DC's Different

The title of this post refers to a quote from Chapelle's Killing Them Softly standup from a few years back. He was referring to the fact that DC is a lot safer now than it was in the late 80's when crack was around. Not to say that crack no longer exists, but the original shock wave that it drove through the city has definitely subsided. Nonetheless, DC is different in other ways today.

I do a vast amount of grocery shopping at the Safeway down the street from my house. Its definitely the first grocery store that I have shopped at where I am in the majority. Every time I go there....something is happening. Either its somebody in front of me who is causing a scene in line because their check is bouncing, an ambulance is outside, or a kid is screaming at the top of their lungs with no parent in sight.

One of the more recent occurrences involved the outdoor ambulance. As I was walking up, I see two EMTs taking their time getting out of the ambulance and preparing for another Safeway pickup. Which makes this even better, was the fact that my roommate was telling me a week prior that his attempts to purchase ice cream was thwarted when an overweight woman had collapsed in front of the doors of the ice cream freezer. After an awkward glance, he decided to pass on ice cream for the time being. In my incident, there was somebody who had went down in front of the Starbucks counter. Everybody there seemed to be ambivalent to the woman as they continued on shopping as if this was a weekly occurrence. The woman seemed to be doing okay, as she was actually sitting up and looked to have control of her body.