For Once, I Walked The Streets During "Second Saturday"

Passerby, heading the opposite direction, and perhaps looking at me: "There sure are a lot of weirdos on the street tonight!"

Me, thinking to myself: ("You said it, man!")

What a zoo!

I went to to see Keith's stuff for sale, apparently at a medical marijuana establishment, but despite the crowds, after 10 p.m., the place had already closed. I knocked on the door, and could even see Keith through the window, but judging from the herbal haze there seemed to be a lot of serious medicating going on nearby, so I let matters be.

I've largely ignored Sacramento's Second Saturday Art Walk even though my office is in the midst of it, because it's just not my thing. I would have loved this thing as a teenager - there are GIRLS walking down the streets, for gosh's sake! - but these days the crowds just make me uneasy. Nevertheless, I'm impressed to see just how big a street carnival it has become in just a few years.

Sacramento's Second Saturday reminds me, oddly enough, of Brisbane, Australia's Fortitude Valley on a Saturday night. That's a crazy place too. So loud, no one can sleep, including the many homeless people huddled in doorways (by American standards so well-served by various homeless service providing agencies and volunteer organizations that I wondered whether they were inadvertently subsidizing the problem). Who knows, maybe Fortitude Valley was almost nothing just a few years ago too? I wonder, will Second Saturday become a homeless magnet? Or is it already such?

But whatever it may be, it sure seems like fun!