Mr. Jordan asks if you could wait somewhere else

“They just don’t want that element. They don’t want those people there.” - Anne Ames

For stocking-in supplies, running the day-to-day errands or even searching for specialty items- need size and gold leaf to gild a light-switch? - Uptown Kingston’s major shopping center, the Kingston Plaza, offers some modest competition to the retail variety offered by the Town of Ulster’s business district.

Home to 39 businesses situated in a strip mall just down the hill from the city’s historic Stockade district, the parking lot is vast. All-weather-speakers have been mounted under the façade of the strip mall which juts out to offer sanctuary from a hot sun or inclement weather to shoppers walking underneath.

The overhang is lacking alongside the warehouse building which contains Hannaford’s Supermarket, the anchor of this strip mall, and so a metal roof has been erected- as much a colonnade as the parking lot is a plaza- which casts the sidewalk beneath into perpetual shadow.

Pop music plays through the speakers, the rain is kept at bay, so far so good, but what’s this? Blocking the approach to the grocery store, there are groups of people gathered under the metal roof, standing or even sitting on the ground smoking cigarettes- and yes- a waft of pungent smoke- marijuana. How déclassé.

There appears to be a man urinating into a trash can but you don’t want to make eye contact.

There’s definitely an old woman drinking from a bottle wrapped in a brown bag and singing to herself, slapping her thigh in accompaniment. You start to look around, suspecting the city jail might be nearby, after all there is a police cruiser parked watching the loiterers at an ominous remove, when a bus pulls up and it all falls into place.

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