Broad and High

Almost every day, for the past four years, I have passed through the same intersection of Broad and High streets, in the center of Downtown, Columbus. I drive east at rush hour on my way to class, and I drive west in the double digits of night on my way home. I run through the intersection in the early hours of the weekend mornings, when the hookers are still asleep and the addicts are too blinky and disoriented to be too scary. I have to tell you, if I could choose to sit anyplace for hours at a time, this would be the place.

My favorite thing about Broad and High is that it is the perfect vinaigrette of batshit crazy people, and totally normal people who are just trying to catch the bus. The fascinating part is trying to guess who is who. I do not say this lightly. I saw a seven foot tall man with a cane and a top hat, and I was like, “Got it: that’s a crazy one.” Wrong. He was shooting a commercial. On the other hand, I saw a perfectly dressed woman walking down the street at a business-like clip. “Ah, the working woman!” I thought! Until she pulled a cat out of her hair and handed it to a guy dressed like Elmo. You just never know on Broad and High. One day, I saw a nun protesting. On closer look, it wasn’t a nun. It was a dude. The outfit was from a costume shop. Nuns totally don’t wear Sound of Music wimples anymore.

But even if the guessing game of What Am I Going to See Today didn’t keep me intrigued, the opportunity for back story creation would. Here is a fact: I am a compulsive back story creator. I create a back story for literally everyone. Dean of my law school? Lived with the natives in Paraguay. Weird neighbor? Competitive Boggle player. Hateful coworker? Spends her Friday nights painting her nails and crying. See? I can make a back story for anyone.

The people on Broad and High provide rich imagery for a fascinating back story: they have scars, chef pants, bicycles, backpacks of every stripe, wigs, furry thigh-high boots, and accessories that range from Gucci sunglasses to a ship in a bottle. These aren’t just skeezy prostitutes and twitchy drug addicts; they are skeezy prostitutes with dreams, and twitchy drug addicts who are just looking for companionship and free doughnuts from Tim Hortons. Somehow, everyone mixes together: working folks, street people, valet parkers, city workers, police officers, politicians on their way to lunch, and confused schoolchildren whose bus dropped them off to soak up some Ohio history at the statehouse.

And I guess this is the bottom line: I love Broad and High because I identify with everyone who ends up there. I’m a harried office worker, a citizen, a consumer, a commuter, a student, a mother, an artist, a sightseer, and a pedestrian. In the most private recesses of my mind, I am as crazy, as addicted, as lost, as lonely, and as desperately in need of community as any person who finds himself on the corner that separates east, west, north and south in my city. And I know that I’ll never be able to see, appreciate, or understand every person who ends up on Broad and High, but I can see every bit of myself there.