The New and Improved Dope Dealers

“Nor can we deny that we all eat and that each of us has grown strong on the bodies of innumerable animals.  Here each of us is a king in his own field of corpses.”

                                                                            Elias Canetti

         Beware of shadowy figures that skulk around empty lots with attaché cases filled with false hopes.  They dress like cardsharps and sport pencil thin mustaches and wry expressions.  These men will tell you anything you need to know that will advance their cause.  They have the morals of carnies and will not hesitate to lure you in with promises of boundless prosperity.  But what you don’t know is that what they sell is nothing more than a roiling, death machine designed to suck the marrow out your towns and your souls.  These men traffic in blight with salesmanship not seen since Jim Jones opened up his first Kool-aid stand.  They are the new and improved dope dealers, real estate developers and we are the dopes.

Me being a man of dubious pedigree have met a few of these gonifs in this town’s more notorious dens of iniquity and to a man each has about as much creativity as a wet beer fart. Real estate developers compensate for this lack of artistic vision by having some of the most unctuous, repugnant personalities this side of The Marrakech Adult Video Awards. “We’re putting in 5 more Starbucks!” Slicky Slick chirps with a smile usually reserved for the criminally insane and 3-card Monte dealers “This area is way under caffeinated!” His lunacy is further enhanced by the fact that the commercial parcel he is speaking of was no larger than the landing strip of the headliner at the local strip club. 

Developers will take any trend no matter how overcooked and ram it down the throat of fresh virgin municipalities with the ferocity of a Jehovah’s Witness on crank.  A real estate developer’s dream is to take the world over by building as many high concept, interchangeable pieces of shit as he can for as long as he can before it becomes a crime against humanity. Real estate developers are Stephen King’s most horrific creation, The Undaunted.  They are one mission to develop any piece of terra firma that isn’t property of the United States government. Don’t fall asleep or you might wake up and find an Old Navy opening up on your ass. 

How else can you explain the virulent march of retail chains like Wal-mart, Starbucks, and Bed, Bath and Beyond? Have you ever been beyond? I have. It’s not as great as you might think. How many Home Depots, Pet Smarts, McDonalds or Piercing Pagodas, does a “free” society need?  Look at what’s happened to most of the one horse, jerkwater towns left in this country, a clusterfuck of biblical proportions, an endless river of homogenized retail gruel. Given enough time real estate developers will erect these totems to blandness in every town, burgh and outpost rendering this country as flavorless as bubbi’s boiled chicken.  Developers buy into the notion that a capitalistic society must constantly be moving forward like a shark. Without constant expansion we are doomed.  This is the trap that capitalism creates and developers rush to it like death to the light.  Will there be any area left unsullied, any area left with its indigenousness still intact after being raped by the whirring succubus of real estate development, the canard that masquerades as progress?

I have a theory that if you blindfolded your kids, drove them around for a few hours then dropped them off at some boilerplate mall in another state they would still believe they were on their home turf.  Once they saw the candy colored windows of Victoria’s Secret they’d know they were where they always were on a Saturday afternoon, not at the ball field for an impromptu pickup game, but in the warm bosom of local capitalism. So what if it’s Utica. These kids will just go home with some other family anyway and never know the difference.