There is an Ave Casualty that is on her second round on the street. Years ago she would frequent the bar, play pool, socialize. A very pretty young woman, she was outgoing, with a quick smile. Drama did not seem to circle her, like it does some young women. Drama chases some women; some invite it. For her it seemed to keep a respectable distance. Then she stopped coming inside the bar as much, but you would still see her on the street, outside, passing by. She had fallen in love with a Heroin Kid. Maybe she thought she could save him, I don't know. But of course it went the other way, like it usually does: she began to get thin, her eyes became dull, distant. Soon the quickest way to see her was to wander by the Heroin Kids in front of the Sporting Goods store, hoping for spare change from the random pedestrians who hadn't seen all of this before. Then she disappeared. Which often meant an overdose. However, the word was she left to go back home to the Midwest, to fami...

Marijuana is now legal in Seattle. Some of the regulars smoked weed before it was legal, of course; the difference now is that no one needs to hide it. Now people come into the bar smelling strongly of the no-longer-illicit weed. They are almost prideful of the smell: they have been smoking the Good Stuff. I said the difference now is that no one needs to hide it. But there is another difference: the legal stuff is stronger. More potent. Growers are working diligently on this, because there is open competition. Now it is like the proliferation of meticulous craft beers: you are aiming for a choosy market. People care about where the hops come from, say: they are discerning. It is no longer Sixties Damage Grass, or Forgotten Seventies pot, or even Eighties Without Hats weed. It is no longer what just happens to be available from shady guys on the Ave. It is like the steroids era in baseball: everyone wants the stuff that lets you hit seventy home runs. Everyone wants to slowly ...

One of the nice things about the Ave during the Holidays: it doesn't change all that much. It's cold, so the Heroin Kids aren't out as much, which is nice. Still, if you are on the street having a cigarette you will still be asked for spare cigarettes or paper money, just like always. The Ragged Crazies are still there; their mumbled spiels and shouted non sequitirs usually don't involve anything about Christmas -- the voices in their heads are on their own calendar, which might have a thousand days, or maybe only one. One of the things that doesn't change much: shoppers. Not a lot of people go Christmas shopping on the Ave. The malls and downtown and University Village are jammed like a Tokyo subway train, but the Ave is not really a shopping destination. Unless you buy your Christmas gifts at the drug store. Or Seven-Eleven. Or the Retro Gaming shop. The University Bookstore gets crowded -- books and UW sweatshirts are easy gifts -- but otherwise, well: t...

During the Holidays the Ave used to put up shooting stars that arced above the street, white lights star, white lights trail. They looked like something from the early Sixties; maybe their original appearance coincided with the 1962 World Fair, which brought the Space Needle and the Monorail. This origin is just a guess, but I like it, so have no desire to research further. They were there last year. This year they are not there. Instead, there are a few trees wrapped with white lights. Generic. Could be anywhere. Maybe too expensive to run, maybe too expensive to maintain. Maybe they require a unique part that hasn't been made since 1972, and they don't have replacement parts anymore, and they don't have the people anymore who can even jury-rig something like that. The last of the people with those skills retired last year, maybe. Perhaps it coincides with the Last of the Television Repairmen. So the Ave becomes a little less special. Which is pretty much the Stor...

On the Ave outside the bar you'll occasionally see the Skateboard Kids. As the name implies, they are teenagers -- and sometimes those teenagers who are actually well into their twenties -- who skateboard down the southward incline of the street. Going the other direction, they hitch on the back of buses to pull them on their way. Most are just passing from points A to B, striking a pose of practiced insouciance on their boards. Some, though: the street and its cars are a challenge, a slalom. There is a crosswalk mid-street by the University Bookstore, so pedestrians sometimes become needles to be threaded. Sometimes a particular needle doesn't get threaded successfully, and people go down. Sometimes that includes an elderly person. No one expects the Skateboard Inquisition. On those occasions a firetruck is called; the police arrive. The skateboarder is long gone, of course: the elderly person is sitting on the curb by then, attended to by kind strangers. Kind strange...

The older guys at the bar don't often play the jukebox; they remember when it took coins, not paper money. Every once in a while though, you'll see one punching in some selections, and some late-fifties or early-sixties music comes on; it is a welcome change of pace, and even some of the younger patrons find themselves bobbing their heads. One day a few years back an older gentleman played a nice selection. Buddy Holly, Patsy Cline, a couple from Otis Redding. Then: Jim Croce, John Denver. Jim Croce and John Denver rarely get played at the bar -- they seem to now belong to The Forgotten Seventies. Maybe I'll go deeper into The Forgotten Seventies later, it is something I've been known to talk about from time to time. Anyway, I smiled at him, then went and played a song. Lynyrd Skynyrd. Not of the Forgotten Seventies, them: wherever there is a bar with a jukebox someone will eventually play "Free Bird". Because: America. Anyway, the older gentl...

There was a Dollar Store a few blocks down the Ave. Everything sold for a dollar, pretty much. Sure, there were some items for more than a dollar, but it was still cheap knock-off shit, so the store name was pretty fair overall. Except if you tried to pay with a dollar bill you couldn't get your item until you put out another dime for sales tax. But still: Dollar Store. In front of the store was a continuous encampment of Street Urchins and Heroin Kids. At times the sidewalk was difficult to pass: bodies sprawled, clusters of kids standing in groups with backs heavy with their belongings, the gauntlet of being asked for spare change or a cigarette or an offer to sell some grass.  A lot of people chose to walk by on the other side of the street. Especially the Asian students; they probably never factored this into their American University Experience. Not on the brochures I imagine. And there was a Bubble Tea place on that other side of the street. Which was convenient for ...

There is a street kid on the block who I have seen, off and on, for at least four or five years. A few others remain from that period, but the churn rate is usually faster than that. And maybe there are others that have never really registered in my memory: dirty hair, dirty clothes, haphazard tattoos, piercings, dead eyes -- the individual can be hard to distinguish. I am a little more familiar with the ones who constantly ask for a cigarette. This kid, though: he has his look. When he started he was a slender boy, maybe sixteen. Long blonde hair, usually dyed blue and fading to seasick green, occasionally with a cheap barrette, often in pigtails. Short cut-off jeans, regardless of the weather. Girls' flirty sandals. Blue eye shadow. Sometimes a t-shirt, sometimes a discarded blouse. For a sixteen-year-old boy he made for a pretty sixteen-year-old girl. He would be on the street for a few weeks, then disappear. Maybe to a different neighborhood: Capitol Hill would be a li...