Spooking the locals...

So, I may have mentioned that I live in this relentlessly gentrified, hopelessly twee little in-town neighborhood called Broad Ripple. There's a business/entertainment strip that is all pubs and live music joints and restaurants and vintage clothing boutiques and hair salons. Stretching several blocks away from that in every direction is block after block of quiet, tree-lined former suburb, inhabited by single adults and young families. You will often see Kelli, the personal trainer or Skip, the newly-minted attorney out pushing baby strollers or pedaling their mountain bikes.

I have referred to the 'hood as "The O-Zone", due to the fact that the (admittedly sparse) yard signs are pretty much all for one guy, as is to be expected in the demographic, which is young, artsy city-dwellers. Every now and again it makes me twitch, though. Like the other day, when I parked the Bimmer (urban camouflage) between the brand new 911 and the Jag X-type (the latter with the obligatory "O") where my doors should be safe, and ran into the Fresh Market for some necessaries.

I'm in the checkout line with my purchases when I draw the attention of the dude behind me. Or rather my shirt does. He's tall and thin, with a tan physique that speaks of lots of frisbees thrown to bandana-wearing dogs in lots of public parks. His salt-and-pepper hair is pulled into a long ponytail and he blinks through wire-rim John Lennon specs as he says "Does that shirt really say...?"

"'Nuke Berkeley'? Yes, it does."

"But," he asks in genuine puzzlement, "why would you want to nuke Berkeley?"

"Because," I say in my sweetest voice, the one I use to get toddlers to take their medicine, "that's where they grow hippies, silly!" And I picked up my purchases and headed for the door, leaving him standing there in slack-jawed puzzlement.