Big City Life, Part 1: Our Back Alley

Since we only have one car, our mornings start with me driving Lorie to Paramount. This morning as we entered our caged parking area from the building, we noticed a big pile of paper trash scattered just outside the cage in the alley. Unusual, but unfortunately not TOO unusual. Must be trash day and lately the neighboring building always seems to have overflowing trashcans. Lorie slid open the big iron gate and I pulled the car out into the alley. As I'm waiting for her to close the gate and get in the car I see why that pile of trash was there: about 10 feet down the alley, there are two homeless guys with a packed shopping cart picking through our neighbors' 6 trashcans. And they're not just poking around in the top layers -- they're pulling everything out of the cans and dumping it all onto the pavement. As we drive past and exit the alley Lorie confirms what I only caught out of the corner of my eye: one of the guys was getting the last drops out of a discarded Jack Daniels bottle.