Traffic direction: direct and helpful.

I went downtown for a movie yesterday and went down a bit early to read outside and relax, but it was getting overcast, so I walked over to the theater a bit early to set up in the zen coffee place there. Traffic was pretty busy, though, and when I went to cross a street the walk light changed to a flashing red "stop!" hand, so I hesitated, but all of a sudden this public transit employee I hadn't noticed before, a four-and-a-half foot tall dark black woman with a big potbelly, stepped out from the opposite curb in the middle of a car that was trying to sneak a righthand turn, stopping it in its tracks, and kept swinging her arm for me to cross and being like, "C'mon baby, c'mon baby."

She did this "c'mon, baby"-thing for some people who came up on the other side, too, but when this 60s-ish white woman with immaculate shoulder-length hair and a flowing, natural-fiber summer dress and an off-the-shoulder canvas beach bag stopped at the curb, she was like, "C'mon princess, you gotta get your [missed the word, something "-ggs" or "-ggers"] on home, there's a storm comin' on," and then she turned to the people behind the white woman and started up the "c'mon, baby"-thing again.