Downtown...

I saw this pan handler in the Pedestrian Mall in downtown Iowa City yesterday, which is not uncommon these days, but his cardboard sign caught my eye. It said, "Please help. My wife was kidnapped by Ninjas. I need money for karate lessons so I can save her." While others were annoyed with him and scoffed at his sign, I laughed and found it refreshing. Here is this guy with some definite issues, down on his luck, yet he is able to keep his wits about him enough to still come up with a story!
Intriguing, to say the least.


Start Fiction (sort of):

     The cool air tussled his hair slightly as he walked down the deserted street. Summer time allowed the locals to actually get downtown without fear of stepping in vomit, tripping over trash or surveying the damage done by the binge drinking college students the night before. Shops, for the most part, came and went.
     There was a definite change in the mentality of the town since he was a kid, growing up on the mellow streets of Iowa City. It was almost completely geared towards the students, specialty shops for the young and "hip", bar after bar after bar lined the Pedestrian Mall store fronts. It used to be that the students were visitors in the town, working with what shops and restaurants the locals kept in business. Now it was merely part of the extended campus for the students to run all over and treat as a playground, if not an outhouse.
     Apartment buildings were erected in place of small business buildings; parking became more scarce in a town that already had parking issues. One couldn't walk more than a block with out being able to walk in to a store or bar and buy alcohol. Single family homes in the downtown area were now dilapidated rental units.
     It saddened him to see a once truly unique city fall to the way side as capitalistic greed and materialistic demands replaced community. But what was there he could do about any of it? He was as much of a relic as those buildings they were tearing down and putting up monstrous steel and glass high rise building.
     Or was there?

End Fiction.