In a well populated city where every established business contains some form of advertising alerting passersby of their presence. Although many businesses are closed due to the pandemic, the blight remains.
BERNIE
Seems like every other retail establishment along Main Street is closed.WINSLOW There's definitely nowhere to wet one's whistle that's for sure.BERNIE I'm astonished at the hypocrisy over vandalism, graffiti, homelessness which nothing is done about, yet one can compare the graffiti to all the wordage displayed on property grounds of retail businesses and fast food joints announcing bargains, promotions, etcetera.WINSLOW I'm just completely blown over at how the government successfully convince the people of an entire country to re-open their businesses without watering holes to retreat to for unwinding.BERNIE Yeah, makes you feel a little like a slave, doesn't it.~
As these two acquaintances continue down the street seemingly window shopping but with an attitude, WINSLOW reaches for a cigarette case where he keeps his pre-rolled doobies. He lights one up, offering a hit to his friend who declines.
BERNIE CONT'D No thanks. I'll be your designated spotter, coherent to a fault and ready to confront the law if one of the idiot hose headed, non-compliant taint uniform bearers has anything to say about our right to smoke.WINSLOW Toke.BERNIE Yeah. Our right to toke.
High above, a ghetto bird seemingly surveys the area and BERNIE lets no suspicion escape his attention.
BERNIE CONT'D Ghetto bird at ten o'clock.
Winslow conservatively holds his joint hidden to the side, taking a toke when he gauges the all clear from view from the helicopter.
WINSLOW You know those drone gismos people use to spy and take aerial pictures from the sky? How soon before law enforcement starts to utilize that stuff against citizens you think?BERNIE Soon. For sure, you know that off-duty officers are playing with them on their free time; percolating ideas for ways they can use them against us.WINSLOW Yeah. When they gonna get defunded? It's always such a downer when you see a "man in blue" around these days.BERNIE Man, when I see a cop, even if it's just a patrol car whizzing by, here and gone within a few seconds, I'm gonna have my camera phone pointed at them.WINSLOW Yeah? Wow. Why, though?BERNIE I dunno. Just seems like I might win the lotto if I capture them doing something illegal and sell the footage to the media. But I found this cool app that takes low resolution, pixelated pictures like the pictures in newspapers that comprise a bunch of dotted stippling from the mesh printing technique they use.WINSLOW Media buys high resolution pix though.BERNIE Yeah, I know. I just take the pictures for my blog. I don't even use the ones with cops in them, but since I always have my camera ready (in public), I figure: might as well take pictures of other stuff.WINSLOW Oh. Cool. You mean like artsy fartsy stuff.BERNIE Yeah, just eye candy to kill the monotony of all the wordage I use when I update my blog. I like to make my blog entries look like they were published in a newspaper; so, sometimes I draw cartoons and scan them in with my stories. Sometimes these irrelevant pixelated black and white thumbnail photos.WINSLOW What's the app called?BERNIE BitCam. I'm trying a bunch of them out. I can't find the BitCam equivalent for Android. BitCam works on iOS. But there's a lot of other apps for the same kind of shooting on Android. My main thing is that the app take low-res shots to conserve memory. I don't like weeding out old photos when my memory gets full.