Occasionally, someone with some motor-nerve difficulty moves with the choppy gait of a tin man oiling up for a marathon. They all define their own animated grace amid the runners, hikers, race walkers, bicyclists and roller skaters. The brick path through the city offers different rewards and makes different demands. You can t give yourself completely to public radio chit chat or the rhythm of a good tune through your headphones when at any moment you might be playing toreador with a drunken Buick or betting on cabbies who are so color-blind at stoplights one marvels how they hold onto green cards. The crowded rails of Washington, D.C., don t allow the John Henry run down railroad tracks I enjoyed in Kansas, but the alleys of Mt. Pleasant, Columbia Heights ad other neighborhoods are as revealing and distinctive as any train trip along the backside of passing towns.
Alleys tell the true state and direction of a neighborhood.
In the blocks that are holding their own, small back yards are crammed with miniature gardens and old-fashioned whirlygigs. Some alleys erupt like a giant dog kennel or reveal a dazed cat defending his trash pickings. In small parks, I see the increasing nomads of the city, or signs they ve been there, such as a 12-foot branch sticking out of an untended smoldering grill with two charred potatoes on top. In early morning, I do chin-ups by a basketball court where a group of men cluster beneath blankets by a wall, with empty Budweisers ringing in their camp. Sometimes you feel you ve wandered onto the set of guerrilla theater in progress.