Watching

I went to see Thor: Love and Thunder yesterday. It's a serviceable movie, even if it's one that leans a bit too hard into its tropes, tired though said tropes are. The theater was in a new shopping center and apartment/condominium complex that's not very far from my home. Not being a movie person, however, I'd never even known it was there until the friend I saw the movie with suggested we go there.

While the entrance is on the ground floor, the actual auditoriums (auditoria?) are up a couple of long elevators; at the top of which there's something of a lounge area where one can look down onto the plaza below.

Standing there, watching the people pass through and/or use the area, I was reminded of how long it had been since I'd just gone people watching. Not to take pictures (even though I did snap the one above) but just to observe. And learn. People are fascinating in their diversity... even in the overwhelmingly White suburb that I live in, and there is always some little detail about humanity that can be gleaned simply from watching them for a while.

And so, I watched them. For about ten minutes, as I waited for my friend to arrive, I watched people and their interactions in the carefully constructed artificiality of the outdoor plaza. In full view, yet more or less completely out of sight. It was interesting, and relaxing, and a bit illuminating. I shall have to do it again, sometime.