Night-Walking Part One

I like to walk about the city at night, generally with the shepherd, occasionally with friends.

I typically don't walk West of Crenshaw unless I'm cruising the Windsor Village, Victoria Circle areas en route to Country Club Park/Wilshire Park. Mostly I walk toward downtown, through Jefferson Park/Halldale/Adams-Normandie/North University Park or through the West Adams Terraces/Arlington Vista/Harvard Heights/Byzantine Latino-Quarter corridor, seldom traipsing further East than Union, even though some of my favoriteneighborhoods lie beyond.

There aren't many people on the street after dark in the residential quarters. Some are happy to see us, eager to ask about the dog, whether we're in training, or just out for fun.

Nicely, there are great places thereabouts to pause for snacks, like on this night when Hunter Ochs, Rocky, and I stopped at the peerless Chabelita's (Western & 20th St.) for tacos. (Recently I opined to a client, concerned about the service shortfalls of West Adams and vicinity, "there's Mexican food, the best Mexican food West of the river!")

I'm not much concerned about encountering the wrong elements, more the wrong canine elements, and occasionally I will cross a street to avoid a dispossesed dog.

In some houses the same light always burns, one imagines for decorative effect, like a jack-o-lantern. No one, it seems, can agree on porch light etiquette, left on or turned off. Sometimes a house is completely black, save the steely xenon-ish glow of solar landscape stick-ins.