Life In The City

The other day I had an errand to run downtown. I haven't traveled there much over the years. I mainly stick to Century City, Santa Monica, and occasionally The Valley. I have heard much on TV about the re-vitalization of downtown, but I was hard pressed to see it during my latest visit. I was only there for a short time yesterday, but while I was there I saw people who are poor, homeless, miserable, and without hope.

One man in particular caught my attention. He had what appeared to be an assortment of his personal belongings lined up on the sidewalk, as sort of a garage sale, but without the garage. While I am sure most of the things he had for sale meant a great deal to him in terms of sentimental value, they didn't have a lot of monetary worth. He had a few DVD's available, and at first I thought perhaps he had some recent theatrical releases, the illegal kind Jack Valenti would have sent his stormtroopers after, in his heyday. However, they were just a few run-of-the-mill videostore titles from the late 1990's, the sort of thing you could have found in the one-dollar bins at Blockbuster or the late great Hollywood Video. I felt bad for the man with the sidewalk sale going on, because I knew the odds of anyone buying those particular movies were between slim and none, and slim left town.

There is a lot of talk in the news these days about the economy, and about how it is improving. It may be. I have to say, however, that I see little evidence of it on the streets.