David and Adele would take their dog, Bandit, on his daily walks at the Alamo Square Park in San Francisco. On the east side of the park stood the row of iconic San Francisco Victorian homes known as “The Painted Ladies.”
“Wouldn’t you love to live in one of those Painted Ladies?” Adele asked David one beautiful spring morning.
“No way,” David said. “We’d have no privacy at all. People would be standing in the park across the street snapping photos of our home. And I heard that the people who live there are constantly having to deal with tourists knocking at their doors and wanting to have a tour of their homes.”
“Still,” Adele said, “These homes are beautiful, they are in a great location, with the park across the street and stunning, panoramic views of the city from the rear. How could you not want to live in one of them?”
“It’s an unrealistic and impractical fantasy of yours that we can’t come close to being able to afford,” David said. “Now let’s head home and get some breakfast. Bandit and I are starved.”
As David and Adele were sitting at their small kitchen table eating breakfast, David said, “Isn’t this interesting?”
“Isn’t what interesting?” Adele asked her husband.
David held up that day’s edition of the San Francisco Chronicle. The headline read:
Iconic Painted Ladies to be Razed to Make Room for Luxury Hi-Rise Condos
Written for Roger Shipp’s Flash Fiction for the Purposeful Practitioner. Photo credit: MorgueFile March2020 file000508086684.