Walking around my neighborhood a couple times I couldn’t help to notice a few things, and a few I still remember.
One night, maybe on Saturday, I was coming back from the gym. I was passing by a motel that rarely has any lights inside during the day (yet all the curtains are usually shut), looks dirty, and doesn’t really seem to have customers. Although, I have seen some strange crowd go in and out before. I wasn’t looking, and to a naked eye they were just two girls waiting for somebody. But then I thought about it – two girls, on the opposite street corners, shorts skirts, large shapes, waiting for somebody but nobody in particular… Of course I could be making it up and they were indeed just standing there waiting, but to me at that hour it seemed it was not a car ride they were waiting for.
That same night I was walking further down the street, when I heard latin music. First I didn’t even see where the music was coming from, and then I saw this man: in his 50s, dressed in all white, with a drink in his hand. He came out of nowhere, and particularly that nowhere was his room. On the street level there’s some kind of store, but above it, that’s where he lives. The place looks tiny, but a little balcony makes it look like a king’s palace, and that’s exactly how that guy must’ve felt. He was just standing on his balcony, sipping his drink, slowly moving to the sounds of music, and looking up in the sky.
Lastly, today I saw another interesting balcony. There was nobody outside, and the doors leading to the room were all covered in tin foil. First thought that people inside were just too poor to buy curtains, but then as I remembered watching some movie and I thought – maybe they are growing something inside? I don’t know, and frankly I don’t want to know, but that’s just the kind of hood I live in. What I can say, the costs of rent is appropriate.
