There’s a raised trail into downtown; part of someone’s scheme to make life more amicable for soccer-moms on their afternoon walks. Just to the left a muddy trail slices through the wetlands. Near it areas of intense litter, what someone calls home, collect between the trees. To the old and affluent these must seem like blights, something that needs to be cleaned up.
Weaving through the back-alleys and parking lots of the city reveals its pulse. Like dissecting a living thing, peering into its bowels and seeing what it feeds on; what it’s creating: the dumpsters neatly hidden behind buildings, the graffiti and its accompanying patches of cover-up.
The patchwork patterns make buildings look like hobo-clowns, patched and sad, trying to cheer people up yet somehow only looking foolish.
The buildings with graffiti – the ones with huge murals, hurried tags, and mixed messages – they become reader-boards for the other half. Somehow, through all the painted character these drawings impose, it is the city’s character that shines. Today’s rebels and drifters leaving there mark. Modern-Day Kerouac’s pushing the limits of their craft.
Under a raised corridor coming up out of the wharf and over some railroad tracks is more evidence of the despondent and dejected: little piles of disarray and disillusionment. One tale of this city expressed through people living off-the-grid, eating what’s left over, sleeping on what’s tossed aside, and surviving despite it all.

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