It's amazing how much you see (and how much journal fodder you get) when you slow down and take a walk through your neighborhood.

I had a couple of errands to run yesterday, and decided to take my walk at the same time. I took off for the library, which is just three blocks away, to return a couple of books. It's closed for remodeling for a couple of weeks, which I was unaware of. I frequent the Manoa library just next door to where I work now, and visit my neighborhood library only on occasional weekends. I was able to put the books in the bookdrop, but now I wonder what they're doing in there. (The libraries here are a wreck, but I'll save that for a future ramble.)

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After the library I headed down King Street toward downtown, and was pleased to note that someone is putting in a bakery just one block away from my house. I hope it's a real bakery, with real bakery stuff -- cookies and donuts and bread and cake and muffins -- instead of the usual odd kind of bakery you find around here. I just can't find the right words to describe local bakeries. They don't seem to have much of what I would consider bakery staples. The two bakeries near work in Manoa (not counting the Safeway bakery, which is still pretty pathetic) have no cookies of any kind, just mostly ooey-gooey overly sugary puff-pastry kine stuffs. Me, I like my bakery full of substantial but not too sweet comfort food, not fluffy sugar puffs. I'll keep my eye on the progress of this new place.

I angled off of King Street down Sheridan toward the veterinarian to get Boo's flea stuff since he's been scratching a lot these past few days. Much of the length of Sheridan is one side of what they call the Keeamoku superblock -- one huge, overgrown vacant lot that takes up four big city blocks and houses armies of feral cats. The deal is just about done to put a Wal-Mart AND a Sam's Club there, right on the edge of a residential area and ONE lowly block away from Ala Moana Shopping Center. And people think traffic is bad now?

I have more than a few thoughts on the whole mega-retail vs. local community thing -- some of which vary from what you think I think, I'm sure -- but again I'll save those for another time. It just struck me yesterday just how HUGE that block is. I don't think I've every walked by it before, although I've biked and driven by it probably hundreds of times. And not a cat in sight, by the way. Scary.

With Boo's medicine secured, I headed back toward home down Kapiolani, and again reminded myself that I have to get down there with the camera one day. I have this back-of-the-mind plan to do a series on dichotomies, and the Hawaii State Ballet studio right above Saigon Passion III (or maybe it's II, who knows) will be the first one.

It is truly amazing how many strip joints there are in this town. I'm not morally opposed to them, as long as the women are there by choice and the patrons are there strictly to look, but how many do you really need? There are at least a dozen in the five blocks of Kapiolani that I walked yesterday. Most of their exteriors are not kept up very well, and it just looks bad.

A quick stop at the Blockbuster armed me with a couple of movies, and I headed home. Blockbuster is fodder for at least three or four future rants, but it's time to run off now and do some errands, so I leave you with that.
- posted by Lori @ 4:44:00 PM | permanent link | |