Change of scene
The monthly boondoggle for supporters, reporting from Anytown, USA
The motel is next to a pawn shop. The rental car is a Korean import. At dawn, the retired elderly of this town clog the chain coffeeshops. At happy hour, they clog the chain restaurants.
The New Balances are mostly white, not gray.
I left Los Angeles to spend a couple days this week in Anytown, USA, reporting a story for the Quarterly. The piece has been in the works for over a year, but we needed one final component. I hopped on a plane to another state, rented a car and drove for an hour, then spent a bunch of hours talking to young and middle-aged people in deep crisis, in a strange, extremely contemporary despair.
So, that was the work of the thing; more on the subject when it publishes this summer. But I kept thinking how grateful I was, after two and a half months of basically staying home, to be on the road again, even if the road and its sites weren’t much.
Applebees, Starbucks, an Amazon fulfillment warehouse. It could’ve been most anywhere in the United States that’s not big city or rural. Antique stores because people die. Addiction centers because people use. Tattoo parlors because people people.
So many gyms, so few parks. Shopping complexes lit up all night like revival tents.
Not one graveyard I saw, though plenty of car dealerships.
In a Starbucks one morning, one customer after another wore scrubs, which made sense, the complex included several healthcare facilities. Though when I arrived, facing a cheery, pregnant young barista, the middle-aged woman behind me in line was not in scrubs, she wore jeans and a T-shirt, long hair and tattoo sleeves, and she openly carried a Glock.
