Downtown

Down­town is inter­est­ing. For the most part Euclid Avenue is rem­i­nis­cent of an emp­ty tomb, just about every build­ing-front is emp­ty and dirty, with trash col­lect­ing where the wind blows it. There is also a con­stant of home­less peo­ple, they’ve each got their own ter­ri­to­r­i­al cor­ner and they tend to place them­selves right where it is least pos­si­ble to avoid them, say for exam­ple, right where a side­walk becomes con­strict­ed so that only one per­son can walk down it at a time. I’m start­ing to get city-blind to them, there are only so many times you can buy them donuts and have them ask you for mon­ey instead, so many times you can give them some change, so many times of hear­ing their dai­ly hus­tle before you get inured to it. At last count I walk by the same six pan­han­dlers every day on my way to work, and in a down­town as emp­ty as Cleve­land’s is, they don’t blend in with crowds very eas­i­ly.

I don’t like that this is hap­pen­ing to me, but it is obvi­ous that what I try to do to help isn’t mak­ing any dif­fer­ence in their lives, and that they aren’t real­ly grate­ful for it when I do try. Home­less folks in Cana­da are a dif­fer­ent breed alto­geth­er. They thank you even if you don’t give ’em change. It is sad but true, as Niet­zsche said:

Beg­gars should be entire­ly abol­ished! Tru­ly, it is annoy­ing to give to them and annoy­ing not to give to them.

There are two places I real­ly like to get my lunch, both have terse ser­vice, unas­sum­ing atmos­pheres, and good food in good por­tions for not much mon­ey. The first is Juji’s in the Statler Arms. I can get a three-egg omelet, a bunch of home fries, and toast for $5.50 and the best part is that I can order it as I leave the gym and pick it up when I walk by. A burg­er and fries is also some­thing like $5.25 and they’re made fresh. The place is owned by a Lebanese guy, but the man­ag­er is a tough tat­tooed Ital­ian from NYC and I crack up on a reg­u­lar basis deal­ing with him and his crew because they’re so mouthy to each oth­er. Since I go there fair­ly reg­u­lar­ly, they’re start­ing to mouth off to me now too, which is great.

The oth­er place is the New York­er Deli. One of my cowork­ers calls it Con­vict Café because of the crowd that you’ll find there. This is anoth­er place run by a guy from NYC and it is just down the street from Juji’s. Their mot­to is “Where Qual­i­ty Tastes Deli­cious” but it should be “$6 of meat of a $5 sand­wich”. Their corned beef and pas­tra­mi sand­wich­es are excel­lent, and I’m pret­ty sure they make their own pick­les.

Hav­ing a month­ly RTA pass might be pay­ing off final­ly, I get $1 off any tick­et to any show at the Cleve­land Film Fes­ti­val if I show my pass at the box office.