Saturday, July 22
I grew up in the suburbs and lived there my entire life, so the experience of the city both good and bad is new to me in my old age.
Walking is underrated, which is easy for me to say since I am now doing it for leisure and not for work or because of necessity. I USED to do it for work, and teaching (if done correctly) also requires a lot of movement, but in my current summer state this is an act done only for my perceived well being. I just like movement I guess. I never used to! I could sit in front of a screen for extended amounts of time with the best of 'em. Now for some reason I have enough energy to move. I think its a combination of the Adderall I'm taking as well as anxiety that can only be released through physical movement. Restless leg syndrome but an entire corporeal being.
Buffalo also does me the favor of being low key nice with it in the summer. I live on the side of Richmond Avenue that is currently drawing all of the gentrification focus. I am disturbingly close to bakeries and Hip Cool Places™. I am also close to places that have decidedly NOT seen any of the gentrification money! The west side is an odd thing in that the gentrification area can extend literally the length of a house and no further. Five Points (the intersection of West Utica, Rhode Island, and Brayton among others) is a neighborhood the inhabits only that intersection and no more. Everything else is as it was without an influx of outside capital looking for a return on its investment, extending in all directions.
The thing is, both of these types of places are beautiful in the summer. There are still enough trees in the city, at least on the west side and in plenty of portions all around too, to provide shade and green. I'm still talking about the areas west of Richmond too, the places that don't get seen on the Garden Walk.
I grew up in the suburbs and lived there my entire life, so the experience of the city both good and bad is new to me in my old age. Yes I've seen a used condom on the sidewalk, but I've also not seen a strip mall. I haven't seen quite as many blatant displays of reactionary politics. I am now surrounded by stoops that display Queer flags and signs. The necessity of driving in the suburbs to nearly everywhere, and walking to where any shops were meant All The Trees Went Away So You Could Park, by Joni Mitchell was a work of non-fiction. Transit Road is a wasteland in this regard. It seems to extend into infinity and it has been turned into a gorge of concrete and asphalt with strip malls at 20 percent capacity and fleeting memories of thinking there used to be a cool shop here maybe? Or was that on Harlem? It's easy to get confused. Transit has fewer trees, that should help.
There are, I'm sure, bad things coming to my living experience in the city. Currently though, I have found my body and soul releasing a sigh and an enormous amount of tension I didn't even know I had.