Two dreams:

1) I was at a committee meeting at the art school and was speaking, and everyone was nodding and smiling in my direction, approvingly.

2) I ran into a friend (can't remember who) and they were reading Spanish and had to pause and look up a word in a dictionary, and I noticed that they had the same pocket Spanish dictionary that I use when I read the local free Spanish newspaper in the city.

Bar "churning".

This summer I first heard of the phenomenon of "churning", which is rapid turnover rates in low-wage jobs, since people have no reason to stay, and which a rise in the minimum wage tends to end, to the benefit of both workers and employers.

I'm also becoming aware that there's bar churning.

For example, this large cafe/nightclub run by some Iraqis that I had been to is now a club run by Mexicans, as I discovered when I biked by it on its opening night, with free mariachi band.

It's interesting how many bars (as physical spaces) I've been to twice under different names (never yet been to one three times yet).

Switching to New Apartment.

When I was switching the gas account for my new apartment - unlike at other apartments, I pay for the cooking gas, and heating - I had a (black) (male) operator on the phone from the gas company.

When he had a hard time spelling my last name, I told him the mnemonic device for it that a friend had thought up, and it got him laughing.

Also, since the apartment had been empty for 2 weeks for repainting, I had to switch the account out of the landlord's name, and that's how the guy had to look it up.

"And what is the name, sir?", he was like.

"Tang," I was like, and then, after a pause, "Isn't that the shit people used to drink back in the 70s?".

"It most certainly is," the guy was like.

At the end of the call, he thanked me for my humor.

Airport security.

The other week, I caught up with the (half Sudanese) (half British) sister of my one (half Sudanese) (half British) friend, and somehow at some point in the conversation she brought up how she gets dicked around with at airport security.

For one, because of her name, she's gotten pulled and made to stand in a waiting area full of menacing dark-complected men with full beards and little white caps.

For another, the staff always interrogate her, and are like, "So it says here that you're born in the Sudan, but you live in Britain.  Which are you?"

"I'm like, 'Where are you going with this?'", she was like.  "They're so black-and-white, it's always one or the other, it can never be both."

"Do you tell them that?", I was like.

"No, of course not," she was like, "I say that I'm a British citizen."

Prices up at my old apartment.

The weekend before I moved, I ran into the older quiet Bosnian guy who used to manage the building I was living in and still works for the property company, though not as building manager anymore.

He was saying he was tired, and had been painting apartments just across the city’s north border, and recently he had been working not 5, but 6 days a week, and was just tired.

We talked about that for a bit, and then I said I was moving, and we started getting into a conversation about the rents in the area where I’d lived for over 3 years.

“Too much, too much,” he was saying, since studios were almost $700 now.

“Yeah,” I was like, “But the apartments still sell.”

“All full now,” he was like, “No apartments in building.”

“See,” I was like, “And the kids are all young.”

“I don’t know, how can afford,” he was like.

“Because their parents have money,” I was like, “And when your parents pay your bills, an extra hundred dollars a month is nothing.”

“Yes,” he was like.

. . .

New apartment sight: Local business.

On the way back from touring my new apartment the first time, I walked to a subway stop near Chinatown, to time the distance on foot.

(I had arrived by bike to tour the apartment, and didn’t really know how long it’d take to walk to one of the two nearby subway stops.)

After a stretch of stores there’s a park and then some closed businesses and then a Chinese massage place near a highway overpass, and as I was walking up towards the massage place – still open at 9pm at night, with a neon ‘OPEN’ sign in the window but no other signs of activity – I see a car pull into the vacant lot across the street, and 2 young early 20s ethnic bro guys (Italian? some kind of middle eastern?) get out all wearing pastel polo shirts and plaid shorts, then walk across the street and into the massage place.

Too, they paused in front of the door and laughed (nervously?) before opening it and going in.

. . .

Great saying about money..

The other night I was out on the steps of my apartment building talking with my (tough) (middle-aged) (biracial) neighbor who makes pizzas at a place across the street, and he started talking a lot like he always does, and in the middle of that he was like, “Not all money is good money.”

“That’s a great saying,” I was like, “Did you just invent that?”.

“No,” he was like, “It’s been around, it’s something I’ve heard all my life.”

His girlfriend called while we were talking, too, and he stopped to talk with her on the phone.

“Hey boo,” he said, picking up his cell.