A New Empty Lot

Less than a block from the place I work was a building. Over the years it has had various incarnations as different night clubs. I can’t, for the life of me, remember any of the names. Over the years the economy got worse, and nobody wanted to roll the dice on an urban club, in a run-down building miles from where the clientele lived. It sat empty, and decaying. The roof began to cave in.

It was a grey, black stucco covered eye sore. But it was old, and it had a history. A history no one man probably knew. It had a house that was probably over a hundred years old, and at some point, probably 60 or 70 years ago someone had added a squat, rectangular, windowless building. Why is lost in the ages.

A family of feral cats moved in and sometimes if you looked out the kitchen window of our building at the right time you could see one of the homeless people sharing food and milk he got from the mission with the cats.

Since the economy is better, and people are willing to roll the dice they tore the building down. Some big moneyed investor is probably going to construct a new apartment building. A glorious marvel of profitability overlooking the scenic homeless shelter. Until the can find a way to relocate the shelter. As long as the economy stays strong, anyway.

I looked out the window and saw a guy standing there holding a garden-hose spraying water on the building. It seemed odd, he wasn’t a fire man, at least he wasn’t dressed like a fireman, the building didn’t appear to be on fire, and it was raining lightly. Then, in a display of raw machine anger and fury, a deliberate, malignant show of mechanical superiority a claw rose over the roof and smashed down. Puffs of dust rose, and were quickly extinguished by the rain and the guy with the hose.

In one day, one guy with a big tractor, and his side kick with a hose knocked the building down. It was an astonishingly efficient act of destruction. Now the cats and the homeless have to find someplace else. We never really try to do anything about homelessness just the homeless. They can live with the problem, just not the symptoms.

It was gone, years of memories, parties, and friendships, brought down to an elemental pile of splintered rubbish. To add insult to the injury they parked the tracked, claw wielding tractor on top of the heap. Just to make sure it didn’t reassemble itself overnight. Then they bought in a parade of dump trucks to haul the pile to some final resting place. 

Progress has to march on, I understand, but does it have to be so thorough, and so callous, so cruel? Months later it still sits, an empty lot filled with weeds.

 I can’t help but think this is how things will end for me, knocked flat in one ridiculously casual act of terrible, violent indifference. Moistened to avoid any flashes of brilliance, no chance for a final act of neon glory to offer hope to the disillusioned and lost, just torn to pieces and hauled away by a force much greater than my own. Turned into the moral equivalent of a parking garage, or office building.