Broadway Market

This is a new upscale food court concept that took up in the space that Tony's Market departed and boy oh boy is it ever a hit with the kids, all of them lovely as can be. The place was packed. Noisy. Young families with very young children, hipsters, millennials everywhere and all the things that they like.

I love the young people. And their very young children are adorable. Picture perfect, I must say. To a person everyone that I spoke to and interacted with is lovely and well mannered, well spoken, polite and conversant. This fine place is proof that now is a new world taking over and this new world these people are creating for themselves is splendid.

My meal was expensive, but not everything there is that high. Sushi is probably the highest. I also bought a deli sandwich to bring home and that was reasonable panini. Delicious and well thought  too.

You can buy into some type of agreement for endless beers if you want. I saw people walk up to a very long self-serve countertop. When I examined, it is a very large selection of various beers on tap. Types that I haven't seen before ranging from blond ales, to wood aged, to spice and herb beers, lagers and stouts. It would be difficult to choose.

The sushi bar where I stopped was crowded and busy, people coming and going, some sitting right there, others at nearby tables and others elsewhere in the space. Nearby an Argentine empanada counter right next to a tiny organic juice bar. On the other side of the sushi place is the deli sandwich bar where I bought the panini to bring home, next to a pasta bar next to a pizza outfit, and centrally a large regular bar. By the entrance is a souvenir shop that had the attention of the children and visitors, and a small baked goods shop. Then comfortable sofa seating throughout where people collected in groups.

People are being notified by phone messaging that their order is ready. The place is partially self-serve and full wait service combined. I noticed people coming up and taking small plates, napkins, and chopsticks for themselves. I saw plates filled with food neglected longer than you would expect, I suppose some people were not responding quickly to their notifications, while other plates of food were picked up and served to people sitting elsewhere.

It's very free and open and unrestricted by customary territorial issues. Yet the little boys who came up beside me, kicking my chair repeatedly while they grabbed wooden chopsticks from a steel cup weren't abusing the system. They just needed a couple more chopsticks.

Two brothers. Adorable. And I was cast back in time to that age and behaving similarly with my own older brother.  They didn't push the cup back into its proper position. They pulled it forward to themselves so they could lift out the chopsticks but didn't push it back. They're boys. They don't think like that.

I recalled my own mother saying, "Your uncle Bob would come home from school and make himself a sandwich and you'd never know he had been in the kitchen."

I asked, "How did he do that?"

"He cleaned up after himself."

     "What?"

"He wiped up his crumbs, put the jar of mayonnaise back into the refrigerator,  put his dishes in the sink. He put everything away that he had pulled out. He put his trash in the bin."

     "Wow. Uncle Bob was amazing. What an incredible ninja!"

"You can be like that."

     "I can try."

It's not how boys think.

They couldn't even feel themselves kicking my chair. It's just something they knocked into. And I was like that past my twenties. They have no idea the vibrations travel and are felt by somebody else. They have no idea that's annoying. It's not how boys think. I adore them. I adore them not knowing, not thinking like that. They think they're stealthy like ninjas. They don't know what they are bumping into. They don't feel it.

At twenty-one an older friend of mine said, "I cringe every time you brush past that fiddle leaf fig."

I didn't know I was supposed to avoid my body touching a potted plant. I didn't know I wasn't supposed to lean against walls or brush past plants whipping through them. It's not how boys think.

And the other children younger than them are models of adorableness with their thick curly hair, their being awestruck with overstimulation, then later their being worn out and bored with adult conversation. The way they drape themselves over a cushioned footstool and submit to detachment from activity, from adult partying, from direct supervision, and give in to waiting it out nearly exhausted approaching their bedtime. Through it all they are very well behaved. Well taught.

This bottle of carbonated orange juice is annoying. You have to take off cap 1 and extend its self-contained punch, then bash it through cap 2 to create a hole to drink through. Then the bottle must be held just so for a marble to fit into a depression. Then only tiny sips are released. 

It's a pain in the ass. 

"I think that I got a good picture of you accidentally."

     "Oh?" 

"Would you like to see it?"

     "Sure."

She walked up to me and stood next to me as I paged back through the viewer. We reviewed her photo together. 

"Oh, it's blurred. You are moving too fast and it's dark in here." 

     "Eh, that's okay." 

"I like it because it shows movement. Activity." 

     "Yeah. It does."