Ronnie

San Francisco, California

"Where are you headed?" Ronnie asked me, after making room next to him on the train. 

"Vancouver," I said. "You?"

"Home. Denver. My girlfriend lives here, though." 

We chat about his career as a DJ, opening for huge bands and playing sweet-16s with just as much gusto (though never, ever will he lower himself to playing the Electric Slide). On the side, he teaches snowboarding lessons and films people sky-diving — as in, they jump out of the plane, and he follows with a camera strapped to his head.

"I feel concerned," he told me. "If humans are trying to make ourselves extinct, we couldn't be doing a better job of it." 

Ronnie was less worried about America as a whole than the planet as a whole. The killing off of what lies in our oceans, the excessive waste, the "YOLO" culture that tells us not to give a shit about what we're doing and how.  

We part ways abruptly, as seems to be the case for airport transit meetings. 

"I'll watch that documentary," is the last thing he says to me.