After I finally got out of work last night, I was standing on the TRAX platform at the Gallivan Plaza stop, the heart of what little activity there is on downtown Main Street following the end of the business day. I was waiting with a dozen or so fellow commuters and passing the time by watching pedestrians across the street. That particular block is a rich environment for people-watching; there are always a few homeless folks around, and usually a mob of scruffy teen and twentysomethings who seem to have nothing better to do than sit on the big planter boxes in front of Sam Weller’s and be obnoxious. You also see a lot of beautiful people along that stretch of sidewalk, thanks to a popular nearby club called Keys on Main, and the interactions between the clubgoers and the miscreants are often pretty entertaining.

The street show on this particular evening starred a young woman, a redhead dressed in the shortest miniskirt I’ve ever seen outside an Austin Powers movie. And if that wasn’t enough to grab the attention of any heterosexual male with a pulse, she was also wearing thigh-high, patent-leather, lace-up, platform-souled boots that made her legs look about 175 feet long. Think of Julia Roberts strutting down Rodeo Drive in that scene from Pretty Woman and you’ll get the idea.

As noteworthy as the woman herself may have been, though, what really made me smile was the reaction she was getting from, well, everybody. I guess she was killing time waiting for Keys to open or something, because she walked from the club down to the corner and back several times. And every time she did, the heads of every man on the block — including, I’m not too proud to admit, my own — very obviously turned to follow her.

It was like watching a slow-motion tennis match.