walking downtown

Yesterday I drove downtown and parked in the garage at work. I walked to Third and Market to pick up two bottles of red wine at Cask, and then I walked over to Union Square to meet up with KW for a good long walk. The square was deserted. Most of the store fronts on the surrounding streets were covered with plywood. The Victoria's Secret mannequins decked out in skimpy, itchy-looking lingerie looked especially absurd. 

KW appeared, wearing a blue bandanna that matched mine. We hugged virtually and then started walking along a strangely empty Powell St.; we kept walking until we got to the bay, and then we walked back to Market on Mason St. We walked past a few city worker types and several sketchy-looking men. No tourists!

KW and I parted ways on Market St., which has been overtaken by the Tenderloin. When I got back to the building I had to let myself in with my keycard and then I had a long chat with Tommy, the security guard/building manager. He is the nicest guy I've ever met, bar none. His wife is very pregnant with their first child, due next Friday. He said that there had been a spike in craziness and crime in the first few weeks of the shutdown -- people shooting up in the building's "breezeway," people breaking car and store windows, even some guy driving around in a rental car looking for pedestrians to mug. So now he sits in the lobby for 12 hours a day (not his normal shift) with the doors locked, which is safer for him. A couple of building tenants are still coming on some days -- an accountant and a lawyer. And I guess Tommy's presence is a deterrent. Oy. Sometimes it feels like civilization is a very thin veneer. Then again, people in the security realm tend to fixate on threats to security -- like the cop who once told me that I should never walk alone in my own neighborhood (whut?).  

Anyway, it was great to have two in-person conversations in one day. I also had a brief interaction with Faud, the building handyman/porter -- he also seems like a very nice man, but we don't get much beyond "hi, how are you?" because there's a language barrier. He was hanging out in the sixth floor lobby with a friend when I went upstairs to water some of my coworkers' plants. I heard them from the fifth floor, talking in Arabic, so I was prepared to see them, but they were surprised to see me. I felt bad about interrupting.