Stroll Mile

Lyrics

[Intro]
Ten AM.
The barricades go up.
The Sunday after Labor Day.
Solano Avenue holds its breath.
Just for a second.
Then the flood begins.

[Verse 1]
A river of shoulders and strollers and dogs on leashes.
A quarter million people trying to walk one mile.
The sound of three different bands at once.
A high school marimba clashing with a blues guitar solo.
A politician on a portable stage waves to no one in particular.
The bright plastic colors of a jump house.
The glint of sun on handmade pottery.
Everyone is smiling, or trying to.
Everyone is shouting over the noise.

[Chorus]
This is the Stroll Mile.
The sensory crush.
The sweet and the savory smoke.
The press of the city breathing all at once.
One day a year.
This is the Stroll Mile.
You don't walk it, you're carried.
Swept along in the current.
Lost in the beautiful, terrible noise.

[Verse 2]
The air is thick enough to taste.
Onions sizzling on a flat-top for gyros.
The sweet, sticky burn of the kettle corn machine.
A man selling tie-dye spins a sign.
A woman hands you a flyer about saving something.
Or protesting something.
Your fingers are sticky from a lemonade you bought a block ago.
You can’t tell where one conversation ends and another begins.
It's all one long sentence.

[Bridge]
I think about September, 1974.
Dorothy Walker and the merchants.
Did they imagine this?
This roaring, joyful monster?
A way to get people back on the street.
Now the street belongs to them.
From the top of the hill to the Berkeley line.
For eight hours, it's the capital of everything.

[Outro]
The sun dips low behind the hills.
Six PM.
The tents come down.
A lone plastic fork on the asphalt.
The scent of popcorn lingers in the cooling air.
The echo of a drumbeat.
Tomorrow, it's just a street again.
Just Solano.
Until next year.