Are you sleeping, Ithacans?
Has the "Bush is a Nazi" graffiti-man gone to bed? (Will Victor Loo, ace detective from the Big Apple, track him down - as promised in the Ithaca Times?) More later on the peculiar phenomenon of Graffiti-Man.
Is the puke drying on the sidewalk in front of Simeon's?
Are all the young passed out in eachother's arms up there on the hills of EDU land? After another night of nonstop boozing, dining, orgiastic debauchery , the sowing of wild oats(it's an Ag-Tech school up at Cornell anyway.They must know something about wild oats. More on genetic engineering later.) Have the seeds of further greatness been sown? Does anyone even know or care?
Have they gotten up to make the donuts yet to feed the cops who keep the city safe to we can enjoy yet another day in paradise?
Is the frost forming on your windshields? Are the 18 wheelers pulling into Wegmans to disgorge pallets filled with goodies for all the happy campers in Ithaca?
Ezra never sleeps. He's keeping an eye on his city. Listening to the ice particles forming. Checking weather forecasts on the web
to see when this long icejam of the soul will ever end. Ezra worries about the nightcrews in the 24hr supermarkets, the bored, red-eyed clerks at convenience stores caught on endless reels of surveillance film, the empty unfolding of lives dedicated to serving others.
No one else seems to care about them. The people at the bottom of the food chain who populate those peculiar insterstices of Ithaca life. The nameless. faceless ones who bus tables at restaurants, make the pizza, wash the dishes up at the dining halls, drive the TCAT buses, run the cash registers that keep our vast service industry humming.
Food is a $40 million business in Ithaca. It's hard work filling those adolescent tummies, who, in addition to the food of knowedge, require pizza, Thai food, Chinese takeout, tortillas, enchilladas, nouvelle cusine and not to forget bagels. Ithaca doesn't make much but it does make bagels. Our 4th largest industry?
Ezra sees. He sees the fools on the hill, flashing Daddy's credit card around in downtown bistros, puking on the sidewalks, driving $30,000 sets of wheels around at 19, getting the best education money can buy, (outside of real Ivy League schools like Harvard, Princeton, Columbia). showing total indifference to the lives of those behind the counter, the poor townies and disposable people who
depend on minimum wage jobs and tips because Cornell and Ithaca College
control the economy of Ithaca and have for how many countless years now failed to contribute to the community. Yeah, go down to Princeton, NJ and you'll see hundreds of high tech startups, engineering and computing boutiques dotting the area, People go to school there, fall in love with the place and start businesses that employ people in ways other than scraping dishes. There is an exchange of intellectual capital between town and university. But in Ithaca? Bagel joints, Thai restaurants, bars, coffee shops, high-end, new age boutiques!
WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?
What sucks about Ithaca? The economy, for one thing. But most of us already know that. More later.
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 5:27 AM
