1001 Black Men–#196

I was driving through San Francisco’s financial district last week, taking a familiar shortcut to Lombard that allows me to bypass all the ugliness at the intersection of Market and Van Ness. It’s always interesting to watch the faces in this part of the city. Sometimes I can’t help but wonder if the ability to look neither present nor absent and neither happy nor particularly unhappy is a skill that the city’s financiers have cultivated deliberately. Is it part of the skillset required when one is dealing with the uncertainties of today’s financial markets? Is it something akin to a poker face at the card table? Whatever the source of this unique talent, the man in the drawing seemed to have mastered it. I had a chance to study his movements while I was stopped at an intersection, and I must say that I was quite impressed with his ability to stop at the appropriate traffic signal and then to cross when the signal changed in his favor, all while seeming to stare off into space at something far in the opposite direction. Today’s bankers may have may caused some major damage to the national economy, but they sure can cross the heck out of a street.

8-Rock

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