Lost and driving to an event, on a sunny Saturday morning I found myself on 34th Street stuck at a railroad crossing waiting on a train to pass. Waiting patiently to my car, an elderly African-American woman left the sidewalk where she had been standing watching me and with a concerned look on her face approached my car, pecking on the glass with her finger.
"Honey," she said slowly, shaking her head, "you don't need to be down this way, especially all alone. It's dangerous for you: get out of here."
Only blocks away in NuLu, I could walk the streets at night without concern, but here in broad daylight there was a percieved threat. The mindboggling social stratification of a single street seems almost surreal, but lives, breathes and exists everyday both on Market Street and in urban areas the country.