I’ve spent a few weeks in downtown Fort Worth, Texas recently. It’s a lively city center with visual art, music, outdoor events in Sundance Square, restaurants, etc. The terrain is well-suited to cycling and there is a bike share system with reasonably good coverage for places that a visitor might want to go. The ethnic mix reasonably reflects recent immigration trends. Spanish is commonly spoken and there are usually at least a few Arabic speakers out and about (the women covered in hijabs, at least). I’m not fitting in that well due to (a) lack of cowboy hat, and (b) saying “hello” to folks encountered while out walking (a sign of mental illness in any true city, but standard practice in our corner of Florida (pedestrians and drivers wave to each other in Abacoa, Jupiter as well if any kind of eye contact is made)).
Texas seems to be home, so to speak, to plenty of homeless people. Nothing like the zombie army you’d find in a California city, of course, but a shocking prevalence compared to suburban or small town Florida. I had remarked on this a few years ago to an Uber driver in Austin, Texas. He was from Afghanistan and I asked him what the situation in Kabul was. He explained that nobody was homeless in Afghanistan because relatives would take in and care for anyone who couldn’t take care of himself.
Outdoor maskers are uncommon in Fort Worth. It’s nothing like my recent stay in Sherman Oaks, California, where I needed to walk only 1 block from my hotel to meet an outdoor masker. However, 100 percent of the outdoor maskers that I’ve encountered in Fort Worth seem to be unhoused (formerly known as “homeless”). I don’t remember seeing unhoused people, even in California, wearing surgical masks prior to coronapanic. Why are the unhoused more enthusiastic today about the protective possibilities of a surgical mask than the general population is? (To be sure, only a small minority of the unhoused in Fort Worth wear masks.)
Why do homeless Americans tend to wear surgical masks? It allows them to better conceal their identities so they can commit crimes more easily.
They probably are all shoplifting, trespassing, blog commenting & concealing their identities.
Obama always said if you like copying and repeating Toucan Sam you can copying and repeating him!
“nobody was homeless in Afghanistan because relatives would take in and care for anyone who couldn’t take care of himself.”
Demographics – Afghanistan is full of Afghans. American cities are full of…err…ummm…ahhh…never mind.
“…that I’ve encountered in Fort Worth seem to be unhoused (formerly known as “homeless”)”
Formerly known as vagrants or bums.
Surely it must be “housefree”.
> The terrain is well-suited to cycling and there is a bike share system with reasonably good coverage for places that a visitor might want to go.
The city of Cambridge, Maskachu$etts, went overboard with bikes! With it’s already narrow streets, half of a street is now dedicated to bike lane. And if that’s not enough, the other half is dedicated to public busses. Trying to drive into Cambridge, during the day with delivery trucks making their rounds, is a nightmare.
Sadly, the dedicated bikes and public buses lanes are empty most of the time!
Why haven’t the people who believe in the sacrament of mask wearing converted to masks with vents? Do they not appreciate the increase in comfort? Or are they still wearing the masks to protect the rest of us?