I arrive to work. It's lovely weather. A nice day in The City. Crisp but warm and sunny. Inviting. "I think I'll begin my day by opening the store and parking myself in a chair out front."

And, I do just that. Across the street in a vacant parking lot, I see a man and woman walking and yelling !!! at each other. "Okay ! Entertainment! Plus, I can be a witness should anything extreme happen !!"

They stand, circle, huff off, return, approach, shake fists, and scream, Scream, SCREAM !!!! at each other. The pitch builds to where it looks like one'll take a swing at the other... but they don't.

A high school girl runs the "Silver Rattle" next door on Sundays. You know, she's somewhat less experienced, more "in the Moment". She arrived, walked past me sitting there, and stopped to watch the action with me. It's, like, you know, like SHOCKING !!! to her. "It's something to do," I said.

The arguing couple falls into each other's arms at one point. "Baby, I loves you, you KNOW I do!" "I knows, and you know I loves you, too!" Then it was back to arguing.

Alvin ("Country Boy Antiques") starts to open. I wave him up to my place. He says "They've been at it since 7:00 this mornin'. I saw them at 7-11." That means FIVE hours of this mess has been going on out in public.

Sigh.

They disappear. I had whatever business day there was, and about 4:00 Alvin comes back up to my store. I am inside, and we go out on the front sidewalk to chit chat again.

An old man is walking towards us, slightly weaving. I smile and say to Alvin "Hey, YOU are behind the times in your Fashion, m'brutha..." The old man is wearing those standard dark blue work slacks you might see on a uniformed janitor... and over THOSE he's wearing a big pair of long-legged blue jean hip-hop shorts. He's mumbling (he immediately became "The Mumbler" on our neighborhood roster - we're VERY quick with the labels), and he stumble/glides past us mumbling "wanna cigret n munny. Wan' sum muh n sigre... jes wah mh si gris yaw ga mo dan..."

"Nah, we ain't got none," I said, but by then he'd already looked through me and was somewhere else in his head.

He went up the block, stopped, wobbled in confusion, and turned around, heading towards us again. This time there were no exchanges. I shook my head, and we quietly laughed at his "overdressing" for the occasion.

A few minutes later, another old guy comes down the sidewalk in a wheelchair. He's moving at window shopping speed, but seems a little on the spacey or stoned or crazy level. I bid him "good afternoon" and he nodded and smiled. His wheelchair was decked with all the stuff you would see on a homeless guy's shopping cart, plus a couple American flags, and eye-catching junk/paraphernalia. He was soon out of view - down the same direction as The Mumbler. The man in the wheelchair didn't have a name - yet - but he soon would.

So........ Alvin and I are chatting about what we planned on doing tonight, which is never much of anything...

"I'll fix a stew in my crock pot," he'll often say.

"I'll watch a movie," I always say.

For us, these are " Barney and Anj " moments up at Emmett's Gas Station.

Then suddenly I spy two bodies in a violent wrestling match rolling across the 7-11 parking lot, onto the sidewalk, and who knows, maybe into the street.

"Check THAT out, Alvin."

We naturally leaned into the Silver Rattle to alert high school girl and Heidi (the owner, who'd just arrived) about the "entertainment". A small crowd was slowly gathering. Some fool was standing there saying "You all gotta stop this!" as IF he had effective words for controlling two crazy sidewalk wrestlers...

oh my god, it's crazy Mumbler Man wrestling with someone! And right then he loses BOTH pairs of his pants...... and we see WHO he's wrestling.....

IT'S Wheel Chair Guy! Yes, they were all over the place, fighting and mumble-yelling, and losing pants. Wait, where's his wheel chair? We saw it about 100 feet away. It's not making sense!

Eventually both idiots got tired, and stopped their own fight. That's how it works. Just let 'em work off the steam. They'll give up. We ain't no social workers OR po-lice.

That's when Crazy Mumbler Guy stands up, too drunk to pull up his pants, AND Crazy Fake Wheel Chair Guy........ STANDS UP, and WALKS back to his wheel chair...... .then RUNS at Mumbler again....... someone stops him.......he WALKS back to his wheel chair again, HOPS on, and rolls off across the street.............. yelling at an empty parked car.

---

I haven't seen "Crazy Judy" in a LONG time. The "Woman with No Weather" has been missing for a couple of months. We have an obnoxious guy who never stops talking - some goofball we've named "Tardo", who immigrated here from a Slav country via New Joisey, but he's barely entertainment. He's just obnoxious. "Crazy Bobby" is often banned from our neighborhood. He's too crude and rude to people. We don't tolerate that. "Crazy Machete Bicycle Man" was REMOVED due to our phone calls to the police to HAVE him removed. He came back a couple months ago - looked like a new man - cleaned up, no bike, no machete, no screaming at sign posts - but it was too late for him. He was removed again, and he'll have to start a new life on some other street corner. So, really, we were close to Crazy-less, and to tell you the truth, it was getting Dull.

To Crazy Two-Pants Mumbler Man & Crazy Fake Wheelchair Guy:

WEL*COME !!