Tennis Ball Walkers and Rhythm Nation

A good chortle to one's self does wonders to put things into perspective. Similarly, living on the fringes of chinatown does wonders to provide chortles to one's self. There's the utter distrust of idling vehicles by the inhabitants, the belief that gradually stopping adjacent to a delivery truck with its hazards on to wait for... (?) and blocking traffic in both directions has absolutely no bearing on anyone beyond a circa 1998 minivan's radius. There's the emotionless old woman in her janet jackson rythm nation sports cap, god bless her, who eases out of an obscure door next to our go-to pizza place as sure as the sun rises, preceded by her walker with tennis ball nubs and accompanying daughter, whose fluorescent orange hat seems to have warped from the set of North Shore. They amble off around the block for a good hour's shuffle.
Today it was a senior Chinese woman who snuck out between a couple of parked cars, seemingly oblivious to my idling car just feet away. Her general wardrobe was nothing out of the ordinary: some new curtain-vest line on sale at the x-ray lead apron boutique. But she was stopping traffic over these babies:
and she was rocking them like she owned that shit.