Wednesday, 3 August 2016

Post date: Aug 04, 2016 12:53:23 PM

Forgetting I could go to the 7 11 on Northern, I decided to go to the one on Roosevelt for cash. On the way, I passed the post‐fire Merit and saw the man sitting in front of it even though it was closed with some sooty objects in front. Thereafter, I made the dubious decision to go to Key Food since it may or may not have been the closest of the supermarkets still open at that time. Unfortunately, the floor was being done and the whole produce area was cordoned off, and I wound up leaving without buying anything. (See text messages with CEBR.) I walked back westward empty‐handed yet telling Carter I’m a lucky man.

I stopped in DR, 37th Ave., and wound up buying nothing there either. I passed a stack of newspapers on the floor as I entered and thought nothing of it. As I was about to leave, a disheveled older man asked if I had seen them. Apparently, their whereabouts were unknown and one of the workers was checking the surveillance camera footage for answers. Even after it was determined that another worker had moved them, the disheveled man continued to chat with me, asking me about my skullcap and what I “do,” which he did specify was not only for a living. We very briefly spoke about photography but I wanted to leave, my original intent when he’d encountered me. I did finally buy something (peanuts) at SM, and that somewhat attractive cashier served me.

I went out again in the early evening to buy plastic storage containers into which to empty the hutch dresser for its eventual discarding. The handsome dark‐haired Türk was kneeling in front of LF and recognized and greeted me before I noticed him. I checked prices in both discount stores on the same block (CS and DM, photographing an attractive young man in DM) and found CS to be the cheaper and got two lovely, 68‐liter, blue opaque containers, each less than half the price of the hundred‐liter container I’d bought at 99¢ Up on 24 July. Carrying them home, I saw Shekar who was walking with a friend who looked familiar, and then Ángel P.

At night, I went out to F’town, and one of the Latin ladies on line with me at the deli counter started a conversation. The long‐haired Latin worker behind the counter was not only kinda handsome but knew his job, observing the roast pork loin whereof I’d requested a pound and correctly determined before he’d weighed it that there was not quite a pound remaining. There was quite the sexy Latin customer I should have tried harder to photograph while he was posing for me but I did not get him at all. I wound up right behind him on line to check out though and also noted that there were three male cashiers plus the gay one who was staffing the self‐service checkout machines. Ours was Enrique, the first or second most adorable of them. After we left, my checkout friend walked up 76th Street.

The man with the facial tats was yet again sitting and smoking on front of the Salem, so I greeted him and he nodded at me slowly.