A Bike-Riding Blogger’s Perspective
While on vacation earlier this month, I decided to jump on the Hummer and pedal my way through the downtown, and wherever else the streets might lead me. You know, yet another bikeabout.
Being a Thursday, I knew I was headed into the teeth of our Farmer’s Market on Public Square. While this event has gone on every Thursday throughout the warmer months for many years now, it’s never served as a roadblock or an impediment for this avid cyclist. But on this particular Thursday, it was. It was an impediment. It was annoying.
With a patrol car in the downtown, a beat cop on the square and three bicycle cops touring their way through the retail affair, for the first time since I was a teenager, I was reduced to walking my bike through the crowds three separate times. You see, if I had chosen to plow my way through those people (as they have done in the past back before the previous administration damn near deleted the police department), one of those cops would have called me out on that obvious hazard for everyone involved. And it was annoying.
Not only was the square crowded with people in search of fresh veggies and the like culled from local farmers, the sidewalks in every direction were way too crowded with shopper’s, movie-goers and folks in search of lunch. In busy retail districts and hopping downtowns, they call this foot traffic. In Wilkes-Barre, we’d have to call this shocking.
Being the pioneering, rabble-rousing blogger that once captured a picture of the first block of S. Main St. looking south while being totally devoid of human beings on a business day, you can appreciate that 1., it used to be a helluva lot easier to embarrass our elected leaders, and 2., I used to be able to pedal these very same streets and sidewalks with my eyes closed.
Ah, the good/bad old days.
And that’s when the epiphany jumped up and slapped me upside this ugly mug of mine. As that pioneering blogger that once demonstratively demanded better from and for my city by way of a digital camera and a keyboard, it used to be easy to wreak havoc on my elected and appointed officials. In fact, it was too easy. It wasn’t even fair. It was a pigeon shoot ala Hegins, PA.
No longer can I publish exposes on how the fire department was operating with rusted, decades-old equipment and working out of aged firehouses that filled with water when it rained. No more “Rain forest.” No more screeds about having to push Engine 5 to get it rolling. No more surround-and-drown as the standard operating procedure.
No longer can I document just how understaffed and outgunned a shrunken police force was. Or how that police department was operating out of repainted government surplus automobiles that were about as dependable as a wager made on sports. No more blog posts about having only three officers on patrol on a Sunday afternoon in a city of 42,000. No more tales of police officers being injured for lack of necessary backup. No more ungodly long waits for police assistance.
No longer can I capture a picture that would be simultaneously embarrassing and damaging to the city’s administration practically any time I wanted to. No more repeated images of a long-collapsing infrastructure. No, the hundreds of collapsed catch basins have all been replaced. One by one, the eyesores are being done away with. The numerous flood control projects are all nearing completion. And believe it or not, my beloved Coal Street Park is no longer in dire need of a thorough napalming. This is bunk.
Again, from the perspective of a muckraking blogger, how am I supposed to make any noise about finances when the city continues to offer balanced budgets, and keeps on with this silly notion that deficit-spending should be avoided like the plague? What’s up with that?
Where once we needed multiple Tax Anticipation Notes (TAN) just to get through yet another red ink-filled fiscal year, now we have fiscal sanity, this tireless devotion to watching the bottom line. No more $5.3 million muddy holes. No more Holeplex money pits. No more Call Centers turning into financial albatrosses. These days, they secure the local, state and federal financing, and then go and complete all of these high-profile projects. And they even have the matching funds. And it sucks.
From my standpoint, what’s a political blogger who writes about the local goings-on to do? What can I complain about of late? The Mayor’s hair-trigger temper? His “bloated” salary? His stated favorite color? His ugly ties?
If things keep progressing at this rate, I’ll likely be reduced to blogging about my undying dream of being a drunken redneck up Sorber Mountain way, where my first cuzzins (female or otherwise) dare not bend over during one of my many week-long drinking binges. Yeah, all you’ll be getting out of me will be yarns about me and Opal sitting out back of the chicken shack in our underwear, drinking warm beer and shooting squirrels, possums and those silly city folk who lost their way.
Opal, you hot lil’ bitch! Get me a goll danged Rheingold, woman!
Seriously, what’s a local political blogger to do? Jeez, man. Can’t I even get me one of those poorly crafted and horribly misspelled press releases to make fun of every once in a while? C’mon Mr. Mayor! Tell us about the upcoming potwhole project, will you? Can’t you hire your brother or something? Can’t you go and earn a good public tongue-lashing from the governor as your predecessor had?
And where once the empty streets and empty sidewalks belonged to me, now I have to share them with shoppers? I have to walk my bike through the crowds so as to not get a response from the police officers that didn’t used to be there?
And now, now when me and the grandkids decide to frolic in the unfiltered water fountain in the middle of Public Square on a hot day, now there’s a cop bringing my attention to the fact that we are violating a city ordinance? Where once we could do as we wished completely free from police supervision, now we have to obey the law while bathing directly under that sign that states that public bathing is prohibited?
Why, I never!
Assuming that I want to continue blogging about my urban environment (bitching about reverse-gentrification, urban sprawl and societal decay), if it keeps going like this, I’m going to have to move to Pittston or Nanticoke. Anywhere but here.
Thank you, Mr. Mayor.
Thanks a lot!
Later
No comments:
Post a Comment