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These Roses Are Crack Pipes
These roses are crack pipes. They’re sold at corner stores throughout the country, in neighborhoods where they’re needed. It’s illegal to sell drug paraphernalia, but it’s completely legal to sell these roses, and encase them in glass-tube packaging. They’re right by the register, otherwise they would be stolen constantly.
If you don’t smoke crack, you see a rose. Chances are, you don’t even see the rose. It looks just like more liquor store detritus, more useless impulse crap you don’t need. Or maybe it’s next to the items you lose easily, like cigarette lighters.
Look closely at the lighters. They often sell one behind the counter that works like a torch. Have you ever noticed that? If you smoke crack, you do. Also behind the counter is the tin foil and the steel wool. Again, if you smoke crack you know why.
This is the real world of parallel universes. There are multiple realities in the same physical space. You probably just see one of them, unless you’ve lived in more than one of them. You see the reality you need.
In San Francisco, beginning with the first dot com wave, people of different realities were forced upon each other’s spaces. The techies and the junkies lived in the same streets and buildings, used the same services, and ate from the same restaurants.
