Taking a Stroll

Two mysteries have followed me well into adulthood: Does soaping yourself work underwater, and how come there are so many people out on the street all day, seemingly not working? Having pitched a work, and not a soap, column, I recently attempted to answer the latter.

Because look out your window. Who are these people? At any given hour on any given workday, well, it turns out it's not a workday at all. Not for these hordes roaming free, anyway. By rights our parks and movie theaters and stores should be minor ghost towns between 9 and 5 -- chanced upon by the occasional tourist or late-night bartender but otherwise peaceful. Instead, they're inexplicably packed. I didn't doubt that the packers had sound explanations. I just wanted to hear them.

It occurred to me last night that you can learn as much about a city from what its people don't do as you can from what they do do. So I drove to as many parts of San Francisco as I could and interrupted as much leisure as possible to find out. (Full Story)

Actually, I've never wondered about this but all of the sudden I was interested. Good read. Do you ever find yourself out and about during work hours?

[Photo via pocoyo]