Dispatches

june 4 | 12:22 pm

i wished i loved anything as much as the most wealthy members of our community love skipping out on taxes (you know, the money that funds roads and schools and stuff for all of us).

-cs

#greed

/////

june 1 | 11:45 pm

my neighbors' dog died. his name was Elliott. he was a really sweet pup. i talked to his parents today. you can clearly see how much they are hurting. if you get it, you get it. if you don't, it's fine. you don't have to.

my dog went out into the yard tonight and ran his usual route along the fence line. he stopped at the spot where they used to meet up every day for the past couple of years. sometimes they'd even look at each other through the window, barking until they were both hoarse.

tonight he stood there for a while, just looking through the chainlink. he waited for a minute. then he sniffed the dirt and came back inside.

it's weird how much of a neighborhood's actual infrastructure is just the unspoken routines of the dogs, or people for that matter, that live there. you don't really realize how much space they take up just by existing until the yard next door is completely empty.

give your dogs an extra treat tonight. for Elliott, my sweet neighbor and a great champaign puppy. they don't ask for anything, but they give us so much.

i just realized i don't even know if his name is spelled with two t's or not. i'm guessing. we never talked about the spelling. i just know he was a good guy, ok? that's what matters.

-cs

#elliott

/////

may 30 | 3:48 pm

we're never losing another god damn basketball game again, ok?

-cs

#never #losing #again

/////

may 29 | 12:04 pm

there was a really good story in smile politely yesterday about maybe the most on-brand Urbana news story of all time, which is happening right now. the real fireworks are happening in the facebook comment section.

i'm not gonna pretend to be some expert who understands market economics and the need for more housing. i don't even live in Urbana. but i do think it probably isn't a very big deal to build a small apartment building near downtown.

if you're looking for a contrarian take here though, mine is that Urbana alderman Chris Evans rocks. i disagree with him on this issue specifically, but at least he cares about something enough to have some conviction and engage meaningfully with his constituents. the Champaign city council would be better off if they had someone like Chris. instead they just tacitly endorse flock safety. great.

the other contrarian take i have (which i'm not as confident in) is that the reason Urbana has a housing crisis is because of the massive amount of red tape the city creates to get projects off the ground. i think they could solve a lot of these problems by reforming their development process. but i digress. tsusrt.

have a good weekend.

-cs

#thats #some #urbana #shit #right #there

/////

may 28 | 7:48 am

the thing no one tells you when your partner is pregnant is that you’ll be desperate for full-strength caffeine. you’ll be so desperate that you’ll become a regular at the Circle K coffee bar. there is no problem that motor oil can’t solve. 

they have these new robot check out machines at the gas stations across town. you don’t interact with a person, you just place your coffee onto some sort of scanner and you’re outta there.

this makes it easy for people like me to avoid any sort of social accountability. i know the manager. i think they’re the manager. we went to school together growing up. they seem to have things together well; i hope they’re doing well. we used to be in the same pe class. now, when i visit the robot, we silently agree not to recognize each other. they even check my ID sometimes.

today, after this near-daily, self-inflicted, humiliation-adjacent ritual, i got in my car and took a drink and the lid completely fell off, flooding the car with circle k’s seasonal favorite flavor (s’mores, if you were wondering).

anyway, there seems to be some kind of widespread problem with the structural integrity of the circle k coffee cups, but it’s going to have to be someone else who brings that to their attention. for now.

-cs

#circlek #smores #sages

/////

may 25 | 11:48 pm

i declared the local music scene legally dead on twitter this month when canopy's calendar ran dry. i was wrong.

the brick-and-mortar footprint might be receding, but the actual pulse of our town doesn't rely on legacy venues with liquor licenses. it doesn't rely on college kids throwing house shows in their humid campus basements (though i have done this and it is very cool). it certainly doesn't rely on land developers who seek lucrative rents and endless profits, oftentimes at the expense of local culture.

i spent monday evening handing out tickets for the phoebe bridgers show. i watched the displaced convention of giggling and weeping teenagers in oversized blazers and silver hair clips filter past, absorbing through osmosis the specific brand of existential dread that hits when you are thirty-something and scanning barcodes. weirdly, it made me feel more optimistic about music in town than ever.

no, a solitary performance from a mega-star can't in and of itself save a music scene. so who does the scene rely on? it's the security guard who gets off of their day job and drives across town to work the door for a show. it's the weekend stage hand who stays late loading out even though he has to work construction when the sun comes up. it's the person who stayed here in the cornfields when they could have moved elsewhere. it's the thirty-something who scans barcodes. it relies on locals. it relies on us.

i did manage to abandon my post just long enough to slip inside and catch my three favorite songs. i know the end made me cry. i think it would have made you cry, too.

after the show i was outside talking with another weekend warrior with more experience than me:

"man, i remember when people used to just get drunk and fight at these things," he said, shaking his head. "now they lock up their phones, buy thirty-dollar tote bags, and weep."

there is a deeply stubborn, midwestern romanticism in that—trading a holiday for sleep deprivation just to make sure the music doesn't stop. the developers might own the skyline, but the counter culture belongs to the people sweating out the late shifts, and it always will.

as long as they are around, music in town can't die.

-cs

#ripcanopyclub #sweatequity #memorialday

/////