The Sesame Street Effect (Tilly and the Wall)

(Part 3 of a series...) Weird things happen when you have a kid. Namely, you start feeling fondness and appreciation for people who appear on Sesame Street to help teach your kid. We'll call it the "Sesame Street Effect".

The Sesame Street Effect (Feist)

(Part 2 of a series...) Weird things happen when you have a kid. Namely, you start feeling fondness and appreciation for people who appear on Sesame Street to help teach your kid. We'll call it the "Sesame Street Effect".

The Sesame Street Effect (Katy Perry)

Weird things happen when you have a kid. Namely, you start feeling fondness and appreciation for people who appear on Sesame Street to help teach your kid. We'll call it the "Sesame Street Effect".

For example, Katy Perry doesn't seem to me to be the ideal role model for my little girl. And somehow, despite her bizarre outfit, I find myself nodding along just because Elmo is involved. Weird...

Two Bicycles and Hopeful Signs

The other day I was sitting in the Brown Coffee cafe, getting some sermon prep done while nursing the city's best cup of coffee. From espresso-steeped silence, there was the sound of chain banging against metal.

"Someone is trying to steal your bike," said the shop owner dryly.

"Good luck," I replied, thinking fondly of the 9lb Kryptonite chain lock choking my bicycle frame.

"I guess it is possible," he considered out loud, "that someone else is chaining their bike up next to yours."

And so it was.

The coffee shop that only seats 8 now had two bicycles chained to the pole. That's a pretty good ratio. Too many more show up and we'd need a bigger cafe. And that would be a very good problem for the Deco District, which is still very much in the starting blocks on the race to revitalization.

We could use a sandwich shop, a bistro, a dry cleaner, a healthy church, a pizza joint, a live music spot, more vertical housing, a bakery, a mixed-use development, an old-school ice house, a streetcar, a BBQ place...really anything other than another tacqueria, convenience store, or payday loan shop.

When you're hopeful for the future and you can envision the day that the neighborhood is again a place for wholesome and holistic living, every little sign of progress is a big deal.

For now, one more bicycle chained to the pole will do.

Where Everybody Knows Your Name

The curtains are not really curtains. They are Mexican blankets cinched at the bottom. The walls are bright yellow, the refrigerated Coca-Cola is most definitely from across the border, and the offerings on the menu range form the mundane (tocino y huevos) to the maniacal (tacos de ojos).

It is La Bandera Molino and it is our version of comfort food.

So, when entering my 4th straight day of feeling like a human snot-factory and virus incubator and my second straight day of single-parenthood (Stef was out of town), I decided that it would be a great idea to go be comforted by Mexican blanket-curtains.

It was indeed a great idea.

The tacos were wonderful, the child was behaved, and the Coke was oh-so-refreshing. For just a few minutes, before I got home to the once-again whining child and pounding ears and head, there was some peace.

So what if the curtains are not really curtains.

Exit Through the Gift Shop (Banksy)

It is the weekend and you have a few hours to kill. Watch this film. Or just the first few minutes here.

The People are the Leverage

Somewhere within me lies a protester, a radical, a contrarian. Within me I wonder if I shouldn't have been black in the 50s so as to use this latent aggression towards something meaningful for society.

Protesters fire me up. Passionate people stoke me no matter the cause. I love documentaries of people fighting power, attacking Goliaths, and rising up for the socially marginalized.

All that to say I watched another such film this week, "30 Frames a Second", a great first-hand look at the WTO meetings in Seattle in 1999 from Rustin Thompson.

I have the strangest urge to go buy a gasmask...