GARY, INDIANA: August 16, 2008

As you walk through the door of Coney Island, as the greasy spoon across the road is called, your nostrils flare as the smell of bacon fills your nose. There’s a jukebox on the side, and that sends the sounds of Black classics into your ears. There’s still no white face to be seen, except for yours, and everyone inside the diner notes your presence when you move toward the counter. Clark comes in behind me and starts passing out VOTE buttons. Dallas shoots video.

Two men turn their faces away from the lens. You feel whiter than perhaps you are. You try to ask one of the men, the one wearing the Obama t-shirt, if you can shoot the front of it from the next down. But he doesn’t respond when you try to talk to him so you forget it. This is not the place to make scene. Not that something would happen to you, although there’s always that possibility, but you like to think of yourself as cooler than that. I mean, shit, their lives are hard enough without some asshole cracker shoving a camera in their face as they’re trying to enjoy lunch.

You order something. The waitress laughs at you when you ask for sauerkraut. You think it’s your New York accent, but maybe it’s the fact, as she tells you, that they don’t have sauerkraut -- just onions, relish and chili. You ask for relish and a coke to go with it, but it takes so long to come, as if they’re intentionally trying to discourage you from coming back, and the burnt bacon smell starts to turn you off, that you give up, hand the girl a $5, tell her to put that in her pocket, and step outside.

You breathe deep and look around. Burned out buildings and boarded-up storefronts surround you. But there’s a chalkboard-like black slate leaning against a building a few storefronts down. You walk over to it and read. It says “H&S Shoeshine Parlor.” You know you have to go in.

Two men are in side. One’s seated and reading a newspaper. The other is standing, shining a shoe. In the back of the men’s shop the ceiling is collapsed. Clear plastic tarpaulins have in front of the detritus like curtains. All the walls around you are covered with funeral notices, one-page paper fliers using with a picture of the deceased on the cover, and some information about who he or she was, as well as where and when mourning will be done.

“We’ve been here thirty years,” one of the men say. “Thirty years. We’ve had a lot of friends pass on us. Seems every week its someone else. But we still managing to get along, day-by-day. Yup, thirty years.”