (and mildly insulted, since i'm pretty good at taking care of myself, and really, if he ever saw the area where i work, the guy asking about my shoes would seem like a minor character vis-a-vis the other people i encounter every day) i only answered, "of course" and left him to look worryingly at me and go to his store.
of course, the implication that a drunk black man talking to a nicely-dressed white women necessarily constitutes harassment is too-often borne out by experience, but the blatent racism in that assumption still shocked me.
in any case, our strange city is always interesting in the morning.