Work was exciting today. A sewer line blew out a manhole cover at 5:25pm, and our entire block was evacuated. It was the loudest boom I've ever heard. The cover itself went through the plate glass window of the PolanDeli four shops down. No one at all was hurt, which is a miracle as far as I'm concerned. The hole was still oozing thick, yellow, malodorous smoke as the cops herded us away. I decided to settle my nerves by making an impromptu visit to Barnes & Noble.
It was an inspired idea. I found a new Majipoor book by Robert Silverberg on the Just Published shelf. Hurrah! I like the series very much, and the last one came out in 1996 so you can see I've been waiting a long time. Now, if only Micki Roessner would come out with her next book I'd be completely blissful.
For our birthdays John and I received Home Depot gift certificates from my parents. First a house, now Home Depot. What next, the Apocalypse?
Actually, I'm all happy and stuff because I want some deep, tall containers and I know Home Depot carries them. If I don't happen to have a house in time to plant fall bulbs I'm just going to grow them in pots. I got the Van Bourgondien catalog yesterday and I'm marking it up pretty intensely. I'm going to have all white, palest yellow, and gold flowers in one pot, and silver and light blue flowers in the other. The fun part is working out which bulbs flower when so I can get several months worth of blossoms from the same pot.
The visit to Home Depot will be interesting if only because it's in a controversial area. East Palo Alto lies between Highway 101 and the bay, and is primarily populated by Hispanics, blacks, and South Pacific Islanders. It does not have a public high school for its 20,000 residents, which should be a source of shame for San Mateo County. It has no supermarkets, either. I imagine I don't have to tell you property values are in the cellar. People from Menlo Park and Palo Alto (white, wealthy communities) have avoided East Paly for years and treated its residents with suspicion.
Along came a wealthy local businesswoman who decided East Palo Alto was ripe for rejuvenation. She lined up Home Depot, the Good Guys, Office Depot, and a couple of large department stores for the anchor stores of an enormous redevelopment site. Ground was broken last fall, and the first three megastores opened for business this spring. A large mall and a supermarket are to follow. The new shopping district is named Ravenswood after the community's original name. It should, with any luck, bring convenience and much-needed income to the locals. Seems like a great success story, right?
Menlo Park and Palo Alto were so upset about the Ravenswood development that they seriously suggested putting in steel teeth in the streets facing towards East Palo Alto as a deterrent to anyone figuring their neighborhoods would make a good shortcut. I would have been shocked, except I had recently had a client tell me about the time he briefly parked on a street to check his directions to someone's home in Atherton. He happened to have a bumper sticker touting a Mexican music radio station on his new truck. The lady whose home he was parked in front of called the cops.
Personally, I'm looking forward to shopping at Home Depot. It's about time some of the enormous wealth in this area was redistributed. They'll be getting my business.
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