Voodoo Chicken

Josh often refers to the oddities of living downtown--from the vagrants that pee on his stoop, to the simple lack of a grocery store. But it wasn't until this Saturday night that I really began to understand the depth and complexity of the picture he was trying to paint. I find myself walking to Qwest field along the waterfront Saturday evening. I near one of the streetcar shelters and witness a shopping cart on the tracks. Now this is not entirely alarming as the streetcar hasn't run in sometime, but an abnormality which catches my eye. The cart is an eclectic mass of vagrant knick knacks, shapes, colors, and textures bulge and contort at awkward angles. As I get nearer, the volume of the viaduct yields to an other-worldly singing. A blanket obscures the show at first, but as I move perpendicular to the cart, the slice-of-life drama reveals itself. A toothless Caribbean woman wearing a doo rag, cackles the jumbled song. In her hand is a rooster, which she shakes and manipulates while she sings--the rooster contributing in a bizarre duet. I catch myself starring, the voodoo doctor deep in her transfiguration, I wide-eyed, mouth aghast.