Places to Walk at Night

Bourbon Street - 1973 - The black kids with their shoeshine kits "Mister, betcha a dollar I can tell you where you got those shoes." ("On the pavement right here.") The hotdog vendors and the guys in the blue suits soliciting money for their cult religion. Finding a kid that dropped out of our circle because my friends made fun of him working as a hawker for a drag show. Friztel's was where I hung out or Molly Malone's. There were 3:00 am jams at Molly's. Found a guy I had worked with in Bloomington down on the street here on vacation. He said he wondered what had become of me. Being propositioned by in the closet guys here on a business trip. Holding myself upright by the buildings trying to get back to my little place on Dalphine street before I passed out. Being surrounded by crowds and not talking to a soul for hours.

Polk Street - San Francisco 1978 - Some nights it was quiet and empty, other nights there were rallies and street festivals. This was before AIDS became a nightmare and there were a lot of guys out here and over on Castro. There was an all night Tibetan Buddhist Temple down off the end of the street in North Beach near City Lights Books. The priest was four feet tall and slightly round like Buddha. There was a guy as tall as me out in a wonderful ball gown with a beard down to his waist walking all by himself at 4:00 in the morning. The was an all used bookstore over by City Lights too. I never got propositioned here. But I didn't hang out in bars very much.

Bloomington Court House Square- 1970 - On my nights of from work, I'd start at the Gables Restaurant across the street from the IU Law School. (Where I worked.) I'd sit in there and write poetry and drink coffee until they would close and then I'd walk over to the Waffle House up north of here and sit there for a couple more hours and drink more coffee and then there was a all night truck stop over in the sleezy part of town that I'd retreat to for the few hours before the sun would come up. It was a real greasy spoon and the help all talked and acted like inbred hill people. Seems they were all missing a tooth here and there. The sun would come up and I would slosh (after about a gallon of coffee) back over to campus to sit outside under the trees and try to finish whatever it was that I was trying to write. Then I'd go home to my room in the boarding house and go to sleep.