Moving...

4 things:

1) Met my one lawyer friend from Missouri at a coffee shop a short bikeride away from my new place. I'd been there before, but what really struck me is how this whole part of the city is full of nothing but white people trying to seem cool to each other.

2) After, though, we stopped by "Balkan Restaurant" and got some smoked meat crepes with onion and sour cream and feta cheese. Mostly Balkans in there... There's diversity on the street here, but not really any interaction between people in businesses etc. it seems.

3) Coming back from the grocery store on Sunday, some Mexicans were unloading pallets of strawberries out of the back of a truck, and were selling them for $1 per carton (and each carton was a pound!). I wonder if they swiped them, or got a deal on pallets of super-ripe strawberries since stores wouldn't buy them, or they were contaminated with salmonella or something. There's a lot of illegal street-vending like this in my neighborhood right near the subway stop.

4) Some friends from my old neighborhood were at an Appalachian country-western bar like 4 blocks away from my house on Sat., and I met up with them later in the night for a drink after I got out of a house-warming party for a friend of a friend. The house band there is great, and the (white) woman singer/amped acoustic guitar player who's in her 50s and wears short skirts and has big hair ("Reva") is a great singer...

During the break from the band's 2nd set, I leaned over to my one friend and was like, "Don't look, but Reva's over there by the bar eating a banana."

Which she was, and he looked. Everyone I went with is in love with Reva. I'm interested to go for the bar's karaoke some night.