Downtown in the Rain

Something about being downtown in a big city in the rain takes me back to my childhood, although I'm not sure I ever was actually in a big city in the rain during my childhood.

I grew up in Royal Oak, which in the post-World War Two era, when I arrived, was a fast-growing suburb of Detroit.

My memories of Detroit are pretty much limited to taking the streetcar downtown to Hudson's and my grandparents' house, which I probably did only three or four times; and visiting my uncle's hat shop on Saturday nights, which I probably only did a few times as well.

Oh yes, one visit to a Red Wings' hockey game at the old Olympia Stadium, and a couple baseball games at the recently demolished Tiger Stadium.

I doubt it was raining on any of those visits, but whatever, today I took one of our local buses downtown, sitting wedged between a toothless old woman comparing her youthful experiences in jail with a middle-aged man still dealing with his own legal troubles.

They were contrasting their own lives of crime with today's youth, and agreeing that kids today just don't understand what they are getting themselves into when they break the law.

"They talk tough, but who they impressing? The cops ain't impressed. They know they just gonna be laying down for a long, long time. Like ten, twenty years..."

Sometimes it's hard to envision an inner city where the majority of people would not be hurting in some terribly visible manner -- addicted, disabled, seriously ill, desperately poor, homeless, mentally ill.

The happiest people I saw today were a small group of Down's Syndrome folks out for their own trip downtown.

Ducking into a mall cafeteria to escape the rain, I happened upon a raggedy bearded fellow who had more holes in his clothes and shoes than the donut display he was gazing at.

Since I was early for an appointment, I decided to sit and watch the shoppers -- another class altogether. mainly smartly dressed young women, some with kids along, these folks seemed focused and relatively content by contrast.

Many already clutched shopping bags that were full, but more consumption apparently would soon occur.

Considering that we are in the middle of what appears to be a permanent transformation of our economy as this, the richest society in history, adapts to a new global reality, I couldn't help wonder how much longer such shoppers will blithely continue to flow into places like this one.

How long will there be enough cash -- or plastic -- in these people's pockets to sustain a lifestyle whose time has passed?

This musing led me to consider how I might continue to adjust my own living standard southward. (All such musings are personal in the end.)

The days of middle class people being able to live in cities and pursue creative careers have crashed and splintered into a thousand pieces. Being a writer, an artist, a community organizer -- living in any sort of manner outside of capitalism's main corridors -- in a place like San Francisco has become unsustainable.

For today, however, I have the hood on my jacket to protect me against the rain, and friends who care about my fate...

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