Whack!

Downtown San Diego has a trendy area, the Gaslamp, a five square block area of restaurants and bars where the pretty people play. The outstretching blocks are undergoing a period of gentrification but it’s a process where old and new business, organization and residence have to make nice, leaving renovated expensive lofts to neighbor community health and outreach centers. It can be block by block when heading north or south off the arterial streets so the sidewalk pedestrian mix is eclectic with pan handling amputated veterans and DINKS poorly paralleling parking their SUVs.

Caught in this fray is the Central Branch of the San Diego Public Library on E Street that offers limitless knowledge but no parking. Two blocks away I scored a spot that I neatly and expertly maneuvered The Red Baron into (the ’94 Honda Civic hatchback DX has an amazing turning radius). As I retrieved my books for return from the back seat I noticed an unkempt man my age, plus or minus two years, pushing a shopping cart fill of salvaged trash items, talking to himself or someone that I nor the couple walking behind him, couldn’t see. He approached a metal sign (imagine inverted V on sitting on the sidewalk) that noted the parked regulations and with not even so much as a wind up, kicked it as hard as he could making a loud scrapping, metal to pavement sound on the quite Saturday afternoon, sending the sign a good five feet. He didn’t notice me as he pushed his cart pass my piece of temporary claimed urbana. He repeated his goal kick with a second sign that was on the corner but didn’t miss a beat when he looked both ways when crossing the street.

The couple walking hand in hand reached me and as I locked my car I just looked at them and said, “Sometimes that feels really good.”