Bum-pee road to work

When I was young and naive and my urban experiences were limited to driving through Denver to visit my grandma in Littleton, I thought living in a city must be grand and exciting. Of course, now that I have spent the last 14 years enjoying all the wonderful joys of the urban existence, I can say with some authority that it ain't all glitz and glamour. Oh no, it requires a certain amount of intestinal fortitude just to go about your day.

As I've mentioned before, I walk to and from the office everyday with my co-worker/neighbor/friend Janet. It's a 1.5-mile 30-minute walk from North Beach through the Financial District to South of Market on Second at Harrison. All perfectly pleasant neighborhoods filled with coffee shops, restaurants, people in suits, shops, tourists and so on. And yet, this walk demands vigilance.

What I mean is that rarely a day goes by that we're not walking past some fresh horror: trying to avoid the mystery splatter of chunky ick in the middle of the sidewalk, holding our breath past the steaming sewer grate, stepping over the running puddles of bum pee, desperately dodging the tubercular coughs of the toothless woman with smeared lipstick ruddying her gaunt cheeks, avoiding eye contact with the crusty young psychotic who punctuates his constant mumbling with epithetic outbursts and wild gesticulations, staring straight ahead pretending not to see the pantsless person squatting between parked cars to the left while skirting the fresh pile of excrement to the right. It's sad, but it's become second nature to not even acknowledge these things, discussing instead butterflies and puppies and rainbows and mountain springs. Blinders are necessary else we'd be forever clutching each other in gagging repugnant depression.

I did wish I'd had my camera today, though. Not to poke fun at the less fortunate or anything like that, but simply to capture the moment. One of the old homeless guys who hangs around near the office had on a Monster.com hat and I couldn't help but smile at the wry incongruity.

Yes, life in the big city is so much more than I ever expected.