Reprinted with permission from the Burlington Free Press.
By John Briggs, Burlington Free Press. August 13, 2010
Friday the 13th, about 2 o’clock, sunny, 80 degrees . . . a late summer afternoon on Burlington’s famous Church Street.
Most days, for breaks, I walk from the Free Press down to the lake and back, and up and down the Marketplace a couple of times, weaving through tourist families, impatient shoppers, past the carts and muffled conversation at outdoor restaurant tables, past the familiar street faces . . .
Wisps of conversation hang in the air, words nearly unattached . . .
“Oh my God! You’re engaged!” (Young woman, loudly, loudly dressed, on cell phone in front of Halvorson’s.)
“Timing is everything, bro…” (Heavily tattooed street regular, laughing, to friend.)
“. . . I mean, you know, that was, like…” (One teenage girl to another, with animation.)
“Where’s the car? Top of Church?” (Impatient man on cell phone, wearing green shirt, in the second block. He turns angrily, summons invisible laggers with a bold overhead swimmer’s stroke of the left arm, then strides on by himself.)
“Things haven’t been good. You know, we feel like . . . ” (A woman in her early 20s, maybe a college student, to her friend.)
“The next time we come down here we need to bring a camera.” (Teenage boy, matter-of-factly, to his friend, who says): “For?”
“Wait with Daddy! Stand right there!” (Mother disappears without a look back into April Cornell. The three or four-year-old boy she was speaking to moves dutifully between his father and another man and leans against the wall. Neither man takes notice.)
“Please, just one cigarette.” (Grey-haired woman of indeterminate age, with head phones on bench in second block. She had been singing a Seals and Crofts tune, tunelessly. She was speaking to a slow-walking man passing by, apparently an acquaintance. He shakes his head almost angrily, “No!” then stops, returns, slowly open his pack of cigarettes and gives her a Pall Mall.)
“Is she already in Greece…?” (Well-groomed young woman, short skirt, tanned, red bag, on her cell phone. A ragged man with white hair, sitting on the stops of a nearby building, follows her with his eyes.)
“Just bake it” (Faded T-shirt on weary-looking 30-year-old man.)
“I don’t think it’s here yet. (A somber, nearly motionless man, sitting on the wall in front of City Hall, to a companion. He reaches slowly into his left pocket, clicks open a pocket watch) “2:13.” (He returns to his previous position, a hand on each knee, staring straight ahead at the bike rack. Beside them, three well-dressed apparent tourists debate whether to eat.)
“That’s new. (Woman demonstrating with sweeps of her arm to her male companion, probably her husband, as they walk briskly down the middle of Church Street.) “That’s new.”
“So many people with no place to go…” (Preppy young woman to her male companion, probably a boy friend.) He: “Yeah.”
Similar to the “Cows Come Home to Burlington” project in 2010, a benefit for COTS (Committee on Temporary Shelter), the Burlington Business Association , Lake Champlain Regional Chamber of Commerce and the Church Street Marketplace have come together again to showcase artists and businesses on the Marketplace and the greater Burlington area. This year, however, bears are coming downtown!
