I am Juror 7. I am sitting in a criminal courtroom with 29 other prospective jurors. The judge is a man in his 50s, not humorless, but mostly businesslike at this stage of things. He explains that the cadence of his speech is a bit slow so the Mandarin Chinese translator can keep up.

The defendant is a 30ish Asian woman, slim, dressed in muted colors. The translator is for her, so she is, presumably, Chinese. She is accused of prostitution. Two undercover police officers will be testifying against her. Both attorneys are women. I am certain this is not a coincidence.

The judge asks each juror some basic info about marital status, occupation and jury experience. He asks our views on prostitution and if we have “any answers” to the questions on a sheet we were given outside the courtroom. (These are about impartiality and connections to law enforcement and lawyers.) I think his phrasing is odd. We all have answers to these questions; it’s just that for some of us the answers are all “no.” It’s the yeses he is concerned with, so I guess if the answer is “no” we don’t really have answers.

About half the jury pool has friends or relatives in law enforcement—both on the “law” and “order” sides of things. A few have had bad experiences with the police. Two have been victims of a crime. No one thinks this will adversely affect his ability to be fair and impartial in this case. Juror 5, however, insists that she thinks the police are always right, no matter what, because she is afraid of them. She says she never disputes her tickets because she knows she cannot win. The judge tries to discuss this point with her logically and fails.

The defense attorney appears to be in her 40s. She is wearing a brown, longish flared jacket unbuttoned over dark trousers and a white shirt. She has 10 minutes to question the jurors. She seemed almost timid during introductions, hard to hear—but not anymore. Now her style is rather professorial. I imagine this is what it’s like to be in law school. She speaks quickly and her sentences are a bit meandering and complicated. She starts by explaining an idea and then segues into a question. I have to pay close attention to figure out if my answer is yes or no. I feel badly for the people whose English is poor. She asks me a question, and I say, “Absolutely,” feeling lucky that I followed her Byzantine thought process. Her questioning seems random, but I’m sure it is as well-planned as it can be in the short time she had to prepare.

The prosecutor is younger. She had seemed very confident in her dark pantsuit, short jacket buttoned all the way, but now a few cracks are showing. She stands at the lectern with her notes, where the defender moved about during her turn. She even rests her head on her hand at one point. Her questioning goes very quickly. I do not think she used her whole 10 minutes. She tries to ask us if verbal testimony would be enough, or if we would require a tape recording for proof beyond a reasonable doubt. The judge cuts her off, saying she is asking the jury to make a judgment about evidence before we hear it. I feel a little bit sorry for her—but just a little. I wonder fleetingly if this is intentional, to garner sympathy from the jurors.

Jurors 9, 12, 19 and 30 all profess trouble with the English language. Most have been in the US close to 20 years. They say they cannot read. They have all taken a US citizenship exam—in English. They have trouble answering the judge’s questions. He is clearly trying to determine if they are using this to get out of jury service. Jurors 19 and 30 claim they cannot treat both sides in this case fairly. Nineteen cannot explain why, but talks in circles, similar to what I have heard my Russian and Armenian neighbors do. Thirty says it’s because she’s afraid she will not be able to follow the proceedings. After a sidebar consultation with the attorneys, the judge only dismisses Juror 9.

Her chair seems to be cursed—or blessed, depending on how you look at it. The next 4 jurors seated there are all dismissed.

Juror 2 has pink hair. She’s wearing Doc Martin 10-eye boots and a black leather jacket. She’s a dog walker and believes prostitution should be legal. She is dismissed by the prosecution—no surprise there.

Juror 3 is an actress. Nobody familiar. She sees prostitutes as victims. She doesn’t think the courtroom is the right place to help them. She is dismissed by the defense—I am shocked by this.

Juror 24 is a first year medical student. He is wearing very ripped jeans and drips attitude. But when he speaks I am impressed. He thinks prostitutes are often victims of sexual abuse or other childhood trauma. He is dismissed, too.

Juror 29 is an administrative judge. He is the only juror wearing a tie. I had to look up what an administrative judge is. According to thefreedictionary.com, he is “a professional hearing officer who works for the government to preside over hearings and appeals involving governmental agencies.” Oh. I was not around long enough to see if he was cut. He may be one of the few jurors left.

Juror 7 is a writer. She wears funky glasses and sips compulsively from a pink water bottle. She explains that while she believes that people should be free to do as they choose with their bodies and sexuality, prostitution holds so many opportunities for exploitation that she is not sure if legalizing it is a good idea. I am dismissed by the prosecution. I am disappointed but not surprised.

There is a consistent parade of jurors out of our courtroom. Within 15 minutes of being dismissed, I have my Certification of Jury Service and am heading for my car. I hear from Juror 24 that there are only a couple of us left. The judge is sending for more jurors. We wonder at the number of jurors who have been cut, but these musings don’t get very far. We get to the parking structure and part ways. I wonder if any of these people might have become a friend, if we had served together. I will never know.

I noticed a similar lack of ambition, or perceived lack, in the Hollywood adaptation of Nick Hornby‘s book High Fidelity. The movie changed the location from London to Chicago but didn’t much change the story, except for the ending. [Spoiler alert] At the end of the book, Rob finds happiness as a club DJ, the only thing he ever really loved doing – and, of course, gets the girl. In the movie, Rob becomes a record producer with a hit single – and, of course, gets the girl. It bothers me that the book’s ending was not seen as “happy” enough for the movie (This is completely my own interpretation of the change, BTW. It may not be why it was done at all.) And it isn’t just the difference between books and film. Even British films tend to be smaller, more personal, just ask Eddie (more profanity).

I find it interesting that in America, finding joy in your passion isn’t enough for a happy ending. You need fame and fortune, acknowledgment from the world at large. The Brits aren’t any less ambitious – they used to rule the known world, that’s pretty ambitious – they just have a more liberal definition of success. You don’t have to be rich, or rule the world, or the record industry, to be considered successful and happy. You just have to pursue your dream. Perhaps after the U.S. has conquered the world, we’ll be content with smaller successes, too. Oh, wait, we won’t be doing that – we elected the other guy.

But this does seem like an awful lot of pressure to put on schoolchildren. Since only the tiniest percentage of people achieve the sort of success seen in American movies, since our culture venerates a type of happy ending few can expect, since we clearly should not be satisfied with ordinary lives, we all are doomed to disappointment and a chronic sense of inadequacy. As a child, I was told I would grow up to do great things. What are these things, I wondered, and if I don’t do them, will I be a failure?

Kids today do have one outlet, one sure way to achieve real American success – reality television. You can be famous just by being foolish in front of millions of people. You may be one of the few who get rich, so toss your hat in ring and start behaving badly. If you happen to be rich already, you have a leg up on the rest of us. In just a few weeks you could become a recognizable face, a popular personality, a villain people love to hate. You could have the caché of Dr. No, Lady Diana or Michael Vick by next Tuesday.

This, it would seem, is where our rabid ambition has led us. There are moments when I am proud to be American, glad that the accident of my birth landed me here. President Obama’s election was one of those moments. Watching TMZ, was not.

According to the World Database of Happiness, we in the U.S. are currently ranked 20th in the world for average happiness level. We drop to 68 when they take into consideration the disparity in happiness levels among our population. I wonder if we’d be happier as a people if we could find a new way to define success.

So Day Seven was a Saturday – the last Saturday before Christmas, to be precise, and the URL was hopping. I raced up and down the stairs of hell a dozen times an hour, maybe more. Most people were very nice, and some were even patient. I tried on sneakers for a man shopping for his wife – assessing the arch support. We went with the black ones. I found snow boot stand-ins for a woman who had recently had surgery on her foot. It needed to be soft and unzip, unlace or unbuckle all the way down, so she could get her swollen foot safely inside. The answer? Mukluks! I don’t think I realized these were an actual brand of shoes until I started this gig.

For my much needed and well-deserved break, I made a bee-line for the mall Santa. Not to sit in his lap and rattle off my list – just to watch. He is one good looking Santa, even with the coccyx cushion. I don’t think the facial hair is real (I wasn’t close enough to tell), but it is very good. And he has the jolly twinkle down to a science.

Most impressive, perhaps, is his sincerity. He listens with earnest attention to each and every child. And some of those kids have a lot to say. One girl of about nine stood before him, weight shifted to her right, in serious discussion for nearly five minutes. Santa was rapt the entire time, focused and in character. There was not one ironic glance. No hint of levity. Santa is listening, and he cares. That is a skill.

I returned to the URL and to hell refreshed and restored. Ready to charge up and down the stairs for a few hours more….

It is not a pretty neighborhood. We walked down hobo alley – where there actually were men on the sidewalk playing dice for money (I thought that only happened in the movies!) – to get there. The Alexandria Hotel use to be a glittering home-away-from-home for the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Humphrey Bogart, Mae West, Rudolph Valentino, Clark Gable, Greta Garbo, Winston Churchill and several U.S. Presidents, including Taft, Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt. Now it is home to low-income residences made up of “Micro-Lofts®,” complete with community spaces and regular visits from social services. And The Gorbals.

To say that this is an unexpected location for a foodie paradise is a gross understatement.

The restaurant isn’t fancy. There is little to distract from the food – I’d describe it as Minimalist Rustic Industrial. Rough-hewn tables, exposed pipes and ductwork and an open kitchen with counter seating. The lunch menu is on a chalkboard over the tiny bar. If there is anything else on the walls, I didn’t notice. The only decoration I saw are the leaded glass windows that look out onto the lobby – I assume they are original to the building.

It was a bit surreal to see Ilan (Top Chef Season Two winner) bustling about in the kitchen. I went over to thank him for the beautiful meal, and he was gracious and warm. We talked about the food – he was curious to know what we thought of it. He really seems to be treating the restaurant as a laboratory, trying things out and modifying as he goes. It was the first day for the Sweet Potato Fritters, for example. They are absolutely delicious – crispy and caramelized on the outside, rich and creamy inside – and the unexpected addition of the sage leaves is the perfect foil for the sweetness. There was an issue with structural integrity, however. With no coating on the outside, they didn’t really hold together the way you’d expect something called a fritter would. Ilan is working on it, and in this workshop of a restaurant that seems just fine.

It’s a tiny operation. Well, maybe there’s a larger staff at dinner, but when we were there, there was Ilan, a sous chef and one server. Far from seeming neglected, the spare staff added to the homey sense of the place – almost like the chef is cooking for you in his home. I have great respect for a man who takes his prize money and spends it so carefully (the rent at the Alexandria must be cheap), and keeps the focus where it belongs – the food. I am enchanted by The Gorbals and its unassuming proprietor. I hope to go back soon to sample more of his outstanding food.

http://www.thegorbalsla.com/