In the confessional

Forgive me, world, for I have sinned. It's been weeks and the guilt is weighing on me. I hope that you and my creator (Blogger) can forgive me.

I was getting ready for work one morning this past August when I heard a pounding noise coming from outside. I looked through one back window and saw nothing. I looked through the other just in time to see what it was: a man running away from an SUV that had a newly-broken window and a dent in the passenger-side door, and a cinder block resting on the ground beside it.

My first thought was—I swear—that I should call 911 and report it. But my second-guessing took it's rightful place as my second thought and I was filled with jaded, cynical conclusions: "I can't even describe the perp beyond 'black guy with a red cap on', and why would 911 in Washington DC care about a simple car break-in when they'll never find the guy who did it? The car owner will report it eventually, and my call isn't going to make a damn bit of difference. So I won't report it." And I didn't.

But I should have reported it, not because it would have resulted in any prosecution or any semblance of justice, but simply because it's like casting a vote against lawlessness and wrongdoing, no matter how small and almost-entirely meaningless that vote may be. And for not voting, I'm deeply sorry and profoundly regretful.

As penance, I'll recite five "Losing My Edge"s and ten "Common People"s. And I offer myself as an example that civic duty should trump cynicism.

Get Outta Town!

DC often does a Night of the Comet impression on three-day weekends. Being a town where most everyone is from somewhere else, the residents clear out to take advantage of the extra vacation day. Staying in town, I was looking forward to a nice quiet city.

But I forgot what Memorial Day is about in this town. Yes, a lot of DCers got out of town, but this city abhors a vacuum, and the residents spots have been taken up with tourists who got out of their own towns. The Metro is practically unusable. I spend my Metro time pondering how I could say "you're doing it wrong" in a nice way.

The tourists are tolerable compared to the main Memorial Day menace in Capital City: fucking Rolling Thunder. Massive groups of motorcycles shake the city only to brag about their volume, but disguising it by pretending that they're here to pay tribute to some KIA/MIA that was a buddy of a guy they met at Sturgis back in the '90's. Really, what percentage of Rolling Thunder do you really believe has personal connections to KIA/MIA? And if it's a high percentage, what is it about that loss that creates a desire to create as much noise pollution as possible?

Happy Memorial Day, everyone. I'm staying indoors.

Ask away (I mean, away from here)

Living and working where I do, I get asked a lot. I get asked if I can spare some change, but I also get asked to save the children, put the Democrats back in power, help school bands, put candidates on ballots, try our new smoothies, and whether I have a few minutes for the environment. On an average work-to-home walk, I'll get asked for my money or my time or both 3-4 times. That doesn't seem like much, but it adds up.

In spite of the need and/or enthusiasm of the askers, I say the same thing to everyone: "Sorry." I've always had a hard time with the hard sell, and to make it easier on myself, I just say no to everyone. I've probably turned down some really great deals because of my all-no-all-the-time policy, but it's the easiest way to separate the scammers from the honest and the wackos from the righteous: don't.

You can get the sense (especially from some of the young campaigning idealist clipboard-holders) that they're getting disillusioned; that they're starting to see the world as cold and unfeeling. "Why don't you CARE?!" is the subtext when they yell, "Okay! Have a nice day!" to the back of my head. And I just want to take them on a little tour of my day, show them the sheer volume of people who just want a minute or two or five of my time or just a little change. It gets to a point where you've seen the same people asking the same questions in the same places over and over that you just start putting it out of your life entirely. "See?", I would tell them. "There's so many of you that it's infinitely easier to block you all out than ever try to make a decision as to which of you is worth talking to."

But that might dampen the enthusiasm if they're campaigners, or bitter if they're asking for money, and I don't want that. I just want them to understand why I don't talk, give, stop or slow down.

Trapped!

When you're dependent on walking and public transportation like I am, the excitment of an invitation to a party can deflate pretty quickly when you find out that the location is a place that was built by people who assume that everyone has a car and that's how everyone gets around. In other words, it's in the suburbs.

It's not that I totally hate the suburbs. A thought that's been floating around my head lately is that in all the press and talk about the upswing in crime or rowdy city nightlifers, no one seems to make the connection that that's why people wanted to live in the suburbs in the first place. They're safer, they're quieter, they're (kind of) cheaper, and you get more breathing room and personal freedom. Suburbs are not the random imaginings of a corporate mind; they're a logical creation by people who longed to leave the city and were finally able to do so when they got cars.

But I prefer city living and my years of apartment living and carlessness have created an itchy discomfort when I'm back in the suburbs and the parking lot space outnumbers buildings and people about 20-1. Add to that discomfort that it's hard to socially motivate when you're looking at a complex strategy of transportation, and it took a good bit of convincing to go to this party. But the people going were fun folks, and I had some companions in my trek out to Rockville so I went.

Getting out there wasn't too much trouble. Some walking, a long Metro ride, a long cab ride. But when we tried to leave at around midnight, I started to feel that any city snobbery I have is totally justified. It's not that we were expecting to walk to the massive strip mall across the street from the apartment park we were in and hail a cab, but we couldn't even get a cab company to send a car. It was "try back in 30 minutes" this and "won't have a car for at least an hour" that. As though we needed to underscore the car's dominance in this neighborhood, my friend Nina tried to find some good in the situation and at least get a Krispy Kreme while we were standing right next to the store, only to find that just the drive-through was open, but they wouldn't serve her because she didn't have a car. And then a double-underscore when we finally had to go back to the party to ask the hostess to drive us to the Metro station.

I know that it's boring for someone who lives in the center of the city to whine about the absence of soul in the suburbs, but I was really overwhelmed at the single dimension of the neighborhood. It's not that it was boring and I wanted to get back to my liberal-elite city life and look down on those different than me...it was that it felt so inefficient. We could walk to that one shopping center from that one apartment complex, but we couldn't do anything else without a car, and even in that one shopping center, we couldn't go to the one place that was still open because we didn't have a car.

It really hit me just how much we've painted ourselves into a corner with the automobile. In a lot of ways, cars are really efficient and fun and convenient. But we've come to rely so much on them that huge parts of this country are set up for cars and cars only. If there is any sort of absolute gas crisis, any sudden change that makes it impossible for people to have cars, a huge portion of this country is completely and totally screwed. And will have a harder time getting Krispy Kremes.