Streets stacked with sitcoms and fairytales. Victorian fantasies in five seven eight twelve colours of paint. Shingles and columns and fretwork and moulding and gables and gargoyles and gold leaf. Rounded bay windows.
Porch steps styled with fat orange pumpkins.
Embossed leather satchels. Custom-made suits. Chinos and iPhones and suede desert boots.
Red. Soled. Stilettos.
Rye. Brioche. San Francisco Sourdough. Sheep cheese with a crinkly rind and the taste of cream. Earth. Little gems, arugula, endive. Massaged black kale. Miniature red and white radishes, plump pink raspberries. Sweet. Soft. Figs.
Black cod. Halibut. Oysters.
Dungeness crab.
Truffled cheese, truffled doughnuts.
Local artisanal sulphite-free riesling.
Tents.
Beneath underpasses.
Rows of them. Dozens of them.
Fabric homes. Wrapped in exhaust fumes and the roaring of trucks.
Cardboard mattresses.
Duvet-wrapped bodies in doorways, on sidewalks. Shop-fronts and alleyways.
Everywhere. Everywhere.
Everywhere.
Men hunting garbage tins. And hunched women rocking.
Forwards and backwards.
And forwards and backwards.
Beside them, three stores. Industrial-chic container-store pop-ups.
Organic raw juice.
Single-origin coffee.
Hand-churned ice-cream.
Fair trade Earl Grey
and milk
chocolate
chip.
