This City Has Really Gone Downhill
God, would you look at this place? What a nightmare! I remember back when this city was nice. But now, for so many reasons, it just isn’t. I look around, and I just shake my head at what this city has become. Sometimes it saddens me. Other times, it enrages me. There are so many things wrong with this city that it’s hard to even know where to begin. I’ll start with this, and let me say it very plainly: this city has really gone downhill.
Growing up in this city, there was a sense of community, but now there really isn’t. Sure people are still throwing parties and having gatherings, but they never seem to invite me. In this city, I used to always get invited to picnics, barbecues, block parties, and so on. These days, when someone passes me on the street in this city, sometimes they don’t even say hello! This, in turn, has led to me not saying “hello” for fear that the person passing me won’t reciprocate. It’s a vicious cycle of unfriendliness brought on by this city.
These days, this city has too many people. When I was a kid, this city had fewer people and that was a good thing. Nowadays, everything is just too populated. The grocery stores, the laundromats, the roads, they are all wildly overcrowded. And as more and more folks move here, this city continues to lose its sense of history. For instance, most of the people moving to this city don’t even know about the historic fire of 1937 or the fact that this city was once casually mentioned in an episode of Happy Days. And they definitely don’t know that a guy who lived here used to hold the state record for the largest Walleye ever caught. People in this city used to have pride in these things because they came from here, grew up here, and as they got older, found themselves stuck here, but now people just move here because of the jobs, local parks, and good schools, which is really a shame.
This city has become dangerous too! On my neighborhood Facebook group, people are always talking about how they see “suspicious characters” lingering about town. Sure, this city used to have suspicious characters too, but back then they would be caught committing a crime and then put behind bars for a period of time. These new suspicious characters don’t ever actually commit crimes and, thus, are impossible to catch. The crime in this city used to be more obvious and frankly that’s how I preferred it.
And don’t even get me started on the tourism. This city has way too many tourists coming throughout the year. And with each tourist, comes a wad of cash they are looking to spend in this city. We get it, you’re rich! You don’t have to show the rest of us up. I guess I get why the tourists want to come to this city, what with its abundance of natural beauty, quaint neighborhoods, and I don’t know, professional sports teams, but even so, I wish they’d go someplace else. I think the tourists are clogging up our city and being a little too showy with how they spend their dollars and cents.
In this city, I have no real friends, but in that city, I have one friend named Jerry. And Jerry says that in that city, they face many of the same problems as this city. I shouldn’t be surprised. This city. That city. This state. That state. This planet. That planet. It’s all really gone downhill.
- About the Author
- Latest Posts
Adam Dietz is a writer and the host of the Home Improvement (the sitcom) podcast “Home Impodcast.” His work has been featured in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Slackjaw, and The Art of Autism. He lives in Milwaukee with his partner and their two cats.
