Urban Jungle

This week:
Tuesday run, 5.2 miles as fast and hard as I could
Wed. foot/ankle work at Peter Szymanski's Catalyst Therapies
Thurs. 7.6 mile trail run - moderate

I took a three-day class downtown. Parking is so bad I decided to park miles away and walk. This gave me some decent time-on-my-feet, but I had to pass a hundred panhandlers, muggers, prostitutes, drug dealers, and even a handful of regular citizens.
There were some notable things...
Everyone's different in what works, but for me, I treat muggers and that sort totally differently than, say, a grizzly. I tend to cross the street towards them and make direct eye contact as I walk by. That let's them see the glint of insanity in my eyes at close range. They're cowards and tend to gather in twos and threes and strike only when they think the odds are in their favor. They don't want to actually WORK for the rewards.
Something else is - there must be ten times as many smokers downtown as in the 'burbs. Not sure why unhealthy lifestyles are so popular there.
People tend to walk fast and never make eye-contact. They're strictly antisocial. This is because of all the panhandlers. Acknowledging their existence opens the door for peddling.
But black people are immune to this. No matter if they wear a suit of regular jeans, they don't seem to have a problem being friendly and sociable. It reminds me of the movie Ghost where Swayze gets acknowledged by another ghost and it freaks him out because he's so used to being invisible. When I saw a black person, I could count on a warm greeting.

Dick Cheney was in town today. His presence brought in some out-of-towners. At lunch, I saw three husky guys who looked like ex-Special Forces. One had the tip of a very small machinegun poking out the bottom side of his T-shirt. I know virtually every gun there is, but this one was not one I recognized. It was either a very large pistol heavily modified, or a very small mini-machine-pistol. It had a threaded barrel and tiny folding wrist-stock. Not what you're normally used to seeing in a Kokoro over salmon and brown rice. They looked like private contract security, not government, because their radios were large and old, and no one was wearing the comical-standard black spook glasses that they really do, in real-life, like to wear if they work directly for the feds.