The closed city

Imagine a city that you want to love, a city haunted by past glory. The jazz and blues musicians to whom it owes so much now adorn the mural you can't miss, approaching downtown from the south. Of course, the irony of this artwork escapes many residents, and is lost on the suburbanites and tourists, for whom the shiny new district was built. These types have little use for history; for them it's better as an ornament, a fleeting, intoxicated thought, a forgettable instance of lives steeped in ledger-line. Bright lanterns, restaurant facades, designed in Los Angeles, fabricated in Shanghai, the glassy arena for sports teams who never came, stringent dress codes, drinks priced for the gilded 'atmosphere', security guards and police now circulating among the crowds, now scowling about the perimeter — you might as well be in any other city in the gaudy country. Only a fool would be proud of these monuments and imagine the city's ancestors were smiling upon them. There is no torch to pass for the flame has been long extinguished. It is the same city in name only, and those who know it can visit the museums only to their irritation. The judgment is clear: not just the abandoned schools, factories, shops, and houses, but the whole city is empty, condemned, disinherited. Strangled by freeways and their bric-a-brac parade, the streets have fallen into disrepair. Once graced with basketball games, impromptu concerts, and neighborly banter, they are silent like a funeral procession. In a strange reversal, the openly corrupt politicians did well by the majority of the citizens, while those who replaced them maintain the facade of honesty, and do poorly thereby, but they deal with tamer creatures now and few notice the difference. There is a small protest today, and a few shows tonight, yes, but they are published on the digital news feed and forgotten tomorrow. In the former case, a noble harmony emerged; in those days, the city enjoyed generous benefactors and a sense of decency and happiness prevailed, despite occasional shootouts between mobsters. You can be sure the bores capitalized on those incidents. Such times, lighter, gayer, simpler and more forgiving, when the spirit of the laws reigned triumphant, the spirit of a corrupt people, who were not preoccupied with the letter because they knew their own corruption, were doomed by a country of petty men, beancounters, and misers. The latter have had the pretense of virtue, of course, but never the real thing, which they could not fathom. So they misjudged themselves and their people. So the most open city in the land of philistines, its festive polling places, public banquets, liquor-smuggling tunnels, and dime-a-dozen speakeasies, was closed, and there is no anticipating that it shall be reopened soon, or ever again. Today's youth are soulful at a glance alone, and the more they chatter in coffeehouses about the city's 'potential', the less you retain any hope, the more you shall consider yourself a wanderer, and dream of other cities you might call home, once the debts are paid and the company of a few solid friends will suffice. Your memories will linger, both what was and might have been, but the ancestors have blessed the coming journey and their heirs now await you at distant ports.