I'm having a hard time trying to suss out just what I don't like about this bit from this morning's Bleat.

{...}There was a creepy old man at the park the other day, my wife told me. Dressed in a ragged suit, carrying his possessions in a plastic shopping bag from a store that has no local outlets anywhere in the neighborhood. Disheveled. He wandered over to the swimming pool and watched the kids. Then he left and wandered away and came back and watched the kids some more. Then he went into the community center, where the kids play unattended sometimes; one of the neighborhood dads followed him, then followed him outside and took him aside for a chat. The fellow said he was homeless, heard about a new shelter in the area, and wanted to live in the neighborhood.

Now. You could say that thereÂ’s nothing wrong with a fifty-something guy with a grey beard and a raincoat and no fixed address wandering around a playground looking at the kids in their bathing suits, and that itÂ’s unfair to deny a fellow the simple human pleasure of watching kids enjoy themselves just because he happens to be homeless.

I donÂ’t care.

First of all, there arenÂ’t any shelters in this area. Second, I donÂ’t care. Third, itÂ’s possible heÂ’s homeless because he spent a lot of time in prison for kiddie-diddling. Fourth, you donÂ’t get to look like the fellow who shows up to collect the Hellraiser cube and hang around the kiddie pool. Good bye.{...}

Aha! By Jove I've got it: it's the whiff of NIMBY flying off it at a speed that would make a French cheesemonger bow with admiration at just how quickly the land speed record for nose crinkling was shattered.

Look, I've got nothing against Lileks. I really don't. Much admiration for his art is to be found in the archives of this here blog. I'm a fan. But this doesn't sit right, and mainly it's because Lileks and I live in the same general part of town. He may sneeze and I may not be able to say, "God Bless You," over the airshaft, but we're talking the same general vicinity. When he chats about Southwest High School before the portion I chose to excerpt, well, that's the high school I went on about in this post, ere so long ago. Southwest is two blocks over, two blocks up. We may never have crossed paths, but we could have. Many, many times.

And what he wrote up there rankles.

It's like he'd like 98% less urban in his urban-living.

Yes, just in case you weren't aware, urban living means, occasionally, running across someone who doesn't have a home. Or a shower. Or even a plastic bag from a retailer in this section of town. Because God only knows we need the homeless to have plastic bags that denote what section of town they're from.

We're fortunate to live in a part of the Cities where you have urban life, but not a lot of urban troubles. When there's a robbery, which is something that doesn't happen very often, you can be certain that the place that was robbed was on a bus line---or within a block or two of said bus line. Yes, this means, in essence, we have such a low crime rate that we have to bus in the criminals. We have a curfew here in Cake Eater Land, and it does keep the summer evening troubles to a minimum---and you don't see the ACLU out protesting about it. No one has a problem with the local curfew. I have many problems with the way the Province of Minneapolis runs things, but my main beef is that they don't have enough cops to keep the speeders from mowing down people left and right on Cake Eater Avenue (because part of Cake Eater Avenue is in Minneapolis Province). We live in a nice part of town. People take care of their lawns, people know their neighbors, they have block parties, everything's tidy and, in general, it resembles one of those highly annoying VISA commercials that are running all over the dial right now. You know the ones I'm talking about, right? Where life is just one step-ball-chain short of Singin' in the Rain? Where, ultimately, paying by cash or check futzes up the choreography, causes the butterfly to flap his wings and a typhoon emerges, hence slowing everyone else down? So, the message you, a terminal cash junkie who just does NOT want to stick their neighborhood retailer with a 2% fee for the privilege of using a credit card to buy a $0.75 donut, are destined to pull is that you should get with the program and get a VISA, lest you slow down and terminally annoy everyone around you.

The Uncle-Joe-says-you'd-better-use-your-VISA-to-fit-in-with-your-fellow comrades-in-life-ads.

If it wasn't obvious, I hate those VISA commercials---and I hate them with a passion. If I want to pay with cash, I will damn well pay with cash and there's nothing you can do to stop me. I don't care if it slows you down. Or makes you drop your latte. Or brings a little chaos theory into your day. I really don't give a shit. That's your problem; not mine.

Lileks doesn't care about the homeless guy who got off track and who may or may not have had nefarious motives when wandering around the fringes of the kiddie pool. He says it flat out. He doesn't care. The guy's probably a child molester. Why should he care?

But I'll bet you anything Lileks really cares when someone holds him up at the checkout line because they chose to write a check and it's slowing him down.

I don't mean to knock Lileks. Really I don't. I'm sure he's a good person, who's got good intentions. But this sort of issue is endemic to the people who live around here. They want everything urban life has to offer, but they don't want any urban problems, either. Like the occasional robbery. Like the occasional transvestite wandering around the neighborhood. Like the occassional polka-dotted house owned by the wandering transvestite which really brings down the property values. (Seriously, folks.) Or the occasional homeless person, who stinks things up. They don't want any urban in their urban life. And as a justification for their behavior, they make up threats where none actually exist. Like a homeless guy who probably got on the wrong bus, didn't have the fare to get back, and is suddenly a potential child molester. People see threats where there aren't any. And if they don't see any threats, well, they'll make some up to give themselves something to do.

I'm not one of those people who wants more pr0n in Times Square, because, mainly, it's better than the Disneyfication of the place. I'm not a big fan of homeless people, either, but at least I realize if I want an urban life, I'm going to have to have a little urbanity in it---and that may include things I'd rather weren't there. Like homeless people wandering around, making life uncomfortable for those who are gainfully employed. Unlike Lileks, I actually use public transportation. Public transportation is where the homeless people go during the day. It is where they get on in the morning after they've been evicted from their shelter, and where they stay until it's time to go back again, mooching transfers from every single person they come across who isn't connected to an iPod and can actually hear their request. I've been on buses from downtown, in the middle of January no less, where every single, solitary window was open because a homeless person's funk was so particularly horrid that was the only way you could possibly breathe. Lileks is safe in his green Honda Element and I'm sure he's got those neat little minty air fresheners hanging around his rearview mirror in case his car has to pass through the hood and the aroma of micturition is particularly fragrant and wafting that day. Given this, of course he's going to assume the worst of this homeless person by the kiddie pool. Homeless people are not part of his daily milieu. But what is really impressive in all of this is how quickly he managed to go from zero-to-sixty in 3.5 seconds flat when it came to assessing the potential threat this man meant. Furthermore, he doesn't give a rat's ass about it. He should, at the very least, go back over the situation in his head and wonder if there was some need to feel threatened, or if he was just overreacting. Which he probably was. If so, he should feel some shame at his reaction.

But he doesn't care..

He's just a suburbanite living in an urban world because there's just so much more kitsch on offer in the urban world! He's a VISA user in a cash-only line, and pretty soon, just you wait, he'll move out to Eden Prairie or Anoka or Blaine because he just doesn't want to have to wait around for someone to receive their change.

Posted by: Kathy at 05:01 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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