Dude. The town you lived in after that was not much better.
No damn kidding. How sad was that place? I actually managed to read half their shelf of SF/F in, like, two months because that's HOW LITTLE they had. And I totally went through their entire collection of books about mythology. They had precisely twelve books on the subject, IIRC.
Yeah. If I were still living there and didn't have access to the bookbarn or a really super posh Barnes and Noble, I'd probably be downloading hardcore, especially since Davis-Kidd went belly up and now there's only the Books-A-Million and I hate that place. They're like the most Christianized non-Christian bookstore I've ever seen. God forbid you should go to Books a Million and be an atheist.
When I was about 14, I was there waiting for my mom to pick me up, and some guy thought I was a prostitute. "Are you walking freely?"
Oh, dude, the library was totally creepy. My parents used to drop me off there and forget when it closed (at noon on Saturdays) and I'd be stuck out there. Oh my god, it was scary.
The thing about it is, that's a town with a population of 100K when you consider the surrounding county. They could do better, but nope, it's all chain restaurants and strip malls.
Yeah, one time I was waiting and this sort of strange guy tried to talk to me and he was kind of crazy looking. I started crying. He went away when I peed my pants because I'd been standing out there for twenty minutes, the library was locked up and I needed a bathroom so bad that I couldn't think straight.
In my defense, I was 12 and alone and didn't know how I'd get home if my parents didn't come get me.
And yet, still, I persisted in going there because there weren't books anywhere else and I don't think Davis Kidd opened until a couple of years later.
They could do better, but nope, it's all chain restaurants and strip malls.
Somehow, I feel this the crux of everything that's wrong with Jackson. Maybe this is the thing that we've been trying to articulate for years about Jackson being a sinkhole of DESPAIR.
And yep, that was exactly where all the insane homeless hung out because the mission was down there and the food bank.
When a Starbucks opened downtown a couple streets over just across from the courthouse, they used to come over and talk or beg all the time. Of course, encountering a mentally ill drug addict when you're in your 20s with a group of people is totally different from encountering one when you're all alone, 12, and totally need to pee.
That Starbucks is closed now. I guess the court crowd didn't go for them, and no one likes to go downtown at night there.
You know, it's funny. I never go to Davis Kidd here in Nashville. Maybe when Unemployment '09 ends, I should go.
And yeah, exactly, about Jackson. It gets larger, but it never grows.
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no subject
Date: 2009-02-06 04:15 pm (UTC)No damn kidding. How sad was that place? I actually managed to read half their shelf of SF/F in, like, two months because that's HOW LITTLE they had. And I totally went through their entire collection of books about mythology. They had precisely twelve books on the subject, IIRC.
Yeah. If I were still living there and didn't have access to the bookbarn or a really super posh Barnes and Noble, I'd probably be downloading hardcore, especially since Davis-Kidd went belly up and now there's only the Books-A-Million and I hate that place. They're like the most Christianized non-Christian bookstore I've ever seen. God forbid you should go to Books a Million and be an atheist.
When I was about 14, I was there waiting for my mom to pick me up, and some guy thought I was a prostitute. "Are you walking freely?"
Oh, dude, the library was totally creepy. My parents used to drop me off there and forget when it closed (at noon on Saturdays) and I'd be stuck out there. Oh my god, it was scary.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-06 04:19 pm (UTC)The thing about it is, that's a town with a population of 100K when you consider the surrounding county. They could do better, but nope, it's all chain restaurants and strip malls.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-06 04:27 pm (UTC)Yeah, one time I was waiting and this sort of strange guy tried to talk to me and he was kind of crazy looking. I started crying. He went away when I peed my pants because I'd been standing out there for twenty minutes, the library was locked up and I needed a bathroom so bad that I couldn't think straight.
In my defense, I was 12 and alone and didn't know how I'd get home if my parents didn't come get me.
And yet, still, I persisted in going there because there weren't books anywhere else and I don't think Davis Kidd opened until a couple of years later.
They could do better, but nope, it's all chain restaurants and strip malls.
Somehow, I feel this the crux of everything that's wrong with Jackson. Maybe this is the thing that we've been trying to articulate for years about Jackson being a sinkhole of DESPAIR.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-06 04:42 pm (UTC)And yep, that was exactly where all the insane homeless hung out because the mission was down there and the food bank.
When a Starbucks opened downtown a couple streets over just across from the courthouse, they used to come over and talk or beg all the time. Of course, encountering a mentally ill drug addict when you're in your 20s with a group of people is totally different from encountering one when you're all alone, 12, and totally need to pee.
That Starbucks is closed now. I guess the court crowd didn't go for them, and no one likes to go downtown at night there.
You know, it's funny. I never go to Davis Kidd here in Nashville. Maybe when Unemployment '09 ends, I should go.
And yeah, exactly, about Jackson. It gets larger, but it never grows.