PORTSMOUTH, N.H. — For people who like people watching, I recommend pulling up a wooden bench or metal chair in Portsmouth’s brick-lined Market Square.
Here in the heart of our historic downtown, one can’t help but feel the pulse of our tiny city by the sea.
Now that another eight-month winter has come and gone, I’ve taken newfound enjoyment in the simple pleasure of just grabbing a coffee, kicking back and watching our corner of the world roll and stroll by.
Why, just the other day I noticed …
An old-timer (cause you don’t see a lot of young people doing this) reading a morning newspaper whose front page I’d just finished paginating around midnight.
Younger people — feet moving, thumbs flittering, eyes tightly focused on their phones — using their peripheral vision not to see their surroundings but to avoid bumping into them. Many wearing white wires in their ears.
When trying to tune in to the rhythms of the square, you’ll notice folks moving both purposefully and aimlessly — some happy to hold a door, others too busy or oblivious.
One morning, a man with a laptop outside the coffee shop had his sleepy golden retriever sprawled out on the tight little corridor amid the outdoor seating, seemingly as if to block the maximum amount of sidewalk humanly, or caninely, possible.
Beautiful dog. I don’t think he or his master even noticed peopled stepping over him. A day or two later, same man’s best friend was sprawled out half-blocking the business’ other door. Oh well, guess I’ve become a curmudgeon in my old age (52 in human years).
Our Portsmouth is small and far from diverse, yet there’s almost always a cool cross-section of local humanity on parade. A million snapshots for the curious eye.
Hey look, there’s a young man dressed in suit and tie in the same frame as a dude with a shaggy mohawk and tie-dye.
And I swear that tough-looking baby with the thick black hair is scowling from his stroller. Spooky little chap. What’s his deal?
Yesterday, I rolled out of bed — first stop, coffee shop. Whether wide awake or sleepy-eyed, I find quirky little human moments to be endlessly fascinating.
Nearby, a little fellow, age 3 or 4, whines: “But I wanted to open up my own straw” (ironic implication, “because I’m such a big boy”). Just as the tyke delivered this quote, I happened to meet eyes with his big burly bearded young dad, whose face registered, “Yep, that’s my Junior.”
Market Square is also a sort of ground zero for yoga lovers (rolled-up mats and stretch pants) and motorcycle folks (embroidered vests and jeans or leather pants).
Right now I’m picturing a bearded Harley badass rolling up on the loudest hog ever, then pulling a yoga mat from his saddle bag and heading upstairs to Zev to quiet his mind with a little namaste. (I’ve never actually seen this, but I’d like to.)
During a recent afternoon people-watching session, a thickly built older gentleman with white hair and a backpack walked up, extended his hand for a firm, friendly greeting, then said, “I wanted to apologize. I had mistaken you for somebody else…”
I’m sure I looked puzzled as he paused and continued …
“I thought you were a friend of mine,” he meandered on, “when I called you a (bleep).”
(Except he didn’t actually say “bleep.” It was a two-syllable word starting with D — first syllable a nickname for Richard, second syllable that thing we each have on top of our neck and shoulders.)
“Oh,” I said. “I didn’t even hear you.”
It was Monday afternoon and at that moment the normal buzz and tintinnabulation of the square was dominated by the hydraulic hum of a garbage truck.
“So, no offense taken,” I said with a smile.
“Yeeaah,” he continued, speaking slowly, as I began to wonder if he was enjoying a state of mild intoxication or perhaps some non-debilitating chemical imbalance.
“Sooo, I just wanted to make my amends.”
I thanked him and assured him that his mea culpa, though appreciated, was definitely not necessary.
He fumbled with the wording of another half-apology. Then, I suppose having sufficiently unburdened his troubled conscience over for the unheard insult, he stood and offered a fraternal but overly touchy tap on the shoulder before disappearing down Congress Street.
Priceless.
In addition to experiencing a visual cornucopia, a downtown people watcher can’t help but hear snippets of passing conversation. Stripped of all context, they can resemble street poetry, quirky streams of human consciousness or inscrutable Zen koans.
I think of it as a kind of “stop and smell the roses” deal, only with people as the metaphorical roses — and with seeing and hearing them, rather than the smelling part.
The other day a brawny young gentlemen engaged in a church-front chat (I may or may not have heard mention of a flask) invited a conversation partner to guess his weight.
Two-sixty?
Nope. Four hundred. Or to be more precise, “400 pounds of fury,” said he, adding for emphasis, “I’m a thoroughbred beast.”
Other times a little harmless eavesdropping can turn downright jaw-dropping, as when — sitting near the information kiosk — I heard a woman with Southern accent.
She said — and I swear to Abraham Lincoln and Harriet Tubman that I am not making this up — “Nobody in my family owned any slaves.”
Wow. As I wondered what the context might have been for the “no slaves” remark, I realized I might even be partly responsible, since the Herald front page I’d put together the night before prominently featured a report on the African Burying Ground Memorial.
Of course, anyone familiar with summer in Market Square knows there are many moments when certain two-wheeled vehicles blot out one’s ability to hear oddly humorous morsels, or much of anything at all.
As a longtime downtown resident, I thought I’d pretty much made my peace with the motorcycle noise. I believe many riders try to limit the noise pollution, but others just love to play spin the throttle.
Last Friday, a posse of super-loud cyclists disembarked from Pleasant Street and revved onto Congress, their fancy noisemakers unpleasantly cranked to 11. When they banged a right at Starbucks, I guessed they’d be looping around onto Market Street and decided to stand there to see just how loud they would be.
It was worth the wait. Due to some traffic, they were all stuck on Market waiting to merge back into the square.
The ensuing multi-minute thunder show — amplified by an echo chamber of tall brick buildings — rumbled hard through my external auditory canal and slammed into my tympanic membrane with the force of many thousand horsepower. The soundstorm banged up my vestibular and cochlear nerves, then rattled all three ossicles (hammer, anvil and stirrup) before ripping down my eustachian tube and blasting straight into my cranium.
If you were standing next to me and I was screaming, banshee-like, at the top of my lungs and larynx, you would not have heard a peep and might even have wondered whether I was some sort of deranged mime.
I could, however, hear my own thoughts … and they went something like this: @$#%*&%@#!!
As mentioned, I’ve become accustomed to lots of motorcycle noise, but it seemed like these guys were gunning for the record for wrecked conversations with their mortar fire mushroom cloud jackhammers.
On the bright side, the passing tremors only registered like a 5.2 on the Richter scale.
That said: Hands down best sound in town? The clopping hooves of the horse-drawn carriage.
So what’s the moral of this story? Because it is to be continued, I cannot say for sure.
But perhaps it is something like this: If, like me, you are endlessly fascinated by humanity, neither getting called a (bleep) nor having your brain bombarded by revving, snorting hogs can ruin the breezy reverie of people watching in Market Square.
— John Breneman
(Twitter: @MrBreneman)