Rant: East Side till I die.

The East end of Richmond is the land of my teenage years. My parents moved out there so I could attend county schools when I arrived here from Maryland. Evidently the county schools were "better" but I've never been able to tell. My experiences there taught me that people are cruel but I think that's more of an age thing than a location. Varina high school was at the intersection of Wannabe Lane and Misinformed Drive. We were close enough to the city that half the white kids wanted to be gangsters and near enough to true country that The Way of the Redneck was strong and true. It created an interesting hybrid, the jacked up pickup truck covered in rebel flags blasting the emergent sounds of the G-Funk West Coast rap scene. Big Johnson t-shirts with baggy pants. I was always mystified by the racist rap listeners, it seemed they would implode with paradox at any given time. I think all teenagers wear their uniforms with pride, I certainly did. Hot topic before Hot Topic existed. My first wallet chain I bought at Kroger, a dog chain attacked with pliers adorned my one pair of Jincos that I treasured above all else.
So here I grow up in this cultural crossroads, one half country, one half ghetto, confused as any young man and assaulted on all sides by fictional racial tensions. They were a fiction, it required a constant stream of inventions by the believers in it to keep the rest of us even paying attention. Ours is a generation where some of us were raised by civil rights activists, some by flat out dogmatic racists and the vast majority by parents who were ambivalent towards the whole issue. The East End is steeped in it all, the old and the new. It's not really a place to me any more, it seems like a metaphor for so much of what's going wrong in our little slice of the human experience. Really, you can see the same cancers in any neighborhood that you do a MRI on, it's just that the East End is one I've seen a lot of.
There was a phone circuit manufacturing plant on Laburnum Avenue when I was living out there in the mid-90's that has been torn down in favor of a new shopping mall. People in the local media laud it as a "step forward" for an area that has seen some really hard economic times. All I can think of is the people I went to high school with that never graduated due to children, their parents or their own drug problems and all the other myriad issues that arise in modern teenage life. When that plant was open, their entry level positions paid anywhere from 9 to 10 dollars an hour and required little more than a GED and the ability to show up sober and on time. From there workers could get training in one of the technical or supervisory fields the plant required and get their wages up to the 12-15 dollar range. Not excessively high, but something you can survive on, maybe even thrive if you plan and save. The work was boring, but not demeaning.
So now we're going to replace that with a fucking shopping mall? That'll really stimulate the local economy, more low paying go nowhere fucking retail and service jobs. People who make minimum wage aren't going to establish roots in the community because they can't afford to buy the housing built during the manufacturing era. They might be able to rent but in all probability they'll have to live a few miles away and take the bus to work. Especially as he local housing revalues higher due to the availability of nearby shopping and services. It occurs to me that this is not a new problem, urban planners have been watching this trend for years. But the Powers That Be (being capital) have no need for solid community. Solid communities lead to things like demands for better education, labor unions and people who expect something approaching a quality of life.

So we end up with a golden cap on an infected tooth, new construction next to abandoned farm houses. It's like refacing a building who's foundation fell apart years ago and expecting that to fix the problem. It pains me to see this pathos repeated all over our country and the only way we're going to stop it is to start buying back our land from the investment class and building community in only way that is sustainable, from the roots up.

The Suburbs

I've never really liked the suburbs. This feeling has only gotten worse since I started working out there. I went to the shiny new Starbucks after work today and I realized something about the place. All of the Starbucks here in the city are very alive, full of interesting people pursuing there passions and talking. I've met some damn fine folks at Starbucks (including my roommate!) either working at or hanging out at Starbucks. The suburban ones feel so dead. Every customer hunched into their shells, seeking the solace of a latte held alone. It's like wandering into a hermitage unannounced, blaring your boombox at top volume. Every glance, measured. Every greeting, brief. I often wonder at the chicken and the egg nature of this crowded suburban solitude. Is it that the suburbs attract people who want to be left alone, or does it change the people there into these shades? It's an overcrowded ghost town and it makes me feel so gray so alone. I can generally avoid leaving the city all weekend. I make plans to go outside like a military commander. I have a strategic overview of what needs doing in the wastelands, a tactical map of my terrain and above all, my armor. What happened out there? Was it a slow and painful death? Was this nightmare soulscape once teeming with life and hope, to be drained as a swamp is for another shopping center?
I like to look back at the facts about suburban development to give me some perspective. The modern American suburb is a direct result of several key corporations involved with automobiles and fuel production selling these old farm lands as an escape from city strife and overcrowding. It's so depressing. So much of our social order and landscape has been determined for us by people with only profit in mind. And short term profit at that. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for profit being made. But at what cost to our national identity? I'd like to think that at one time our people were innovative workers, citizen soldiers and thinkers unafraid to speak their minds. Ah, it is but an illusion I learned as a child. The more I look and learn, the more this becomes apparent. I swallowed that red pill lock stock and barrel all the way through middle school and I still have a hard time shaking the idea that this is a great nation. It sounds so damn good on paper too. A secular, pluralistic representative democracy ruled by law. What we see is certainly not what we get. I see parts of it here in the city, people helping each other, being tolerant of others beliefs and participating in the governance of our home.
It gives me joy and hope that my childish dreams may yet see reality in one form or another. But every time I get into the wastes it fades from my vision and the harsh tungsten lights conceals all else. The scurrying, honking noisy mess full of hyper-caffeinated shoppers tries to herd me in. I can understand how people out there get eaten by this crap. Where did it all start? Who was the first person to start this vicious game of eat and be eaten? I do not know the answers, but the questions are getting clearer and that is all I can ask.