The Big Bong Theory...nothing to do with drugs. People inhale the gestalt, or the elements there of. then blow it out their shorts...

The Summer of Five Dollar Shoes:   

This is a riveting analysis of metaphor, me to a very old Black Woman who, I noticed last year in August, wore thin spandex beach shoes most certainly acquired at the Five Below store downtown.   I had on the exact same shoes, no socks for me, thank you, and Miss Liz wore thick purple synthetic knee socks and her black, with gray trim, spandex shoes.  Five bucks a pair.  We talked one afternoon, and the things people have in common can be in the making before the chat opens apprehension the way two ice cubes will open single malt scotch.  Miss Liz is a live wire, like a pricey bottle of Glennfuckit.     Some of the things Miss Liz and I have in common were, in my case, yet  to be realized, and maybe only for having seen it in a person other than myself.   

Not mentioning the shoes, we got to the subject of how it was downtown in the 1990s.  That's as far as I go back with the former steel sub-metropolis.    Miss Liz moved here not too long after the Great Depression.  Had many go rounds with our metamorphic multifarious city administrations and business districts, each an amoeba taking in goods and expelling services, an economy with stone and at the same time elastic walls.  Our shopping centers have been ever morphing.   Thin walls are removed and placed elsewhere otiose and never exciting.   The downtown business establishment was knocking itself out when I first got here, to seem vital, and I've come to adore, from a safe distance, the way expendable people work so hard to maintain appearances when a place lost it's soul decades earlier on the fat prick that is a time line.  

When I mentioned to Miss Liz that before the Smithfield Street McDonald's closed in 2019, back in the 1990s, people used to get lunch there dressed in cheap but fairly well fitted business suits, shirts and neck ties.  Miss Liz smiled warmly, alertly, triumphantly, and said, "they all dead."

That's one of the things I had, in transition, in common with her.   It took a few years for the lime gelatin and vodka to solidify.  Jello Shots, a party fave, goes down same as regular lime Jello, but it's fifty proof if you do it right.   The Jello, in this case, Lizzy and myself, is joy in knowing lesser mortals croaked, and we are still alive.  People aren't so fucking great in Pittsburgh.  It's a truly second class city.  Why should that be bothersome to anyone?   Lizzy had it already, and I gained it eventually.   It's an element of bliss.   Shitty people are kind enough to bite the dust, leaving more room for Miss Liz.   Me, too.