Toes frozen, ears stinging, I'm walking against the wind, ducking between white Holiday Market tents to escape the unusually sharp December bite. A traveller hawks his electropop world music cd from a street corner, shows me his backpack, asks to listen to my ear bud. I comply, he shakes my hand. One of the stands is selling empanadas; they're out of chicken and beef. I buy the last tuna empanada, feeling bad for the multitudes of spinach ones but not bad enough to buy one for pity. There is a guy on the sidewalk yelling and waving tickets at me. Earbuds out. He offers me free tickets to see the Neo-Futurists at Woolly. I tell him I already have a free ticket to see the Neo-Futurists at Woolly. Later I'll find out his name is Auggie and he knows one of them, Chloe, from Chicago. It's a tiny tiny theatre world. I see the show; laugh, cry, all that (if you get a chance before Jan 2, definitely see them.) But it's the part afterward that is my favorite. Street musicians, a violinist and a guitar player, weaving notes around the streetlights as people pour out of the Gallery Place metro. The walking and talking down city blocks. Not even the talking, just the walking.

I love this town.

ink :: graphite