I remember a winter’s night
When we kissed beneath the street lamp light
Outside our bar near the record store
That have been condos for a year or more
And now that our haunts have taken flight
And been replaced with construction sites
Oh how I feel like a stranger here
Searching for something that’s disappeared
I’ve mentioned before that I was lucky enough to visit a friend out in San Francisco back in 1993, 1994. I walked around the city, ate at restaurants, bought some plants in the park from a woman named “Phoenix”, drank tea, visited Chinatown, drank in the experience.
Came back to Colorado Springs.
So when I heard this song by Death Cab for Cutie, I was struck by a whole truckload of weird memories and conflicting emotions.
They’re digging for gold in my neighborhood
Where all the old buildings stood
And they keep digging down, down
So that their cars can live underground
It seems I never stop losing you
As every dive becomes something new
And all our ghosts get swept away
It didn’t used to be this way
The absolutely huge used bookstore that was one of the first places that I took Maribou when she first visited me back in 1996 or 1997 has been an empty storefront for… what? The last eight years or so? We drive past it, occasionally.
I looked up whether “The Toy Boat” was still open in San Francisco. I was worried that it would have closed back during the crisis or something. It’s still open. I let out a small sigh or relief. I guess. It’s not like I’m going back there anytime soon.
It didn’t used to be this way.
So… what are you listening to?
Without dipping into politics, there are some strange and uncomfortable parallels between the sentimental anti-gentrification argument (as shown in this song/video) and some of the arguments given against immigration in general.
Change, please don’t change
Stay, stay the sameReport
So true. As someone who visits SF and walks through the Mission nearly every week, the video feels a bit different. We all hate change, but we have only a limited power to stop it.Report
We have only a limited power to stop missing the way it used to be.
We have only a limited power to convince ourselves that the way it is now is better.Report
My son went to college in the town I went to school in, that I grew up in (my old man was a professor at that school.) I had left to marry his mother in another part of the state in the, ahem, ’90’s and slowly my family had moved away, retired or gone to find greener pastures. Friends did the same as the town became more and more pricey, and, well changed. You see, growing up one could consider it the farthest south part of Northern California. And it slowly became the most northern part of Southern California. And thus a different town. Sure, the used bookstore that I worked was still there (one of them at least), the record stores I haunted. The bar that townies go to moved, but kept the actual bar intact.
But the town is not the same town I grew up in.
A little latin jazz:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AFfBsUycGgReport