Tag Archives: city

Mother.

Leave a comment | Posted by Patrick Calder on in rant

Dear lady with the cute baby in the stroller,

You may not know this, but muttering snarky comments under your breath as you walk away isn’t the best way to convey information.

If I caught your words correctly, I should point out that given how I was walking down a narrow aisle, towards an outward swinging door, which you were already in the process of opening, physics dictates that the only way I could have conceivably helped you instead of “standing there like a lazy fuck” would have been to either open the door into your face or expect you to back up and move out of my way while I exited, finally putting me in the only position where I could have actually held the door open.

But I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume that you didn’t actually look at the situation. You instead just felt entitled to help from anyone and everyone around you. And you know what they say about feeling entitled. It makes an ass out of you.

Sincerely,

Me.

Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!

KoolAid

Leave a comment | Posted by Patrick Calder on in misc., photo

Walked past the Chinatown subway exit on my way to a store on the same block. Went in, found what I wanted right away. I paid and left. Walked back towards the metro.
People were crowded around. But there was a guy playing Caribbean music, so i just figured he was popular. Saw bright red KoolAid spilled on the ground near the exit. Then I noticed the guy slouched in the corner, with his hands over the side of his face. And there’s a cop standing over him.
And maybe that wasn’t KoolAid. And judging from the spray, and the fact he was holding the side of his face, I’m guessing that wasn’t a bloody nose. Must have gotten slashed.
And the steel drummer played on.

Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!

Dupont Circle

Leave a comment | Posted by Patrick Calder on in intangibles

When I moved to DC back in the late 90s, I wanted to live in Dupont Circle. Nothing really shocking about that. You ask any young white person back then where was somewhere cool to live, and you can be sure that would be the first place off their lips. Possibly the only place, depending on how much they knew the city. Even Adams Morgan was still a bit questionable back then. (I remember them moving the Adams Morgan Day festival to the Mall one year to avoid gangs in the actual neighborhood).
And for the whole time I was trying to get settled in the city, Dupont Circle did glow as this ideal place to go. It’s always filled with people. It’s as safe as a big city gets. It had nothing to do with the tourist-DC. It has food, and entertainment, and people yelling strange things on the street.
I didn’t actually end up there, but wasn’t too far away. But everything that glows, fades. The circle itself isn’t much different, but the way I looked at it did. I’m not going to bore you to death by examining why my perceptions changed, but they did. The circle was still a decent place to be, but it didn’t feel magical anymore.
In the last year or two, I’ve spent a lot of times at various places around the circle. I’m not drunk enough to claim that it’s in any way magical again. But I think it’s one of the closest things DC has now to the big city image you see in melodramatic movies. In particular, I love sitting in the coffee shop, facing out the giant, old windows. They’re the biggest, highest-def, brightest movie screen you’ve ever seen. Sit there long enough and everything will walk, roll, or shamble past, eventually.
You have no idea how hard it is to not pull out my camera and spend all day taking pictures of the people passing by.

Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!

Burning the Midnight Oil

Leave a comment | Posted by Patrick Calder on in design, photo

It’s now a bit after 6:30 am, and I just sent off some art to the client. I promised them something by this morning, and unfortunately I seem to be better working on this particular project in the wee hours of the day. But I quite like the design, (*knock on wood*), and the payment for the job is pretty good.
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This was yesterday’s “picture of the day”. I took it on my way down to Penn Photo to get some pictures developed. I like it, though I’m having a hard time thus far saying why. It has nothing that jumps out at you. But it’s distinctly city, and of a street not yet made up totally of homogenous boxes.
Gawd. It’s getting light out. I really need to go to sleep now. I have a hard time sleeping in daylight.

Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!

morning

Leave a comment | Posted by Patrick Calder on in friends, life worth living, memory

I have always liked wandering around in cities at ridiculous hours. Everything takes on a surreal quality. I used to work a semi-third shift at a newspaper, and would come home at 3, 4, or 5 in the morning, in a small town. And everything was quiet. It was when I first notice that night time tends to have no weather. Especially no wind. It’s a Twilight Zone episode, where you’re wandering around an abandoned city and nothings moving. My favorite memory of that job and those people happened when two of my coworkers, driving home from the same job, pulled over and started a snoball fight, in a suprisingly bright street at 3am.
The last couple weeks, I’ve gone to a club about 6 or 7 blocks away. It’s very nice not having to think about how I will get home. If someone offers me a ride, great. But otherwise, it’s nothing more than a short walk. And I’ve been stopping at CVS on my way home, since I’m inevitably hungry by the time I get out of the club.This CVS just makes me cringe in daylight. It’s every depressing aspect of city life all rolled into one little cell. But at 3am, even it becomes fascinating. And everyone wandering the aisles looks briefly at you as you pass, probably wondering why you would be out at such a strange hour in a place like this, (forgtting of course that they’re also doing the same).
About 4 o’clock this morning, I went down to the lobby to get a soda from the machine. Someone was running the dryer in the on-floor laundry room. That’s life in the middle of the night. You know it’s out there, but it’s all locked up behind walls and doors.

Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!

never ponder when tired

2 Replies | Posted by Patrick Calder on in intangibles

So I get off the metro around 3 AM, and start walking up the street to my apartment. Not for the first time, but for the strongest in a while, I ask myself, “wow… what the fuck are you doing walking through downtown in a major city at 3 AM? you’re a redneck from nowhere. they look at you funny here.”
But then… I don’t really care how they look at me. Just wish more of the cute ones would touch me.
I’ve had serious urges to go back to my home town or some small place and live. Aside from the whole “things to do vs. isolation” argument*, I wonder why I’m where I am. Certainly on my last trip home, it occurred to me that while DC may be infinitely more complex and dangerous, it’s the devil I know. Confronted with a questionably dangerous situation in my home town, I was lost as to how to react. While I’m by no means “citified”, I haven’t lived in a truly small town since 1993. I think in my hometown, it’s more of that whole lord-of-the-flies, go-with-your-gut, redneck, survival-of-the-fittest thing. And I have no illusions as to where I stand under those conditions. Whereas most things in a city, even the bad things, usually involve a whole line of decisions. And when you over-think things as much as I do…
Ideally, I want to reside somewhere under “live and let live” conditions. But it doesn’t seem like those kind of places exist any more.
*New thought for me: Do you think maybe people marry younger in small towns simply because they’re bored? Or put less offensively… because to move on to the “next set of stuff” you do in small towns means being part of a family?

Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!