ArchivedLogs:Kids These Days

Kids These Days
Dramatis Personae Jackson, Jim, Samuel
In Absentia	2012-12-16 YouPunkKids and your newfangled technologies.
Location <NYC> Tompkins Square Park - East Village
Small but popular, this tree-lined park is a perfect centerpiece to the eclectic neighborhood it resides in. Home to a number of playgrounds and courts from handball to basketball, it also houses a dog park and chess tables, providing excellent space for people watching -- especially during its frequent and often eccentric festivals, from Wigstock to its yearly Allen Ginsberg tribute Howl festival. It has been rainy, but by the time the sun is setting over the city on Sunday night the rain has dropped off. The ground is still damp-wet but the temperature is mild, a faint breeze occasionally dislodging water droplets from the mostly-bare branches of the trees in the park. In the center of the park a group has set up tables, hot food and hot coffee and a milling crowd of homeless or just hungry people finishing up their meals. From the tables hang a banner -- Food Not Bombs, it says, with a stenciled logo of a raised fist clutching a carrot -- and manning the tables are a small cluster of people, many pierced, most tattooed, mostly young. The meal seems to be, perhaps, winding down; at least, though there are many still eating there is nobody lined up to obtain /more/ food, and the servers are largely chatting, amongst themselves or with their clientele. One of the people manning the table is doing neither, instead leaning against it, bright purple hair spilled down over the sunglasses he wears even in the dimming light. His attention is on neither food nor people but a sketchpad held against one arm. Perhaps his attention is /tangentially/ on people, really; the pencil sketch he is working on seems to be the nearby basketball court, with a pair of youths mid-game. At present Sam's playing with his latest gadget, his hand running over a device that looks like some kind of tablet. He looks vaguely annoyed. "No, I'm looking at it right now. It's far from perfect, but it'll do until we can gut the system and totally rewrite it... Which I'll do tomorrow." He shakes his head slowly as he moves through the crowds. "But for now you're good enough." His English accent's strong as he works. His attention never leaving his tablet as he weaves his way around any obstacles he might encounter in search of a bench upon which to sit upon. There's a casual lean men of a certain middleage can perfect, and Jim could give lessons, a hip and elbow fetched up against the mossy trunk of a tree. Twirling a toothpick from the corner of his mouth, he wears a brown corduroy jacket and jeans, with feet inexplicably bare to toes worked into the mud; kicked off beside him are leather shoes that might still classify as formal though they could stand a polish. A distracted twist in the skin beside his nose helps him wink shut one eye to better view through the lens of his Nikon 35mm. Clik. The purple haired young man set against the iron-gray sky. Clik. Another young man wandering amongst a duo o disheveled and eclectically dressed bag women sharing a coffee over a shopping cart that has long since gone astray from the Target it's labeled for. One side of his mouth is quirked. Perhaps it is the talking that draws Jackson's attention up from his sketchpad, perhaps the vague sense of Being Watched that a camera brings; at any rate he /does/ look up, mirrored sunglasses tipping away from the page of the sketchpad and across the park. The sunglasses make it hard to tell quite /where/ his gaze is focused -- his face is turned towards Samuel, for a moment, but then turned away towards the camera. Above the glasses, his pierced eyebrows pull down into a frown. He starts to move away from the table -- towards Jim, most likely, although his path nearly bumps into Sam's en route, saved from a collision only by a quick last-minute adjustment. "Sorry, sir," is reflexive and immediate as Jackson sidesteps, his molasses-thick Southern drawl soft and polite, though his face is still turned away towards the man with the camera. Looking up from his tablet as he side steps Jackson, Samuel offers the man a grin. "No, it was my fault. I should stop playing with my toys and look where I'm going." With that he sighs, slipping the tablet into his pocket. "I keep getting told I work too hard." He shrugs a shoulder. "I find it difficult to stop however." He catches the avoidance to look a certain way, glancing towards the camera before giving Jackson a worried frown. "Is everything ok?" When Jackson initiates his approach, Jim watches it for a moment in cyclopian fashion through his camera lens, his mouth beneath chewing slowly on toothpick wood. It's not until the two younger men cross paths that he lowers his camera idly, one eye squinted against a wind gust, and tucks it into an inner pocket. He twitches a glance between the two and then begins to approach at an idle city-speed meander, exhaling wearily through his nose, reaching behind him beneath his coat for something in his back pocket. "Are they nice toys?" Jackson is briefly distracted by this question, returning Samuel's grin reflexively with a warm upward curl of his pierced lips. "Ain't bad, staying busy. What's it y'do that eats up your time so much?" He glances back towards the table he's abandoned, but it is still devoid of food-seekers, though some who have already eaten are trickling back to return their dishes to a pair of crates under the tables. Returning his gaze outward, he hitches up a shoulder in a quick shrug. "Could be, p'raps. Just get curious when -- erm. When people are getting curious," he finishes awkwardly. He steps closer to Jim as Jim meanders nearer, bobbing his head in a quick nod. "Evenin', sir," he calls, light and easy. "D'you have some business?" He gestures between the table and the pocket that the camera was tucked into. Shrugging a shoulder Sam laughs. "They are, at least they will be once I'm finished with them." He sighs quietly. "I get told I'm too obsessed with my toys for my own good sometimes." He offers a hand to the man. "Samuel Griffith." He does however look over to the now approaching indvidual. "D'you have a light?" Jim shoots back at Jackson, abrupt in manner but approximately equal in tone. He's pulled out a box of cigarettes - cheap, Marlboro red, dogeared at the corners - and pulls one out with his teeth. He eyeballs Samuel right back, a frank catalogue that rather overtly fixes on the younger man's tablet, "So what kind of a toy is that one going to be." "Y-no, sir, sorry," Jackson starts to answer reflexively, but then apparently changes his response near immediately. "Jax," is the introduction he gives Sam, with a smile and a quick shake of his (four-fingered, only a scarred stump where the pinky should be) hand, firm and brief and almost feverishly warm to the touch. "Everyone's got their things, I guess, sir." His smile is still warm, though it dims a bit more thoughtful as he turns back to Jim. "Sorry, sir, I just noticed you were takin' pictures. Was that for --" His brows draw down into a frown, quick and brief. "-- What /was/ that for?" Shrugging Sam grins as he looks at the pad now in his pocekt. "It's a next generation tablet. Mostly I'm hoping it will be able to run applications that are far ahead of the current models. In truth I'm hoping to blow the iPad out of the water, but in truth it's likely to be a competitive next generation model." He doesn't seem inclined to worry about the picture taking quite so much. "For?" Jim leans his head forward, his upper lip pulling up in a grimace of something vaguely disbelieving, cigarette hanging off his bottom lip. "Lot of nothing," he jerks his chin towards the tables - and what a lot of chin it is he has to jerk, "Just saw a good shot. All the color --. You take it when you see one. A group all out in getups like yours, doing..." he is digging into an inner pocket, then another, from which he extracts a box of matches, which he shakes to hear the rattle of a single soldier left within. He shakes it in the direction /of/ the table, "All this. Maybe youpunkkids," all one word, "do this everyday but it's a funny sight, you gotta --" he strikes the match off on a box, pulls the flame into his cigarette's end and then shakes it out dismissively. "Y'know what? Forget it. What's a tablet do?" He addresses this aside, to Samuel, speaking /around/ an exhale of smoke that comes through nose and mouth in one. One side of Jackson's mouth pulls up in a smile, though it's a little more reserved and a little less warm than his previous. His fingers curl around his sketchpad, holding it close against his (brightly coloured!) sweatshirt. "Yeah, okay, colour I can get behind," he says, a trace of amusement in his thick drawl. "We don't do this everyday, sir. Three times a week in this part'a town. Twice up in Harlem. -- You'll have preeeetty stiff competition," he adds, squinting towards Samuel's pocket. "I mean, there's great tablets an' there's great tablets but t'ain't like anything's even come /close/ to /touching/ the iPad." Samuel seems vaguely lost at Jim's question. It's as though someone asked him what colour is the sky. He doesn't answer immediately apparently needing to give the matter some thought. "It's a type of computer, one small enough to be held by hand." Frowning Sam looks at Jim. "You've never heard of the iPad?" He shakes his head with a smile to Jackson. "I've never bothered making tablets before. The hardware's matchable, it's the software people seem to struggle to match. That's where I plan to outpace them, I'm a better programmer than the people at Apple." He shakes his head slowly. "Still, we'll have to wait and see, people like the name on their products. Griffith electronics isn't a name on the street." With a thumb and forefinger lightly closed around cigarette, Jim looks from Jax's missing finger, to his reserved smile, to his sketch pad, to Samuel's tablet all with the same professional mark-file-preserve thoughtfulness and then shakes his head, exhaling a dry semi-not-quite laugh through his nose, "Heard of them. Not really my bag. Three times a week, huh?" It's formulated more hypothetical than in pursuit of answer, rubbing a hand against the side of his face and looking at the tables a final time. "Guess there's worse things to be doing with your time. Good luck with that." He waves with cigarette held between middle and index finger, only offhand remarking with a gesture of same hand at Jax, "See me not giving you a hardtime asking what all that is, huh?" Twitch-smile, that is ultimately tired. THen he's turning away, to amble towards his shoes. With cigarette clamped in his lips, one hand in a pocket, his other dangling empty footware off hooked fingertips, he walks off to another side of the park where some benches have his name on them. Bare feet leave muddy footprints as he goes. Jackson tips his head downwards, purple hair flopping over his forehead as he watches Jim's muddy footprints. His head shakes, briefly, and he hooks a quick-bright smile to Sam. "Well, you're confident enough for it, at least," he says, words chased by a quick note of laughter. His nose crinkles as he looks back towards his tables, the last of the diners returning their dishes to their crates. "Oh, shoot. Think s'about time for cleanup." The smile he gives Sam is easy and warm, and he lifts a hand to his forehead, the quick-touched gesture he makes reminiscent of tipping a hat to the other man, though he doesn't wear one. "Good luck, sir! Griffith electronics. I'll be sure t'check it out if I see them hit shelves." And then the young man is jogging, sketchpad tucked beneath his arm, back towards the food (or what is left of it), greeted with an amiable punch on the arm by one of his compatriots as he sets his sketchbook down to start helping put their station away instead.