Ten Thousand Dirty Alleyways

Milwaukee is full of charm but she clutches tightly to her winters.

(Iced puddles on April 8)

In a rare moment, I bring you the land of not so dirty alleyways. My first installment...

Dromedary Drive.. just one of the 10,000 Dirty Alleyways. This one is a particularly clean alleyway except; lots of pigeons (?!) perhaps these fine birds eat dirt.

Happy Thanksgiving to all

This hummingbird -WhireEyes- did not die this day. He is of the Southwestern Dirty Alley variety, weighs 0.32 oz and smokes Camel Unfiltered.

His cashapp is $mylungfeelsgreat$

Happy New Year,
America's Weirdest City!

The Three Rules of Society

Concerning the potential Seattlization of this weird city, I am reminded of an old homeless guy I'd known back in San Diego (a place with some eerie, ocean-buffetted similarities to Phoenix). One old lady called him Embarcadero Joe. There was something much more hobo to the man and I imagine now that he must've also been fluent in travelling symbols and the kind of rail-yardery of a more and less disconnected time. Gone are those days, tho, and neohomeless roam the streets (all of them), just being; They have voiceable reasons for getting there, being there, and even staying there. Enough sorts of reasons that sound reasoned, pitiable; Irrecoverable even. So, when given gypsy-gilded, they are unassaiable.

Joe might have had insight in regards to this.

These folks go on, unaware of his rules regarding citizenship; here I am not speaking to immigration, of H-1B visas or rights deemed inalienable. No. I am referring to what he thought every citizen's responsibility was towards citizenship. He called them The Three Rules of Society. The need for these rules -he said- arose from the homeless community's need to self-regulate before the City of Neighborhoods decided The Homelessness was one neighborhood they didn't want the city. One thing that I thought was natural and logical was the HC's already self-regulated 'area'; there was an unwritten agreement between the city council, the police and the homeless that the latter would not spend unsightly time west of 13th and north of Broadway. Anyone can travel smartly and unladen anywhere but don't be pushing a cart through Horton Plaza, flying a sign up the 163 or panning in Balboa Park.

Simple.

In almost every part of America's Weirdest City's you -the citizen- will experience a somewhat even concentration of citified density. There are bizarre pockets of poverty and affluence to be found in every city of the valley, from neighborhood to neighborhood and within any given block.

My own apartment complex (its unistory, ovaline layout of units creates within itself a calm Rivendell of grass and trees and quiet) has discernable 'areas' that serve as analogue to the vast city around it.

AWC's population (huge and getting huge...er. Almost 72* people have moved to, were born in or otherwise descended upon Phoenix every day for the last 12 years), location (at ~1,000 ft, in the middle of its own nowhere, at the bottom of relatively wet desert valley, all surrounded by distant, bleak & mountainous high-desert, Phoenix has repeatedly been hailed as 'desert-affordable') and survivable, three-Summers-with-a Li'l FallSpring-climate (which helped to lead businesses to an oasis of corporate tax sanity,) made this valley a no-brainer for constant growth.

Recent socioeconomic changes in the lower-left national quadrant have conspired to give Phoenix pause; just-above-average cost of living, barely adequate public transportation, strange confluence of conservative Spanglish Southwesternism, Millennial liberalisto, punctuated often with West Coast and divisive gentrification surges are just the basic ingredients in a recipe for common indifference.

Add to this, an economy that is post-COVID bizarre ; people who lucked-out are paying loyalty to corporations who are non-ethically non-monogamous, the bold are rolling dice on their own wobbly sense of leveraged individualism and owners of any type of business are turning fast-casual with respect to their commodity if opportunity; ~15hours/week @ (potentially!)$16/hr. Act Now!

I would opine that the homeless should take these jobs; automation is fast approaching whilst some alternative minimum wage will be slow to follow. Care for one's fellow non-AI/non-camgirl/non-commendable-employee/non-social-influencer seems to have slumped to an all-time low. If you are able-bodied, it is probably time to do something -anything- now.

If you have felt that you are two degrees of separation from financial obsolescence, think again. Just take a look at the Circle-K on the(and EVERY) corner. No matter how well you think your future is secured by your crypto, your diversified properties in Glendale, or even your off-grid compound, there is another way the near future can direct you.

All which absolves no one of their societal obligations; there are but three, after all.

So, the city could be giving up the ghost. You can feel it. Well, perhaps the overall lack of populational exuberance is what you are feeling. Every metropolitan block has its own codependent relationship with itself that is loosely based on prideful neglect. Every neighborhood exudes an aura of 'mess with us one. more. time and we'll TOTALLY come together and... (let you?) Which is accurately the healthful and nutritious cornucopia of spiritlessness on which dystopia will dine.

The health-free menu for this coming darkness is offered by the able homeless. Someone once said of the homeless that 1/3 truly wanted to get unhomeless, 1/3 truly did not and 1/3 suffered too deeply from mental health challenges to say one way or another what they wanted at all.

It has not been like this in a decade. Anywhere. It turns out that being and staying homeless -especially in steady-growth, year-round survivable, baseline-attractive locales- can become oddly comfortable. In San Diego, I became aware of 'Program Hopping', in which the agile and crafty homeless play the un-homeless ambition role in one city after the next. Now I'm tangentizing(tangentializing?).

The deal is this; people -not just the homeless- are rude, ungrateful and audacious. They overstep boundaries, seethe with entitlement and fail to adhere to the Three Rules of Society:

1) Do not (dick around) with someone's stuff.

2) Help another out.

3) Don't be a nuisance.

Embarcadero Joe spent the better part of an evening defending the rules from various 'Can God make a stone...?' questions and 'She turned me into a newt.' declarations. The irony was not lost on Joe. The very nature of the entire rest of the evening was a rabbelous violation of all three.