Almost a statistic

So last night I'm on the way home from a show over in Bucktown and I did something a little stupid. As usual, I'd rather walk two miles than wait 10 minutes for a bus, so I just started meandering my way home, until I found myself heading eastward on Diversey.

As I crossed over the river it occurred to me that the housing projects over on the other side have always looked a little sketchy, even from the safety of a vehicle in daylight. So here I was walking through at around 9:30 on a Saturday night. But it's a very busy street and it goes through MY neighborhood, so how bad can it really be? 

But I pause at one more bus stop, looking over my shoulder in vain for a sign of an Eastbound bus, and continue on my way. Up ahead, on the other side of the street is a handful of young urban gentlemen. I see them talking amongst themselves and then they start loping across the street, intersecting my path.

I think for a moment, and have a little flashback to college when I was held up at gunpoint. Something about the way they (they being potential robbers) move. It's a combination of casualness and determination that both sets off warning bells and causes you to think you're crazy and imagining things. So it's instinct versus intellect.

As I was contemplating my next move and thinking about my odds (again, it's a VERY busy street, though a little desolate a little ahead of where I'm walking), I see them sorta stop in the middle of the street, shuffle about, chat a bit, turn around and head back to their side. Okay, I really was imagining things, I thought.

Then I see that between us is a slow moving unmarked police car with three plainsclothes cops in it. Very obvious -- only a tiny fraction less conspicuous than a squad car. And the cops are looking at me, and looking at them, and looking back at me and just sorta stopped there and it occurred to me that, yes, this quite possibly was about to happen. I mean, if the cops had a suspicion, after all.

Just then I saw a bus coming up the street, so I sprinted across an intersection to the next stop, flagged it down and got on.

Thinking about it this morning the cops did have a "what the hell are you doing here" look, that I initially took for, "It's stupid white boys like you that make us do all this work filing crime reports." But maybe instead they thought I was there to buy drugs!

Who knows?