Goodnight, Lawrence.

And hello, Lawrence nights.

It’s a different city out there with the sun tucked away.

“Way different,” said waitress Marvie Paez, who works overnights at a diner.

It takes all kinds to make a city run at night. People who keep us safe and those who make sure our water is running. There are people searching for a party or just a voice to stave off the loneliness.

With the help of a cabbie who knows Lawrence nights well, the Journal-World spent a night out on the town, talking to some of those who work and play in the city at dark.

Sights and sounds

Aaron Abbey’s world is often enveloped in darkness. It’s just after midnight at Midwest Transportation headquarters in North Lawrence, and a slow freight train blares its horn into the still night air.

For years, Abbey has been listening to the sights and sounds of the Lawrence night – a process that takes adjustment, a kind of departure from the structured working world.

“The difference between night and day is the entire society, the scene, everything,” he says from behind the wheel of his white Lincoln.

As he cruises across the Kansas River bridge toward downtown, Abbey relates some high points of his time collecting fares.

He remembers the chaos of one of his regulars, a stripper, digging through his car looking for drugs she thought she had lost. Or the story about the guy who walked out of his home with an AK-47 and a six-pack of beer.

But for Abbey, the night also lends itself to deep thinking, he says. Often, when the dispatch radio quiets, he has time to enjoy the silence and look at the stars.

It helps, he says, to know other late-night folks are out there watching out for the city.

“That’s really the backbone of the town,” he says. “These people that watch out for you, protect you.”

A friendly voice

The room inside the Douglas County Law Enforcement Center is well-lit. It’s quiet tonight, at least for the moment. Shifts have just changed; the bars haven’t let out yet.

But the job is rarely easy, supervisors say. The night shift means bar fights, domestic problems, people waking up to find their loved ones without a pulse.

The calls may be fewer, they say, but often more severe.

Dispatcher Lori Alexander just picked up the overnight shift here, although she’s been dispatching police and fire calls for years. She took the shift over the summer so she could spend time with her young children during the day.

Calls here are always from people in need, but at nights, she says, sometimes the need is simply conversation.

“It’s just a different level sometimes,” she says, “people that want to call and talk.”

The night shift also is the home of the noise complaint, typically from people trying to sleep while their neighbors party or play instruments.

But like many nighttime workers, she gets done with her shift and heads straight to bed, typically around 7 a.m. Then, she says, she has some noise complaints of her own.

“Yeah, OK,” she says, somewhat snidely. “Now you’ve got your lawn mower running, and I can’t sleep.”

Productive time

For daytime sleep, Clifford Reusch has heard every trick in the book.

Blinders. Ear plugs. Heck, he says, some guys sleep in their basements.

Here at the Clinton Water Treatment Plant, Reusch and his partner, Shane Dye, keep track of the city’s water while the rest of the city sleeps.

It’s been a strange day around here, he says while checking these seismograph-type dials that cover one concrete wall.

A big rain’s supposed to come through town, so he figures people must have skipped out on watering their lawns and gardens. Water towers and pumps have more H2O than they need, so, in a minute, the men are going to shut off some valves and, once again, keep the city’s water supply in order.

Keeping his own life in order working nights comes pretty easily for Reusch, he said. He gets off work, runs errands, hangs out with his family, attends his son’s sporting events and all the rest.

“It’s pretty nice,” he says. “You can get a lot of things done.”

But still, Reusch, like other night workers, gets stuck sleeping with the sun creeping through the windows.

It isn’t easy, he says. To be alert enough to handle all of the switches, valves and gauges of the treatment plant, the men here need their rest.

So what’s his method?

“You buy the dark shades for the bedroom,” he says.

Closing time

For Abbey, the peace of the night just ended. He got his first call, and now he’s wheeling through downtown ready to haul people home from the bars.

The call is from the Sandbar, 17 E. Eighth St., and when he pulls up, a guy named Adam and a friend – apparently an ex – hop in the back.

Adam’s been at the Sandbar for some time, coming there from Fatso’s up the street.

“We got a little tropical,” he says of the beach-themed bar. “I had a few margaritas and whatnot.”

He says he has a bar schedule he tries to abide by: on Tuesdays, Quinton’s Bar & Deli, 615 Mass., for the drink specials; on Fridays, he’s at The Wheel, 507 W. 14th St., by 5 p.m., then down to The Hawk, 1340 Ohio, for late-night fun.

“It varies for each night,” he says, his friend making fun of him nonstop.

Abbey drops them off, collects some cash, then heads back to the cab stand on the corner of Ninth and Massachusetts streets.

This is what he likes about Lawrence, Abbey says. He’s lived in other college towns, but even with all the young people, the towns closed by 10 p.m.

Here, the city rarely stops. From bar-hoppers to doughnut delivery guys to the police who circle the blocks keeping the peace, Abbey sees them all.

“With Lawrence, you can always find someone, somewhere,” he says.

‘Sidewalk Sale’

It’s a few minutes after 2 a.m., and bodies crowd the 10th Street sidewalk outside the Replay Lounge.

In the tinted glow of streetlights, as bartenders and door guys start their hours of rinsing glasses, mopping floors and counting money, a restless herd of young people plot how to spend their time until the sun peeks over the eastern horizon.

For these friends and acquaintances and complete strangers, it becomes a blurry search – for a place to go, someone to go home with.

This scene goes by several monikers, some crude, but all descriptive: “The Sidewalk Sale,” it’s called.

Random addresses float around conversations. A guy in a blue baseball cap and ripped jeans sticks his head into a circle of girls talking about the night.

“Seventeenth and Vermont,” he says. “I don’t know. It’s a thing, I think.”

The young women don’t seem to notice much.

Over here, a guy named Nick discusses the merits of a party at an abandoned church building just outside of town.

“I don’t do old churches,” Nick says. “You know, there’s always my own bed.”

But then, friends begin to seriously discuss the possibility, mainly by questioning whether they should bring their own beer or not.

Suddenly, Nick is asking for directions. The night finds a direction.

Passing the time

Marvie Paez wipes down tables in the white-hot light of Hayes Hamburger & Chili, 1410 Kasold Drive, an old-fashioned all-night diner tucked away in a strip mall in West Lawrence.

The 17-year-old Lawrence High School student spends her summer nights here, serving burgers and smothered hash browns to boozy college students.

“It gets pretty boring,” she says. “There’s nothing to do but clean.”

Now the diner is wholly quiet, with whatever remnants of the bar crowd tucked away in their beds. So Paez cleans, hops on a computer, tries to keep herself busy. Out here, it’s all about passing the time.

The mundane nights make the shift tedious, Paez says. Plus, when she heads home at 6 a.m., she’s still packed with energy that keeps her up until afternoon most days.

“It’s really hard,” she says, sitting at a table near a framed Elvis Presley print. “I get home, and I’m not tired. I have to do something else.”

So she watches movies, calls friends – does whatever she can to pass the time. But it isn’t so unusual for her, Paez says. She’s a night person.

“I stay up all night anyway,” she says.

Last fare

After stopping at the cab stand, Abbey picks up one last fare before he calls it a night. This time, he swings his Lincoln into the parking lot of Royal Crest Lanes, Ninth and Iowa streets, to pick up the woman who just closed down the bar.

Evan’s her name, she says. She works here and at the Slow Ride Roadhouse, a biker bar north of town. It’s an interesting job, closing the bowling alley bar, she says.

But the night can be rough sometimes. She works another job early in Kansas City and rarely has time for friends.

“I don’t get to go out very often,” she says as the cab pulls up to her apartment. “My social life is right here. I don’t have a social life.”

Deep thinking

For night people, Abbey says life is always a challenge. Going to the bank is tough; so is finding time for a love interest.

“You’re just trying to keep up with the rest of Lawrence,” he says. “You either have to wake up early or stay up late.”

But it has its advantages, too.

The night, Abbey says, is a time for people to find themselves, to do the kind of deep thinking the daylight can wash out.

Pulling back into the taxi shop, the car, like the night, winds down to a halt. In the distance a train echoes, this one with less whistle blowing, replaced with the metal hiss of its wheels on the tracks.