The Palace of Light

The Jewel of the New Manchester, the downtown baseball stadium, which for the moment as far as I know has not been pimped out to some corporation who could give two shits about baseball, is awash in expensive light in anticipation of Baseball's proper coronation in this "city." If you squint really hard you can block out the piles of trash and abandoned land and buildings surrounding the stadium. The row houses on the west of the river glow nicely in the kleig lights, as the residents of said houses prepare to sue the city for all manner of inconvenience they will suffer as a result of this sporting disco. I guess "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" washing across the river four nights a week is better than Godsmack.

Snow melts, trash unearthed

As the last of the snowbanks is washed away by the torrential rains, mounds of dirt and trash line the streets of crumbling and pitted asphalt. April can be a month of pure disgust in this city as the mess of winter is dug out and mud flows freely in unpaved driveways. As the weather gets warmer, I get blessed with the roaring of Hogs with loud pipes owned by white trash idiots with more money than sense, pounding through the side streets and destroying any possibility of having a quiet picturesque neighborhood in this frayed city. Elm and Willow Streets may have pretensions, but it is in the side streets - the 80 year old buildings that haven't been renovated, the halfway houses, the 20 year old cars inspected with an extra $50 to the mechanic ("I know this guy"), the too-young and too-old mothers - that the real city exists. The city fathers and real-estate agents want to pretend otherwise, but Manchester will continue this way for a long time. And then if the march of progress comes, where will all the trash be washed away to? Farther afield, Goffstown, Hooksett, Litchfield? Will the potholes and shitty asphalt get patched if people are getting the rims of their Navigators bent driving down them? Will they widen Willow Street to eight lanes all the way to the Queen City Bridge? Will the hanging-on-by-a-thread storefront businesses finally close up in the wake of rising property taxes and higher property values? It's a long way to go yet, new arena or ballpark notwithstanding.