by William Skink

Yesterday I decided to make some changes. I decided I have had enough with the fear campaign. Maybe it was watching this roundtable that finally shook me loose from the growing sense of doom and despair I’ve been sinking into.

One thing suggested to me by my better half is to start the day with a bike ride. So that’s what I did this morning, and it was a glorious!

I biked downtown to drop off some documents at my lawyer’s office, then headed west on Broadway. I wanted to use the $800,000 dollar bridge to check out the west broadway island.

At 9am there wasn’t much activity. I noticed a few tents, but not the amount of trash I was expecting. It’s clear there have been clean-up efforts going on.

There was one woman in the area, a Native American woman. After a few glances I realized I knew her. We talked for a few minutes. She looked horrible. I asked if she was around when the guy at the Poverello Center was killed. She was in jail, she said, clearly not wanting to talk about it, so I dropped it and went on my way.

As I biked down Broadway I saw a former client panhandling. This is the person I got into “housing” and by “housing” I mean a weekly room at the Sleepy Inn. I asked him what he was going to do, since the city was buying the motel. He looked at me with a glassy sheen of confusion that indicated he was already on his way to being drunk.

Knowing the futility of speaking with him in this state, I went to the Sleepy Inn instead to see if the manager (who is a saint) was available. I hadn’t seen the manager in years, so we caught up a bit. I asked her what people like my former client were going to do. The plan, as far as she knows, is they will be offered a room at a different motel owned by the same guy who owns the Sleepy Inn.

Isn’t that nice?

I was tempted to ask the manager if she knew what was behind the locked door she wasn’t allowed to have a key to, but I thought better of it. If I asked her that question then I might be tempted to start speculating about video recording equipment, and if I went down that road then I might feel obligated to inform her about the existence of elite pedophile rings implicating princes, presidents and the guy who is going to make your Covid vaccine.

After finishing up with the manager I concluded my ride, wondering how a business owner can flout state laws, cash in his property on the taxpayer dime, and keep exploiting drunk, disabled people like my client who’s only other option is an alleyway downtown.