.

I’m walking into the Hilton Double Tree in downtown South Bend, which stands across from the lot that used to hold the College Football Hall of Fame. The Hall of Fame building still sits, completely empty for the past 11 or so years, on a 30,000-square-foot lot that also features a concrete football field painted with green turf and white lines.

I try to open the doors of the Double Tree, in order to enter and apply for a kitchen job. It’s three or so in the afternoon on a Monday. The doors stick together as I’m trying to open them and it takes about 30 pounds of force to get them open. I walk into the giant, lavish lobby, in which the ceiling is like 10 stories high or so and adorned with copious windows, and make my way over to the bar, which flanks the kitchen and serves fare cooked there. I pass a couple of cheerful or innocuous people, get up to the bar and notice there’s no one there. I start making my way toward the kitchen, still not seeing or hearing a single person. There’s a bathroom there and I do in to relieve myself. One of the dispensers is out of soap. I walk out, still not seeing or hearing anybody, and I start to walk into the kitchen. South Bend is very violent, so I decide not to go all the way in (actually I once heard a story about the manager of this very kitchen trying to lance this dude I worked with with a pizza cutter, right on the job). I walk back out toward the bar, gaze at a bunch of bottled beer in a little cooler, and think, this could probably all be mine, if I wanted.

It’s been another year in South Bend: of skimpier-than-ever uniforms at Hooters, of greater and greater prevalence and even intricacy of yoga pants (they now make bell bottom yoga pants, for your viewing pleasure), of homicidal glares from random dudes and of spending a lot of time alone, on my computer, blogging and listening to music, two of my typical practices. Car washes and fitness centers are spreading like wild fires, disabling any scabs who would attempt to say there’s completely no commerce here.

The commerce at the downtown hotels, though, seems perhaps a little slow, which is ironic since the Marriott just built a new multi-story hotel right next to the Hilton (which is especially weird since the Hilton used to be a Marriott in itself). In one quest for night life over the summer on a Saturday night I walked past McCormick’s and Cool Runnings on Michigan St., right across from the Hilton’s back side, a block which is supposed to be unmistakably the epicenter for local music, these days. There was not a single performance going on in either one and on my way there I’d passed the Howard Park Public House, where a band was packing up its gear at 10 o’clock at night.

Before Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s initiative of doling funding to establishments to set up downtown, there stood a bar called Blarney Stone, which was a sports bar which also made a regular practice of housing live music. I also remember hearing of DJ sets at the State Theater, something that hasn’t transpired since Buttigieg initially took office.

Since 2016, when downtown was fused with a bunch of government-funded businesses, places like Blarney Stone and Finnie’s sports bar have gone under, leaving a drove of new-fangled, faceless bars and restaurants whose only purpose seems to be to cater to the pretentious wannabe-Bohemians who are dense enough to consider South Bend a “cool city,” or whatever. The Morris Performing Arts Center still stands one block from McCormick’s, a staggering and almost unbelievable bastion of proof that, even in a city this size, it’s possible to forge a staunch, defiantly cataclysmic separation between socioeconomic classes. Tickets for these events typically sell for over $40 and the shows they hold are galaxies away from anything the average working-class or blue-collar individual would want to view — musicals and other Broadway-minded events, typically. I mean, I have a liberal arts degree and I can’t even stand that dross. South Bend Brew Werks has been known to house live music here and there but it’s nothing on a consistent basis. (Please let me add that their nauseating shtick of “donating to local charities” smacks of pecuniary subterfuge, to put it very lightly.) The most consistent venue for live music in South Bend is probably Simeri’s Old Town Tap, which sits about a mile and a half southwest of downtown.

As far as the public schools go, there was a stabbing incident at my old school, John Adams, recently, an event the likes of which I remember nothing from when I was there. In one case, during Mayor Pete’s tenure, a certain school ran out of food for the day, and the mayor did not even issue a single statement to the public regarding the incident, let alone issue an apology. That’s a matter of fund allocation, right? How is that not the mayor’s responsibiity. Buttigieg went to St. Joseph High for his adolescent schooling and certainly behaved, while mayor, like somebody with no interest in the public schools. I heard another tale, from my boss at Bob’s 19th Hole, about a student transferring out of South Bend public schools and seeing his self-esteem pretty much skyrocket, as a result.

We’ve just had a festival where metal detectors were required for entry, the two-day “Fusion Fest.” I would have gone but I don’t have any camouflaged clothing. Violence, spite and antipathy are through the roof downtown, as was corroborated by this local  comedian I used to be friends with on Facebook, who gave a tale of a homeless dude decapitating a goose in Howard Park. (Now our comedy club, The Drop, is closed, by the way, so I’m not sure where or if she’s still doing her routine, which included, I have to say, wanting to date an epileptic because “The sex would be incredible”).

Mayor Pete did oversee the addition of the South Bend Cubs, which I suppose is a positive in a certain sense. But South Bend has always had a minor league baseball team, in that same spot, since my parents moved me here in 1990, and there are no sports bars surrounding the stadium or establishments which seem in any way to get clientele runoff from the games, which is certainly troubling. Here is hoping that in the coming years we can place a greater emphasis on the schools and in giving locals a voice in what transpires in the realms of downtown nightlife. As it stands, in this downtown revampment project, South Bend is trying to attract people to what is basically a phantom entity.

This is one crazy zodiac we’re entering here,

As if the sun’s fire has become semantic

In its molten, all-encompassing rage to

Drive our shadows to precipice

And our shadows will dance and sing

In careless, timeless zeal, with

Faces glued in burning identity,

A 90-mile-per-hour

Omniscience factory.

His car is smeared heavily

With bumper stickers of aggression —

Armed Forces,

All gave some some gave all,

And then

A curious permutation, you might say,

In “Bite me,”

The words juxtaposed next to the

“Don’t tread on me” snake,

.

The question then, perhaps,

Being

Begged

As to why we fight wars

And attempt to gain victory

To

.

Reconvene on the

Homeland and administer,

Simply,

“Bite me.”

Stevie Wonder is laying down the truths

On the mic

But in your mind

Is the carnage,

Is Sandra Bullock speeding

Through a city of retractable roof stadiums

And so the truth hits your mind

And dies like old leftovers

With the mocking fire eye of America

Berating down on you,

Its poison running through your veins

As you hoist carnivorous eyes to the world.

I have reason to believe that Gauff has hijacked my iPod shuffle

In the last 48 hours

Because she’s laid her head to rest —

She’s snoozing off to the left

On a sun-lit, screened-in porch,

Laughing at her Charlie Horses

And puerile taste in liquor

And swimming in the muck

Of America, of

Gawkers complimenting her new woman’s shape.

He sits atop a land mine

That is his castle

And

I know

That castle is his jail

Because

.

I constantly

Hear his snips —

Now he wants to

Fight, now

He wants to buy,

And it was never

Enough and

Tonight

.

When I retire to bed

My blood will be

The same color as his

Apologizing for itself and

Swimming beside kitten’s fur.

When people are happy in my town it’s like a found art object. One example would be the two liquor store clerks talking about STD’s. I said it was like something out of the movie Clerks. They asked me if I’d ever had an STD. I said no and that I even went to IU so that meant I’d been extra lucky and my guardian angel had been watching me. They accepted everything I said with this steady, semi-oblivious, slightly passive-aggressive element of disregard. The fat dude who was talking a lot would never laugh, but only offer, in jovial but finally indolent disposition, more anecdotes, like “I thought I had an STD but it turns out she just ruptured a blood vessel in my penis.” I loved how he blamed her. So authentic. The other guy only talked when he was spoken to, pretty much. They made the perfect work pair. I started bounding out, having declined a receipt and exchanged no more words with either of the two. It was a Saturday night at about 9:30 in early August, temperate and raining. As I was walking out, I heard the talking dude say something about how there’s a tube from the testes to the penis and his friend got his injured. The more you know, I thought. I got in my car, cracked a Summer Shandy, started driving home and just letting it all sink in. Tomorrow it would be back to sports, tattoos and Magic the Gathering, I figured. I mean, it’s only so often you get two guys alone in a liquor store at 9:30 on a rainy night in August.

So is there someone

Up in the sky

Who, like,

Consciously writes all our dreams every night?

.

That would be a funny job —

Like a cross between

A news reporter

And a

Saturday Night Live hawker.

As a bi-product

Of

.

Some strange

Inclination in my heart

To live my life

.

I search for information on Juneteenth

And I can feel the eyes on me

And they are dark,

Cold and dead,

And

.

They are

Posing

As

.

A conduit

Spotlighting a gluttonous bigot.

.

I wanted Juneteenth to be mine too and

They hate that.

 

It’s Memorial Day Sunday,

I glide back into town

From Red Bud Trail

And the bypass.

.

I’m filling gas and

Next to me

I notice a woman who

Seems kind of

Eclectic and lively, like

Someone who would be

Really into cats

Or maybe Van Gogh.

.

Ok, that’s a stretch.

.

Cats and plants.

.

She is regardless

Accompanying a man who’s

Riding a motorcycle and

Who strikes me generally,

Sidelong,

As big, ugly and angry.

.

Eventually

After the man administers

Various mannerisms and gesticulations

Which somewhat resemble epileptic seizures,

.

The two get on the bike and start to ride away.

.

The weather is perfect

And I’m a near-immaculate mood

So when I almost cut them off

While leaving,

I give a very polite

Smile and wave, letting them go.

.

The fu**ing bastard doesn’t even

Smile or wave as, staring at me

In ugly clothes, an ugly face and

A loud, obnoxious vehicle,

They ride off.

 

The next Sunday I’m in Big Lots

And there’s a couple next to me.

.

I’m pretty accustomed to just keeping my

Head down around people

But this guy is like

Jerking his arms up and down

Like a crackhead

And lunging to and fro,

To the point where

.

I find myself trying to stare him down,

And then I kind of just feel bad,

Because I know how people are

(I especially know how this dude is).

.

He goes to church and

Gets a new truck to polish

Every year and now

We’re all going to hear about it,

Whether he tells us or not.

.

And he’s convulsing and

Lunging around, in

Big Lots, rather like

A dog would, sending

My blood pressure up and

My level of interest down

And there’s the woman,

Rewarding the ape-like

Disposition like some

Paradigmatic swatch of

Universal law that is

The only thing that could have

Created Taylor Swift.

.

And I just put my head down

And walk out and

Try not to care about

The pervasive devolution movement

Prevalent in our culture

And I don’t.