I haven’t written something sincere in a long time. OK, that’s not quite right. Let’s say sincere without the leitmotif of a punchline driving it.
I put together this piece in 2020 about the Strip District — about its peculiarities, its foibles, but the prevailing sense of something that uniquely represented the city all the same.
The area has undergone notable real estate and cultural changes since then, as we know. Some of them seem just fine: it’s good that young people like to spend time and be young there; it’s good, broadly speaking, that the old fruit terminal isn’t just a dead space for parking.
Of course, some of the changes suck shit, too. Starbucks, Primo Hoagies, Chipotle, massive breweries — a lot of it feels counter-cultural to what made the Strip a spot locals adore. Likewise, you’re left to wonder if the giant condo buildings aren’t going to become unpopulated concrete husks in the decades to come if people don’t commit to staying in the city.
That’s just the thing. Few of these matters are simple. Few of them can be summed up neatly, thoughtfully, and entertainingly in about a dozen words, and that’s what can make humor-centered satire a slog: to do the job ‘successfully’ nowadays almost obligates you to do it wrong. Points and positions that require paragraphs of cooked-up exposition and viewpoints are boiled down to a single serving of punchline that either elicits a radically positive reaction, radically negative reaction, or barely one at all.
There was a paragraph in here covering this last point in more detail, but let’s go ahead and get to what matters. Namely, communal experiences pull us together. I would say they outlast any bonding a digital joke might manage, no matter its potency. In fact, it’s surely why the yinzer category of jokes often performs so well: they poke at a moment, value, behavior — you name it — that belongs to a more meaningful community we’re a part of. That’s why this year, more than ever, we need to get back to our roots.
We need to neb our hearts out.
I get it. We all know that neb. The one that comments on people’s weight. The one that loses their shit on somebody parking near their house to visit family or friends. The one that casts suspicion for no reason other than to satisfy some internal fear or angst or discontent or undiagnosed spiritual malaise.
Fuck ‘em and fuck the way they’ve tainted a cultural practice that’s good for our hearts, good for our soul, and good for the places we live. In a time where the digital black hole only folds us over and over again in doubt and despair we could do ourselves and those around us a favor with an occasional shift on the stoop, in the yard, or a public space.
It’s not entirely unlike a dog showing its belly. To share a space openly with others is to apply at least a degree of trust in the social contract. It’s to expose yourself to that, most likely your, community’s reality. I won’t use ‘we,’ as it suggests a level of certainty I’m not willing to claim, but I often feel adrift from reality, lost in a space too contrived and manufactured to carry any value, to make that same aforementioned personal impact outside a few random flashes that appear before me.
Is nobody else hearing their internal voice shouting from within how desperately it wants this?
It’s the dog’s name you learn. Yeah, he barked at you. He’s just cautious around new people — you get it.
It’s the couple that used to run together. Now they walk. With a stroller. Oh, and a four-year-old. Sorry, boss, you don’t play Minecraft, but you appreciate the expert’s info on it.
It’s the kids bicycling with reckless abandon through intersections. Jesus, please be careful.
It’s the indoor-outdoor cat that walks by without a care. It’s got a name, but you’re going to keep call it that other name you made up instead.
It’s the young man who lives down the street driving his car too fast. You used to drive yours too fast, too. Maybe you’ll tell him to cool it. He’s slowed down in the past year or so, though, so that’s good.
And it’s the jagoffs — OF COURSE it’s the jagoffs. That’s part of the whole damned point! Your actual, physical, “I’m right here if you wanna talk about it” presence will make a 1000 times greater impact over the angry post on Next Door.
We don’t have to reinvent being human; it’s already coded into us. The neb within is indeed strong, coaxing without. We just need to resist the extrinsic demand to dehumanize ourselves on a semi-permanent basis. Go for a 10-minute walk. Do your work at the coffee shop. Put on music at the bar. Some people will think it sucks; they’ll never get to thank you for the story or conversation point. Doodle on the napkin and leave it for somebody. If it gets thrown away, you can always doodle another. Shovel the walk one house over.
Just sit on the porch and verify the existence of someone who walks by. Sometimes, all we need to do is answer another person’s “Is this thing on?” and it means everything.
Recent events only serve to underscore this need to participate in community, not just in permanent marker, but in blood. Right now it’s the blood of somebody far away, that you don’t know, whose bonds, whose life, whose dreams and cares and hopes and those tiny threads of being that makes us who we are can only be inferred from outside information and what we see on a screen. How long before it’s in our state, our city, and then in our backyards? With the folks with whom we break bread, crack a beer, ask about the dog, watch bike in the streets, and, among a trillion other things, share the strange phenomenon that is the human condition?
If we weren’t meant to neb, it wouldn’t come so easily. It wouldn’t be something that we could learn through a mix of observation, natural inclination, and some willful intent. Did Descartes neb? He thinks and, therefore, is —famously. But what’s being without being a part of something?
You don’t need training. You just do it. Sit. Watch. Chat. Don’t chat. Stare. Just be present and part of it.
Our lives depend on it, now more than ever.
