Buttermilk meets The Wire
By GREG MAFFETT
Published: August 10, 2010
I don’t expect sympathy. Life is hard for everyone. I know that. So my explaining about how tough it is to be on the road for 7 weeks or my explaining about teaching the same course 4 weeks in a row will probably fall on deaf ears. I know this. I’m in Hawaii on someone else’s dime. For most people, that is the entire story.
But really, I’d seen dragging for 5 days. I live in San Diego, but had been teaching in Alabama the week before. I was all out of whack in terms of time zones when I showed up. I was teaching in a location that had never been used before, so I was struggling to work in a semi-broken environment. Then there was the hour commute to get back to the hotel. At the end of the day, I was drained. At the end of a week of this, I was totaled. There was nothing left in the tank. My main accomplishment for the week was to stay up past 8 PM one night.
By Friday I was in shape to stay up later than 8, maybe even 9. Woo hoo! I had ventured down to the Puka Dog hut on the recommendation of my daughter. This was at the back end of the International Market. The Market was my one link to the old Waikiki that I remembered from my first visit here in 1977. I was a fresh faced young pup from Penn State at the time and on my first trip outside the time zone I was born in.
So I walked through the market and out the back past the Puka stand. I turn right and head down the back road. I don’t know the name of the road, it doesn’t matter. As I’m walking a slow awareness begins to dawn. I’m walking down the street and the police sirens are blaring. I’m walking next to two large black men who are flipping cell phone with casual dexterity. One glances a the other and says “man, they are not playing tonight. Bang! They are on top of this street.”
In fact they were cops were screaming up and down the street. I think I could see 8 of them from where I stood. Can’t say I knew what they were after, but I started to look at the eyes of people on this street. This was two blocks from the beach, but the eyes were totally different. At the beach you have googly eyed tourists looking at buildings and sunsets and each other. Over here, everyone is looking in everyone else’s eyes or they are reading the street. People are focused. Sharks are in the water and no one has a cage to protect them. Just their eyes and their awareness of what might be coming their way.
I see a redhead who makes eye contact and asks something. I semi ignore that as she looks, well, rather aggressive. Not 10 feet later a brunette strikes up a conversation.
“hey you look like you have a lot of pep in your step!”
Well, I probably do. I’m bouncing back from a tiring week and am starting to feed on the energy of the street. I don’t recall how I respond to the compliment, but next thing I know she has her hand on my shoulder and suggesting that I may be overdressed for what she has in mind.
I admit I’m a little slow on the uptake, made all the worse by my exhaustion. Add to that the fact that I’ve not been propositioned in over 3 decades and you can imagine that I’m a little befuddled. Eventually I find out her name is Megan and she quotes me a price for something I’ve never asked for. Interesting, I think, as I extricate myself from this situation and move on down the street. Not 15 feet later another lady, this one barely 5 foot tall and over 200 pounds, flashes four fingers at me. The fingers are hidden from sight of anyone but me by her belly. Nice camo, I think.
It doesn’t take me long to figure that she was selling drugs and if I knew what the fingers meant, I’d have understood that offer.
At this point I feel my fatigue completely lift. As an armchair economist, I can assure you I’m in heaven. I’m watching a free market economy play out from the front row. Other than the cops, there is no BS socialism here. There are buyers and sellers and they are , as best as I can tell, on their game.
I walk around the block and see some other women who are clearly not the equals of what I see on the back street. It appears I had just passed the Yankee stadium of sin in Honolulu. I wander back to the main beach road and see that things are in full swing there. In addition to the usual street performers, there are groups from three churches preaching to the passing crowd. One exhorts “you are not alcoholics! You are not whoremongers!”
He was correct of course, but I saw that as possible inspiration to grab another beer. But rather than that, I decide to go back to the backstreet. Here I am once again invited to “hang out” this time by a black lady. I politely decline. She suggests “maybe next time around the block…” I think about that and decide to take up residence on top a planter. I see two black guys and the large lady congregate about 10 feet in front of me. They are talking business. The large lady is chatting with one of the professional women. Eventually one of the black guys sees me and inquires very politely “Do you need something?”
Now at this point I think I might explain that I’m simply a humble professor with an interest in economics who is enjoying the sight of free market economy. But now that I’m in street mode I realize that could be the kind of reply that might cause the seller to inflict physical harm on my person for being a smart ass. So instead I go with my second response which was “no thanks.” Obviously I chose well as I am here to type this.
I sit there for another 15 minutes watching the dealers deal. I watch the professional women find work for the evening. I can’t help but smile at the spectacle I’m seeing for free. This really is a front row seat to the kind of energy that built America. Granted it may be twisted, But I’m watching what I think to be some of the top professionals in their fields ply their trades. I could have stayed up for hours watching this, but eventually the spectacle as the night wore on.
Oh sure, I could have written a fictional account of one of the professionals picking me up. But I already wrote that piece in my first book. And in the end it seemed like any words this amateur writer could have invented about, oh say that initial redhead circling back, would have been an injustice to the professionals involved in making this city block work.
Also...
So I’ll leave this as it is. This was 33 years since my first visit. 33 years since my one glimpse of the pro called Buttermilk. A few years since the TV show The Wire ended. Those were both the high end of their art form. The same is true of what I saw that Friday night. My school tries to teach people to be professional by having them read books and answer questions in a classroom. Watching this for 15 minutes would do more for their career than 4 weeks of listening to a professor bloviate. I know I’d never get this on the curriculum. But really if any of my students find themselves in Hawaii, hang out a block or two north of the Puka Dog store and get a real education in acquisition.
That’s all.
Adult Disneyland
By GREG MAFFETT
Published: November 2, 2010
It's not the old Apple, but I still love it.
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