This Week in Kingston

In the spirit of updating regularly, here are a few tidbits about our adventures in Kingston the past week or so:

1. Last Saturday, I drove around with a couple of friends looking for a fabric store and ended up inside the dreaded "M"--that's the part of the city that's supposed to be off-limits to us, defined by some roads that make the shape of the letter M. It was day time and nothing looked amiss; we made it out just fine, but don't tell the regional security officer.

2. I bought a basket similar to one I bought a few weeks ago and paid a similar price without realizing that it was actually significantly smaller than the first one. I am now mad at the Basket Man.

3. Speaking of Basket Man, one of my favorite things about driving around Kingston is the cast of characters my friends and I see on a daily basis. There's Basket Man, of course, Phone Card Man, Pillow Man (yes, he sells pillows on the street), Hub Cap Man, Gate Girl (she raises the gate to the parking lot at work), Sometimes Naked Man (I've only seen him on loin-cloth days, thank God), Newspaper Man (Dave), and even Fish on a String Man if you drive out on the peninsula by the airport. It's a veritable pantheon of street vendors and other assorted characters. I think my favorite is Pillow Man, because the idea of selling pillows on the street just cracks me up. He's there every day, which makes me think that someone out there must be buying his pillows. Definitely not an item I would buy on the street, but rock on, Pillow Man, rock on.