Downtown, Off Duty

At the time, I lived at Miro in downtown San Jose. One afternoon in June, I took my camera downstairs and went for a walk.

It hardly counted as going out: one step past the lobby door, and I was already downtown.

Afternoon light at home before the walk

A person walking along a quiet downtown sidewalk

Crossing the street in the late afternoon

Downtown is supposed to be the loudest part of a city; San Jose’s rarely raises its voice. In the afternoon there were more gaps than crowds, and the city kept its scale while losing its urgency.

Tree shadows moving across a campus wall

By late afternoon, downtown seemed to have clocked out before everyone else. Nothing had actually closed, and nothing was happening either. All of which worked in my favor: I stopped once for a wall, once for a window, once more for a small piece of sun, and never once worried that the city’s real evening was going on somewhere else.

A chair and its shadow in the late light

SJSU was right next door, so I drifted in, no need to turn the walk into an occasion. A campus is good for going nowhere: every path leads somewhere, but you do not have to follow it all the way.

Brick, shadow, and a patterned concrete screen

Two people sat on the lawn, looking like they properly belonged here. The June evening was feeling generous, and dealt the last of the sun to a pair of windows.

Two people sitting in the grass at SJSU

Two windows holding the last of the sun

An empty street photographs like loneliness; walking in it was nothing of the sort. The place was just unclaimed for the moment: the sun had warmed the walls, and every bench was free, take your pick.

A bench beneath a palm tree