\t\t\t\tAt a Starbucks, where the place feels like a positive commotion. Do not remember last time I was here but probably not as long ago as I so often retrospectively infer. It is Halloween. This was, as a child, the one holiday or event that my mother felt had not yet been excessively commercialized. How time have changed. You could say it always was commercialized. When I was a kid many of the costumes advertised Time-Warner and Looney Tunes characters and franchises. I went out as Casper the Ghost once, and Spiderman another time. But it\u2019s become more of a sensation over the decades, as children ceded the holiday to yuppies, gen-xers, and even the millennials. Christmas, of course, is no different. A religious holiday turned into a retail opportunity for children, now a retail phenomenon.<\/p>\n
Kids walking past me now are dressed as surgeons (with blood stains [fake, I hope] on their bibs); leprechauns; unicorns and rainbows; generically painted with blood dripping from eyes; grade school kids wearing private school uniforms\u2026 oh, wait. Can\u2019t always tell the costumes from the everyday.<\/p>\n
I look but not for long. Too long a glance at a child (or at any human unknown to you) could prompt the social media shame police to haul me, a single man, before the court of public opinion. Millions of the shame police\u2019s worshipers could, without me possibly ever<\/em> even knowing it is happening, evaluate and speculate on my motives for sitting in a public coffee shop, alone, watching the young people amble by. My face, put through open source face recognition software by the shame police who further treat as gospel the error-riddled public records of the City of New York, is wrongly identified as that of a married father of 3 living on the same street as me, 4 houses down. I go home later to find street debris and hand grenades lobbed at the house of the unwitting individual, who I must say bears no resemblance to me.<\/p>\n Sitting here with the sun blasting in my face so I can spy on the Smart City kiosk across the street. I am looking for reactions of passers-by to the loud rock and roll music I have blasting through the device\u2019s loudspeaker.<\/p>\n It is too damn commotious in here. Going home, or elsewhere.<\/p>\n \t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" At a Starbucks, where the place feels like a positive commotion. Do not remember last time I was here but probably not as long ago as I so often retrospectively infer. It is Halloween. This was, as a child, the one holiday or event that my mother felt had not yet been excessively commercialized. How […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23925,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-text","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/Sketch1931307-e1484013006181-640x1024-3.jpg?fit=640%2C1024&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paumAn-3Kh","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14401"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14401\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24004,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14401\/revisions\/24004"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}