The Happy Hour today will be once again at the Elbow Room at the behest of the birthday girl. I think I’ll be riding my bike, no promise of what time I will be arriving or departing however. Shuffleboard table awaits, indeed.
Difficult one today in my estimation.
A sleepy little village, one that might be the quintessential European mountainside hamlet occupying a hopeful portion of the neo-cortex. A place we dream of perhaps one day visiting if it indeed exists. It does, which is also why once it was rediscovered (again) by hikers during the middle of the 20th century it eventually gained in popularity amongst artists, writers, and various others in search of a temporary peace of mind in order to free that portion responsible for imagination to be set free, no longer occupied with the thoughts of whether such a place might exist.
Before that however, we must retrace the cities roots. It sprung up as a crossroads town between resource, production & manufacturing, and market as many have throughout history. In this case, an empire in search of iron for various tools of warfare and engineering. Eventually, like all empires it whithered away as its nearby resource was found more attainable elsewhere until it was found again in medieval ages where a few families existed long enough for just one elderly person to be found by the hikers, who immediately did what new, hopeful and empowered micro-empires do, they bought the place. All of it.
Fortunately, since it was so remote and isolated, lacking various infrastructure including any improvements to the nearly two millennium-old roads, still fifteen feet wide and made of stone just as they had been built, no electricity or running water beside the mountain stream running past and with little as of yet demand to add such technological pleasantries, it remained, cheap as can be. Cheap enough for artists to colonize anyway, thus making it popular and bringing it to a spec of the world’s awareness where it sits, largely unchanged and fortunately not yet Disneyfied.
Perhaps to assist, these are several pages of Jane Jacobs’ words, filtered and distilled through my own caustical perspective. And even if you were to find the book I am referencing here (it is one of her much lesser known), making this guess the city more difficult is that Janey was using the name of the region, not the Commune where it now houses less people than some might have graduated high school with…or at least in my case, began high school with before attrition. Who woulda thought high school was so difficult. But I digress:
If nothing else, this place represents a new world where in the age of google earth and the internet, nothing disappears…unless we want them to.
And here is a reminder: Don’t be an ass this weekend.
