so i'm writing this bloggy thing to comment on how my lovely neighborhood has swiftly fallen into speculator hell in a few short years. once upon a time, it was supremely difficult to snag an apartment on coventry. rents were really cheap because the owners of the buildings had long ago paid off their mortgages. sure they were rat-infested firetraps but you got to live in the niftiest neighborhood in town with all your friends and a bunch of people who became your friends. every year, a few more people would move in and become part of the fabric of life. they got jobs on the street, hung out on the coventryard, dated your ex-boyfriend's ex-girlfriend who lived with you because your cats got along so well. in short, life as usual on coventry.
then the owners started getting old. they began selling off their buildings, trading on the coventry magic to up the prices for their retirement. who wouldn't want to own a building with one hundred year old 'charm' in a cute hippie (if slightly downmarket) neighborhood? but the speculators realized that hippies don't pay much in rent so all that 'charm' got upgraded with glamour baths and security systems. then the students arrived. kids going to Case got the shilling of a lifetime. rents went way up to accommodate what these out-of-towners thought of as fair-market rent ($700/mo for a one bedroom apt that consisted of a tiny galley kitchen, a short hallway running alongside the bedroom and the bath sandwiched in between the two. that's it.). now when i make my yearly rounds of apartments to escape rising rents, roommate changes or evil scummy landlords i am informed of the wonderful hardwood floors, decorative fireplaces and quirky crown moldings that define my prospective home. unfortunately, these features are de riguer around these parts so the leasing agent (who IS something new around here) has just told me that this apartment is exactly like every other apartment on coventry:one hundred years old. as an added bonus, this year i am being asked how familiar i am with the area, a sure sign of a company that leases primarily, if not exclusively, to out-of-town students.
for some reason, this year is the tip over year on coventry. i look around the street and see ghosts where there should be life. we have too many empty stores and too many stores being shucked for higher-paying national chains. this is the street that was the heart of cleveland counterculture in the 60's and it kept that identity going for almost 40 years. i still say the death knell was sounded when the coventryard was filled with tables from arabica. they were so tightly packed together, their bulk seemed to say, "stay still. don't get up. don't dance. don't hackysack. don't skateboard. don't perform bike tricks. don't stage a swordfight. stay still." the tables killed the point of coming to coventry, which was mingling, dancing, etc. they killed the freedom of movement inherent in the coventryard. the lack of movement led everyone to stay away from the 'yard. the lack of people coming to coventry killed coventry as we knew it. now people come to coventry, but it's to stay inside one of our three sportsbars, drinking and screaming at televisions. when they're outside they still scream but at each other and they fight over parking and harass the elderly russian jews from musician's towers and give the suddenly ubiquitous crackheads money because they're too damn stupid to realize they're giving money to crackheads.
i want to change it. i need to change it. sometimes i think a good oldfashioned riot might chase the big-spenders away. turn the street into a bombed-out wreck and watch the investors flee. then all us die-hard, in it for life folks can have our street back, our neighborhood back, our lives back. sure it will be ashes and wreckage but it's kinda where we started and i think we'll do just fine.
