random thoughts – Day 1,290 – (Thursday) – movie and moonrise

As I rounded the corner from Shattuck Street to Market Street, there was a plain white moving truck parked at the opposite curb with an aqua bicycle resting against the truck. The back door was open, exposing the heavy stanchions and red velvet ropes used to mark out queues, along with a lot of other stuff that wasn't basic residential moving boxes. It seemed like it was getting late to still be moving and the stanchions marked it as a strange assortment of stuff.

Approaching Warp and Weft, I noticed a police officer in a bright vest standing in the street in a parking spot, which seemed slightly odd, but not more odd than other things seen elsewhere. There was a guy leaning against the building and what looked like equipment on the sidewalk.

Boozy Book Club was meeting outside, possibly for the last time in a while, and I worried about being chilly. The chill was forgotten quickly with an Allagash Haunted House beer and an update of the activities downtown. 

First, there was the news that Shannon, one of the local downtown street inhabitants, passed away this week. He was a downtown fixture for years, and often reclined in various doorways and sometimes in the middle of the sidewalk. It was a weird feeling hearing the news, between sadness because he was a human and likely had a rougher life than I could ever imagine and now he’s deceased, and relief that there is one less person asking me for money when I’m just trying to get to or from work.

That was followed by the exciting news that a movie was filming two doorways down from where we sat, in the space above the book store owned by the organizer of book club. Filming was taking place in the apartment above the book store, and we got a description of the very cool space and the very cool guy that lived there. Of course, my immediate question was, “Is he single?” (He is.)

The box truck parked on the street with the interesting contents was part of the filming, scheduled for 3:00 pm to 3:00 am. It explained the assortment of stuff in the truck, and also the other UHaul and plain white trucks parked in the immediate area, and the equipment on the sidewalk.

Oops.

As we sipped drinks, enjoyed appetizers, and discussed the book, there was the scrape of metal on metal out on the street. A white moving truck had scraped the corner of the truck parked at the curb. My guess is the driver was trying to back into the space behind the other white truck.

The mishap was right in front of a police cruiser that was parked behind the parked truck. It took more screeching and some maneuvering to get the trucks separated and the truck on the move parked in the lot for the Greek restaurant on the corner. Soon, a firetruck and ambulance were on the scene.

The owner of the apartment where the filming was happening came down the sidewalk, saw our book club leader, and stopped to chat. We grilled him about the filming and chaos in his dwelling. Apparently, the initial request was to use one room but the crew and props and equipment and the filming was taking over everything. The dining room table had been jammed into the kitchen blocking access to the beer in the fridge. A lot of his furniture had been rearranged and temporarily removed and replaced. The good news was that permissions had been granted and some of the owner's bachelor pad artwork was going to be in the movie.

Full moon rising
over Market Street.

A police officer came down the sidewalk and stopped at our table and said, “Hey ladies, you wanna see something cool?” It was a unanimous “Uhh, yeah, sure!” and in seconds we were trotting down the sidewalk behind the officer, in the direction of the film set. 

Officer LPD stopped and told us to look at the moon, bloated, pinkish, and bright, hanging over the end of Market Street. The officer stood in the street, poised to stop any oncoming traffic so we could look at the big, beautiful moon. Boozy Book Club oohed and aahed over the moon and took pictures with our phones. I spent the rest of book club checking the moon and taking more pictures. 

Over the next few minutes, staffers and customers trickled out of the restaurant to pause and look at the moon and take pictures of it, and themselves with it. It was spontaneous and fun and surprising and had elements of what I hoped life in Lowell would be like. Super fun night, and all in the space of about an hour.