picture perplexing

An odd thing happened to me on the way home from work.

I was walking along on 8th St. at around 6:00 pm (so it was getting dark), and had just walked under the O St. overpass (as I do every day on the way home from work). It had been cold in the morning, so I was wearing my nice, full-length wool topcoat and my God scarf (that's another story), but at the time it wasn't all that chilly so I had the coat unbuttoned and the scarf loosely draped across my neck. The coat was held together a bit by the strap of my messenger bag, slung from my right shoulder diagonally across my body. So far, all this is rather mundane, but you can judge the relevance as you read on.

As I was walking down the sidewalk past Jack's Bar and Grill, I noticed a girl (late teens to mid-20s, it appeared) walking down the same sidewalk in the opposite direction, about half a block ahead of me. The girl reached into her purse, pulled out a digital camera, flipped it open, pointed it directly at me, and snapped a flash photo. She then calmly closed the camera, put it back in her purse, and continued on. I made eye contact as we passed on the sidewalk, but only got the sort of polite, terse little smile that people give to random people they make eye contact with on the sidewalk.

Now, I have no idea what this girl was doing. The only thing I can think is that there was either something going on directly behind me of which I was unaware, or that the situation, framed by overpass, perhaps some smoking exhaust, etc. was just a sort of generically photogenic scene. I don't know.

But it was a little surreal.