Listen to your city at 3 a.m.

Around here, the bars close up at 2 a.m. There are blue laws and whatnot keeping people from paying to get hammered, but nothing but noise laws keeping private parties from going on past that.

This time of night, I'm normally either at work or asleep.

But I'm neither, so I went out and listened to the city for a bit.

Nearby, the hum of electricity from a transformer.
A block away, some traffic.
A couple blocks away, some music, the bass beat of something just out of intelligible hearing range.

Nearby, traffic. A car goes by, the driver possibly wondering what a white boy is doing just standing on a street corner, not smoking, not drinking, not trying to cross the street.
A block away, a dog barks.
A couple blocks away, a police siren. Probably someone getting pulled for drunk driving, or speeding. Or both.

Nearby, conversation. A couple walks past me, murmuring things to one another.

It's almost the end of October. This kind of night, cool enough to need a jacket, warm enough not to want one... not many left this year.