Like a Kabuki Mask

I make a shortcut on my way to university. After exiting the train station, I go up a laneway, across a carpark, and up two more laneways, which halves the time it takes to get to the diagonally opposite end of the block. The shortcut provides a unique view of the businesses on the block, from behind, the side of each building that isn’t facing the street. The following buildings and businesses make up the block;

1. A police station. The officers stationed here only venture out to check that the cars in the carpark, of which there are about five, not including police vehicles, are displaying parking meter tickets on their dashboards
2. A courthouse
3. A coffee shop, where highly strung lawyer-types go to score weed under the counter to calm themselves down, which they smoke on the carpark-facing balconies of the courthouse, their skin stretched tight in the mornings and leathery under their makeup by the afternoons
4. A brothel. The brothel is an entirely pink two-storey house, with the front door boarded over, and no signage aside from an arrow pointing down the side of the building. The windows are always covered. the brothel sits in the middle of the block, not facing the main roads on any side
5. Some run-down apartment buildings
6. A gift shop. The gift shop has high priced giftware, sold by young Asian women. Their shop is small, and only faces a one-way laneway. There are no signs. The gift shop is clearly a front for some kind of money laundering operation, probably run by the fathers of the young ladies whose carved wooden kitchen trays I buy whenever my friends get maried
7. A Greek Orthodox church. The church is run entirely by two old brothers, one the priest and the other the gardener
8. A function centre. The function centre also opens onto the laneway, and isn’t signed. Although it looks like a function centre on the outside, the sides and higher windows are clearly that of warehouse space. It is in fact, a front (quite literally, as the front of the building only has been styled) for the large-scale distribution of some kind of illicit substance(s)
9. A series of small shops that sell illegally imported, obviously pirated, or foreign language movies.

There is also a small Asian woman in her late twenties, who walks in the opposite direction to me every day. We generally pass at, or within twenty metres of the parking meter. As I have just alighted the train, I am always there at the same time. She, presumably without such a means by which to time herself, has still never been more than forty-five seconds early or late on her daily walk. She always looks scared.

4 Comments

You’re right.
Except the function centre is actually a function centre, the Greeks often have engagement parties there, and one of my friends had a work function there once.

sylvatin, May 15th



You need to broaden your horizons, get out more.

Blah, May 15th



I always enjoy reading your observations; you have quite the talent for descriptive writing.

Kris, May 15th



yeah, i looked it up on Google Maps. At least i tried. You know Tristan, sometimes I don’t get you.

josh, May 20th

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