2009-06-13 - 11:23 p.m.
A moment in time: 11:24 on a Saturday night, a quiet apartment except for some music turned down low, me drinking from a sweating bottle of beer. And then, like the arrival of a police helicopter, what comes down the alley is a group of 40 or 50 black kids, teenagers or maybe a little older, many of them yelling at each other, laughing, shouting into cellphones that turn their cheeks electric blue, the boys in white undershirts, some of them kicking dumpsters, one of them saying, "Look, white people." And, like that, it's 11:28 at night, on that same Saturday, and all of a sudden they're gone, having reached the end of the alley, having reached Eager Street by now, all of them gone into the night, dark skin into dark night, even the girls' voices gone now, leaving only that music turned down low, that same bottle of beer, that sense of sameness that feels like nothing every really happened at all.
Here's what I was going to write: That music turned down low was Radiohead's "You and Whose Army?" and how good is that song? When the piano comes in it feels like a well-meaning thunderstorm, a gentle one, a love letter from the best uncle ever born.
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