A hotbed of badminton

Tonight I learned that Denmark is a hotbed of badminton.

Downton at night, tag-ends of conversations riding on mild air currents.

A single brick wall, like the rib of Jonah's whale, standing high over the leavings of the building it once supported. Next door, a slick metal neighbor watches its last days through two hundred window eyes.

A friend explains why he's moving back home to New Orleans.

"...people are atomised here. You see people on their own, or couples, but no families, San Francisco hasn't been around long enough to grow those generations.

"...and yet, and yet, I love the musicians in the subways, the freaks and the hippies, but their ways are dying. You have to work hard, people have to work hard to survive here.

"...my brother in New Orleans is unemployed...he spends his days at the coffee shop, talking with all the curmudgeons that gather there, about art, and living, and all the unexplored universes..."

I can read what's playing at the movies in mirror writing, the marquis running backward in the shop window across the street.

A girl grooves down the road to the music in her head.

"I love San Francisco," says my New Orleans-bound friend, "It is, clearly, easily, the second best city in the U.S."