I headed downtown last night for Timmy's show. It was dead, dead, dead. A ghost town even, I played this in my head as I walked from car to bar. Granted Monday isn't generally a hopping evening, but it was a particularly desolate and sad.
I have mixed feelings the "revitalization" of downtown. Sure it had become a bit of a pit, but they turned a bar into a library for goodness sake. (Someone really ought to pitch that as a Parks & Recreation bit.) When I go into the bathrooms there I can't help but think how much piss and vomit I have seen in them. And I once saw a guy get his face busted open where the children's section is now. And the old Renegade Regency (wtf is the Renegade? I think it used to be a strip club... here I am trying to be all old sköl Springtown and I eff it up. Nice one, whit, real nice) is a adult daycare center now. Some elderly lady is doing her silver sneaker exercises in the same place I got felt up for the first time!* (Keeping it classy!)
And you know, when downtown was a cesspool of crusty clubs and stinky bars I don't remember hearing about large throngs of drunks and innocents getting beat down by the police. Actually, I don't really remember seeing police down there much at all.
Sure, it is probably good for the economy to have gelato shops and cupcake shops and coffee shops. And definitely, there are way more nice places to eat on my side of town now. But when I read comments in the paper about downtown, I see that a lot of people still consider it dirty and full of drunks and hoodlums. Which is weird, because now when I go downtown it seems like it is full of yuppies and hipsters. And drunks. Still loads of drunks.
Only slightly relevant, I re-watched Little Shop of Horrors recently. Still great:
*edit: I just remembered, the first place I was felt up was actually my church basement. Ahem.
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