i haven't been to a bar before noon since the viewing lehigh/layfayette game at the final final in the marina in 2001. at least, not that i can remember. but today, today it was justified. even business. or at the least schoolwork. (what's the difference?) after 'interviewing' 12 6th graders for approximately 15 minutes, me and my 2 collegues/coworkers/cohorts needed a place to reconvene. castro's hideaway being the obvious choice, because my cohort/casamate has been itching to go there. besides, there's not many options in west sacramento.
the sixth graders are all conflict managers. they go out onto the playground during recess, donning really cool denim vests with a red C on the back, and make themselves available to students in first through sixth grade. somebody called you a name? go to a conflict manager. a boy threw a football in the girls bathroom? conflict manager. the pint sized conflict managers learn not to interupt, not to take sides, to be good listeners, and importantly 'not to laugh, since some of the conflicts are pretty funny' according to the teacher leading the CM's.
CM's are supercool - we never had anything like that at st. thomas aquinas elementary school, although i could see those red C's really complimenting our already mandatory
navy blue vests. plus the teacher in charge noted that grown-up playground monitors don't really want to deal with fallout from kids calling each other names - let them take care of it themselves. fair enough. CM's are really playing an important roll during recess, and i commend them. nonetheless, talking with a dozen of them of them at once in a class room with 20 other CM's is tough, and i didn't get too much information from the ladies i was with. they want a mall and ice skating rink in their town. they want more swings at the park, and maybe a football team (for girls, rock on). there's a lot of drunk people on the street, and they don't like that. they have elderly neighbors with funny ears.
so clearly, distilling this information as soon as it was recorded was in order. and castro's hideaway fit the bill. perhaps the more fruitful interview was held within, with castro's proprietor, frank. at 11:46 am, frank's sister, 40-something nephew, and a few other friends were already patronizing. after the first round, our drinks were on the house. frank told us about the police barging into his house, pulling him over because of his lowrider vintage 60's car, and general harrasment for no good reason that's lead to a decline in customers at his bar. frank talked for a long time, while his friends teased him for ignoring paying customers so he could talk with the ladies. a good song was played on the jukebox. i silently questioned the differences between morning and evening metabolic rates. i listened to frank's stories.
lately, mostly in bathrooms, i've been making a new list in my head. the list starts, "community development is..."
today's addition, skyrocketing to the top: going to the local dive at noon