North Davidson & East 36th streets

Sunday, I had nowhere to be. Nothing to do. I did have a means of transportation, so I set out with my journal/daybook on a sunny day with temps in the low 70’s. It’d been four or five years since I’d spent any time in NoDa. I began at the headwaters of now-entrenched art district: South Davidson Street. After tooling north along Davidson, traffic began to build and slow.

I rolled toward the center of the district, and more and more groups of people appeared, walking to or from. The Smelly Cat Coffeehouse requires one right turn off North Davidson onto East 36th and one right turn into the Smelly Cat parking lot.

The Smelly Cat view of the Neighborhood Theatre

Outside, coffee in hand, I took a table across from the Neighborhood Theatre, where I’ve seen some fine bands. The building is a show itself: colorful, entertaining. Passer-by made people-watching engrossing when I wasn’t busy writing. I took pictures. I took an afternoon that I would otherwise have spent grading and turned it into a mini-walkabout. The rest can wait, I reasoned. And it did, just fine.