So its clear my recent business trip to Cleveland, OH did put a damper on my blogging activity. No big deal though… I have plenty to blog on. I stayed in the Courtyard Marriot in the Willoughby, Cleveland area. I have always found it kind of exciting staying in a hotel. It’s like an adventure what with the secret access card, the strange people that call me by my sir name, and the fact that I never have to clean my room. Of course the initial appeal of staying in a hotel only seems to last for all of one day then I get tired of it. There is never anything to watch on tv, the room temperature is either too warm or too cold and my entire night consists of reading a book and getting up to constantly change the thermostat. Hotels suck!

So one night, in my restlessness, I decided to just go for a drive… at midnight! And what better place to drive that late at night than the hood?! So I go driving down Euclid Avenue on the north side of Cleveland Heights down towards downtown.

Euclid Avenue reminds me alot of Georgia Avenue in DC. Crackheads and sellers at every stoplight, squad cars patrolling the surrounding blocks, that strange rundown motel that can’t possibly be charging more than $20 bucks a night (and from the looks of it, even that would be a ripoff), and late opening chinese takeout stores. I remember, over a year ago, driving down this very street dodging potholes to a dancehall beat and being pulled over by the cops for allegedly not coming to a complete stop at a stop sign (trust me, there was no stop sign for miles that I could see). The cop pulled me over because my weaving car had to signal a drugged up junkie or a drunk guy on the way home from the bar. I was very polite (as I always am to the police) and I could tell that he immediately started having doubts as to exactly how inebriated he had imagined me to be. That didn’t stop him from asking me if I minded taking a breathalyzer. To his surprise, and mine, I was in a pretty good mood and cheerfully shot back a “don’t mind if I do” mixed in with a little “I have always wanted to take one of those!” My cooperation served as a good ice-breaker and I could tell he wasn’t even interested in the results of the test anymore (he knew I was sober) but was pretty psyched about explaining the whole procedure to me. I passed the test with flying colours!

Most people would find a street like Euclid or Georgia a tad bit dangerous and dark. Not me. I grew up on the streets of Kingston, Jamaica and had never felt like anywhere in the US quite compared to the Jamaican ghettos. Instead, I have always had a kind of weird fascination with the streets. I used to walk home up Georgia Ave. late at night and watch the druggies smoke crack from bent soda cans with holes in them as the dealers looked out from dark corners or 24 hour laundromats (drug dealers love laundromats… must be the fresh smell).

Nothing seems to have changed since I last drove down Euclid over a year ago. And that’s sad. Because I think that our streets and neighbourhoods are some of the most blatant displays of class discrimination in the United States. I understand that the poverty and attitude of blacks and latinos (and whites too) contribute to the overall degradation of certain areas in a city… but what is the excuse for the apathy towards that degradation?! There is none. The people in power do not care about those in the lower class. I have heard several arguments that hit out against welfare, food stamps, and low income housing and by far the worst and most inhumane one is the chant that the poor just haven’t tried hard enough to not be poor. Has anyone thought to themselves that only so many of us can be well off? That not everyone can be in the lower-middleclass to upper-class brackets for the same reason that someone has to finish last in a marathon race? As long as we compete against our fellow man for limited resources someone has to be a winner and someone has to be a loser whether it be his will or not. I have great sympathy for the poor and I am for any hand up from the powers that be that do not encourage slothfulness and irresponsibility. Put people on welfare but give them a limited amount of time to get off of it. Give people food stamps but find a way to ensure they are used only on food. Enforce affirmative action the way it was mean’t to be enforced by going out there and recruiting deserving and qualified minorities. I swear… we, as humans, complicate life so much more than it was mean’t to be.