Today, after work, about 7:30 p.m., I drove down S.W. Sixth Avenue.

That would be unremarkable except that it's the first time in 30 years I've been able to do that. I walk across Sixth every day. he building I work in is bounded on one side by Sixth. But for the last 30 years, it's been a transit mall. You could only travel a block or two before big white turn arrows directed you onto a street with a name and not a number.

I rememmber when the bus mall was being built. I was pregnant with Lyza, so it was 1977. I walked carefully around the detritus of construction, picking my way past piles of bricks and broken asphalt. On Labor Day weekend, at the first ArtQuake, held to celebrate the marvelous new mall that was a-building, I had my first bite ever of sweet potato pie.

Now, driving down Sixth, I have a delicious sense of priviledge and entitlement. The lanes are clear, except where crews are working on replacing sewer pipes. The old "bus only" markings have been obscured. Everything is intensely familiar from all the times I've walked or taken the bus past these blocks. But it's strange and different, too. I feel like I don't belong at the same time I am exulting at rediscovering my city.