A Sunny Sunday...

It's been rainy and drizzly and grey and dreary for the last few days, and until we get that brilliant sunshine that's predicted for later this week (I'll believe it when I see it--the LaBameter has been pointing to rain for nearly a week), I thought I'd pull myself up by my bootstraps, turn that frown upside down, and destroy a coupla other clichés by posting something I wrote in early October, about a perfectly sunny Sunday.

It's 5pm on Sunday and after wandering around for ages to grab me a copy of the International Herald Tribune, I walked a bit through El Rastro (the Sunday flea market near my house), grabbing a couple of tubos (tall, skinny beers) and sharing a table with two older Norwegian men, I now find myself at La Latina metro, in an “occupied” space: El Campo de Cebada. Sort of like a squat, but nobody (to my knowledge) lives here. It makes me think a bit of McCarren park in Brooklyn--it was something, once, but now it's just a lot of cement and graffiti.


Anyway, a group of individuals have "taken over" this unused space and every Sunday, starting today and continuing until they either get shut down or stop caring, they have impromptu concerts. So I'm sitting here amongst about 50 other people and about three times as many chairs, drinking my 1.50 euro beer from the "bar" while my 5.50 worth of newspapers (IHT + El País) flutter in the breeze next to me, listening to various artists play songs based solely on guitar, voice, good intentions, and good humor.


There are young families on the side, letting their kids run around; older couples sitting further back but joining in with every song they know, and then a huge range of people in their 20s and 30s, myself included.

I'm pretty sure this is what Sundays are all about.