Aaron Naparstek

» Monday, March 01, 2004

I-77

You should see what is happening along I-77, the stretch of highway between Akron and Cleveland these days. I was there two weeks ago. It's all big box stores and vinyl McMansions sprouting up in former corn fields. Traffic disaster happens on a regular, daily basis here. The highway is constantly immobilized and there really is no other way to get around, no trains, nothing. When you get off the highway it's miles of strip-mall gas station burger shack crap. And traffic traffic traffic. Almost every motorist you pass is shtupping his face with a handful of fries or sucking liquid from a 64-ounce giganti-gulp cup. It's as though people have completely given up on living life outside their cars. Public space is a hostile environment. Late to pick up my wife at the airport and my mobile phone out of juice, I had to pay a guy at the tire shack $5 to use his cell phone for a minute. I couldn't find a working pay phone anywhere. While the region's jobs flee this futureless place, the city fathers scratch their heads, blame China, and fight to build a new convention center in Downtown Cleveland to revive the economy. It's a sad state of affairs. If the people who live in these places can be roused out of their passive consumer stupor at all, it won't surprise me if, by 2012, they are voting for some sort of religious-right Osama bin Hitler candidate promising to set things straight....

11:56 AM | Link |

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