I had a friend back in college. He was a foreign student and though he had mastered at least three languages, he had a special way of mis-forming certain words in English.

Always up for a party, and ever much in the flow, a common question he might pose would be “What’s the PLANIFICATION?”

I thought of him when my friend Nicki called on a recent Friday afternoon. “Do you have any plans for the weekend?” she asked.

I told her that I didn’t but I would email or text with some suggestions for the following night.

If it didn’t look like rain, I thought maybe we could go to Gospel Fest, a free showcase for gospel performances over two days.

The idea sounded good but by the time she came over after a Saturday full of errands and phone calls, we decided it wasn’t worth getting on a train for 45 minutes if we were only going to be able to catch a couple sets.

“It’s a nice evening,” she announced. “Why don’t we just take a walk? I’ve been wanting to check out the 606 for a while.”

The 606 refers to the first 3 digits of Chicago’s postal codes and was a public works project, formerly called the Bloomingdale Trail, for a long time.

The idea was to make an uninterrupted path for walking and cycling along Bloomingdale Avenue just above street level; to create green space on what was abandoned railroad tracks.

There are a dozen access points along the three-mile path.

Stairways and ramps spiral up from street level to the cement and Trex® edged (cushioned) trail. A yellow dividing line, like you’d see in the center of a rural highway, bisects the trail marking eastbound and westbound traffic. But you are pretty much free to find you own lane and pace.

It connects several neighborhoods. As one goes west, you travel from a gentrified neighborhood of hot restaurants and old brownstones that have been renovated to blocks of ramshackle warehouses and alleys where boom boxes, tuned into WOJO or some other Latino music station announce their presence.

It was close to 8:00 in the evening – dusk. And people were out!

Life was happening all around us.

Bikers, joggers, walkers, families, lovers, gaggles of teenage gal pals wearing the strappiest of strappy sandals sporting colorful toenail polish, tattoo marked twenty-somethings in shorts and tanks alongside of logo leisurewear decked out Steppenwolf theatre subscribing urbanites and happy pets and their people – everyone was out!

There was room for everyone. The path was designed to accommodate different purposes. It was made of different surfaces, lined with trees, and dotted with benches and rest areas. Signs announced plans for special performance spaces to go up in some areas.

After walking for some time, we decided to take a break and sit on the benches overlooking Humboldt Park.

There was a festival below. If we sat on the north side of the path, we’d hear the sounds of a DJ spinning rap. On the south side of the path, the sounds of a hot salsa band could be heard.

We decided to sit on the south side. The band featured a smooth throated, balding man whose voice resonated with playfulness or passion depending on the lyrics. A couple horns, a sax, and several percussionists filled out the group. There must have been about 10 musicians.

A woman from a nearby seat spontaneously rose and started to give kids a salsa dance lesson. None of the youngsters held back. All gleefully, and with natural rhythm, shook their booties.

We decided we had to get down to ground level to see the band. We took the ramp down and saw that the festival itself was blocked off to our entry by a large white metal barricade that ran in an oval from just behind north and south stages.

They must be collecting some sort of suggested donation somewhere, we considered.

A open-shirted Mexican man, resting with his bicycle-powered paleteria (ice cream & popsickle cart) saw us in our quandary and moved a section of barricade so we could sneak in and approach the stage and listen to the music.

We joked about it being the first time a Mexican helped middle-aged gringos cross the border into their territory.

After dancing for a while and watching kids of all ethnicities play duck-duck-goose (no words to explain the game is required), we decided to get back on the path.

Now almost dark, we stumbled on a parade preparing to travel the trail. We forgot, but the day was being celebrated as the one-year anniversary of the 606 opening.

Small children carried wands of tiny white lights. Some children wore funny, tall-tiered hats like they were balancing wedding cakes on their heads.

And a half dozen, or so, bicycles were rigged up with lit white screened boxes around their mechanical parts. They were finished off with horns to look like bulls.

The parade was an accidental spectacle, but the small sights and feeling with the flow of life, being able to get on and off the path, made this Saturday night SPECIAL.

Running (or walking would be a better description) with the bulls along the 606 is no small thing.