Hey, Buddy!
A friend called me a couple weeks ago.
Not a close friend, more of an acquaintance.
She said her family was having this huge barbecue party in the park.
She said it was for a bunch of different things, but one of the main thing was her daughter’s fifth birthday.
So there would be a lot families and a lot of kids and a lot of food.
Old Apartment Building
There was this really old apartment building downtown, that the city finally demolished and built a kind of small greenbelt, with a couple of walking paths.
It was built a long time ago, and then the economy crashed and it started to become really run down.
Pretty soon there was no tenants, and no electricity, but you could see lights in their at night sometimes.
Homeless Magnets
They were candles from homeless people living there.
There were also a whole bunch of rumors surround this place.
It was a place where people would go and shoot up heroin.
I heard there were a bunch of dead bodies inside.
Stay Out
I heard the police and the paramedics were too scared to go inside, so it became a kind of no go zone.
There were also a bunch of rumors that a bunch of Satanists had moved in, and they would use some of the heroin addicts as human sacrificial victims in their full moon ceremonies.
There were a bunch of rumors of developers coming in and tearing it down, but they always ran into trouble.
I even heard a bunch of rumors that the local mafia had gotten involved at some point, but they didn’t want anything to do with it.
Refurbished Strip Malls
There were a couple of empty strip malls the city did demolish and rebuilt.
They made it into this really popular promenade.
Really busy on the weekends.
It’s a long, pedestrian only street, that has plenty of shops and restaurants and bars.
Any Can Do Anything
On one end it’s a kind of an open performance section for street artists and street performers.
On the other end is like an open, free speech area.
They set it up so you don’t need any kind of license for either side.
But they also have a very low tolerance for abuse.
If you do anything on either side that requires a police presence, you are banned from the entire promenade for life.
No Problems Allowed
If the cops find you there after you’ve been banned, it’s an automatic $10,000 fine.
And if you are not a city resident and you cause problems, it’s an automatic $10,00 fine.
A couple of weeks ago there was this guy that looked like he was going to start preaching.
The End Is Near
He started talking about the end of time, and people thought this guy was going to go off on a doom and gloom angle.
Then he started cracking a few jokes, so people thought this was kind of a goofy stand up routine.
But then this guy started doing some really cool mental tricks.
Like cold reading.
He would pause, scan the audience and pick somebody.
Giver of Wishes
Then he would tell them to think of a wish.
He would act like he knew what their wish was, and he’d tell them to check their phone.
They would check their phone, read a text, and get super excited, and then run off as if something fantastic had just happened.
He did that a few times and then he started telling these weird stories.
Teller of Stories
Evolving stories about random people kept coming and packing in this free speech area.
The crowd kept getting larger ideas are not so easy to keep in mind.
Pretty soon this guy seemed to have the entire crowd hypnotized people are much easier to control.
Hypnotizing speakers can very naturally lead to confusing ideas.
And confusing ideas is never really the best thing to do.
Simple Minded Ideas
Because some ideas don’t like to be confused.
Some ideas take it very, very personally if you try and confuse them.
It’s best to speak very simple language, and very simple ideas tend to be the ones that can create the most profound changes.
I don’t know where this guy is from, but he seemed very familiar.
But he only seemed familiar after I’d watched this guy for a while.
This Feels Funny
So I don’t know if it took me a while to remember that this was familiar, or if this guy is purposely creating a familiar feeling.
Because familiar feelings do have a tendency to show up when least expected.
If you go here on the weekday, you’ll see a lot of performers practicing their act.
Amateur Juggling
Kind of like younger kids who want to be jugglers or magicians when they grow up.
Sometimes you’ll see some high school or junior high school kids daring each other to perform.
Like play a song on their instrument, or sing a song, or do some kind of cheerleading routine.
Kids seem to be much more willing to take risks, especially if their friends are watching.
Secret and Instant Money
I’m not sure where the city got all the money to do this renovations.
They were broke for a long time.
But once they knocked down that old apartment building, it’s like they suddenly had tons of money.
She wasn’t kidding about the kids.
There were at least a couple dozen.
Clowns and Ice Cream
They had clowns and ice cream and plenty of barbecued chicken and pork.
The pork was delivered from a shop that specializes in boiled pork.
She said it was a combination of her kids fifth birthday, her husbands promotion and that they had, after about a year of intense marital counseling, figured out a way to work things out in the best way possible.
They clowns were juggling clowns.
They Don’t Land Right
Which is hard because it’s much easier to juggle things like bean bags or eggs, that don’t move when you juggle them.
I guess they wanted to go all out for their trifecta of happiness.
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