Lake Street Red Line Stop on a Wednesday Afternoon

Two men singing on the el platform with their permit clearly visible.


One plays guitar and sings melody, the other harmonizes.

They sway.

The harmonizer smiles.

The guitar player has long grayed dreads. He’s thin but not hungry, looks faded and worn but without pain. His skin is graying. His shiny black guitar looks gray under the subway lights.

His voice is anything but gray. Warm and mellow, like honey, like the 1960s folk that bore him. You can hear the hope and marijuana round the edges of each phrase.

The harmonizer reminds me of the old smiling Sambo images. Less bright, less ridiculous, but retaining a bit of the please-the-white-man quality. Still, his voice is pure and adds a dimension to the familiar tunes.

Police officer with his big german shepherd sitting not 10 feet away, staring.

The German Shepherd is watching the permit

The police officer isn’t watching much of anything.

A train comes and the guitar player leans into a concave *beam* to retune.

I drop a dollar into the bag with the permit.

A woman walks past. She is so large her legs sink down, burying her feet and her flip flops.