The financial, political, and international forces of our time, by all accounts, are just now taking a breather from the greatest depression since the greatest depression ever in the universe of time, ever.
Sales down, unemployment up, companies crumbling, national economies in tumbling freefall, like dark matter careening in a toilet-bowl spiral toward the event horizon of the black hole called the greatest depression since the greatest depression ever in the universe of time, ever.
For months, it was easy to remain immune. But now, many many months into this, it’s all starting to sound a little tedious. And marginal, and emotionally charged with American Dreamania, and whatever.
If you owned a home you couldn’t afford and which consequently went into foreclosure (sooooo 2008!), I guess you can nod your head smugly, grimly, and line up behind Paul Krugman at the NY Times to moan about the (clearing throat) Economic Apocalypse(tm). Or if you are a big, wasteful, sloppy, lazy, inefficient, obsolete company that has squandered the fortunes of fools and sheep, you might be nodding your head grimly as you feel the bite of illegal and misguided government intervention in your affairs, affairs which the free markets would creatively destroy and reassemble in more nimble aspects.
But I’d like to talk about Main Street, because that’s where my elected officials apparently think I keep my address. San Francisco is not Detroit, Stockton, Fresno, Sacramento, or any one of the towns I am told — with heartfelt music and regular-people gumption — are bearing the brunt of the greatest depression since blah blah blah. My Main Street was razed to the ground after the internet bubble popped back in 2000. I’ll match any grovelling-for-income story from 2002 with anyone else’s grovelling-for-income story from 2009. Pound for pound, wheat cake for wheat cake. We all find ways to survive, even when it feels like we may be on the street in a matter of weeks. Recessions, upturns, downturns, are normal, no matter how they were caused. You buck up and navigate through it, with your wits, and with your drive to not fail. If you’re lucky, you do it without any assistance from the government. You hold your head even higher when things turn around and you realize you persevered because of YOU and not because of some magical alignment of union agreements and government spending programs.
It’s May. Work for me was thin for about two months around the turn of the year. Nothing disastrous. I’ve learned as a freelance contractor how to make a dollar go a long way. In February, things picked up and have been peachy since. I’m getting ready to serve two clients at the same time, doubling my income for a short period of time. I still find time to buy Bluray discs, eat high-quality sushi at least once a week, shop frequently at Whole Foods, buy new clothes, and sock money away.
But that’s just me. Let’s talk for a minute about this Main Street thing. Even the loosest interpretation of this ridiculous “body” leads one to the conclusion that things just aren’t that bad — unless, of course, you live in one of a statistically unimportant handful of communities disproportionately crushed by the failures of local industry.
My local Best Buy is constantly packed with customers slouching under the weight of new HDTVs, gaudy laptops, silly little digital cameras, camera phones, and MP3 cameras. I have never seen supermarkets like Safeway, Whole Foods, or Rainbow Grocery more stuffed with bitchy consumers sniping at each other over a place in one of the looooong lines to the register. If anything, the length of time I stand in line at a supermarket has increased dramatically since the onset of the greatest depression since blah, blah, blah. I frequent sushi bars like a whore on her claimed corner, and I’m happy to report that they are always full, often with wait times. Sushi dining can hardly be called frugal, so what, exactly is going on?
San Francisco may be a hotbed of overeducated, overcompensated opportunists, but it’s certainly not lacking in low-income individuals: the college set, the three-renters-to-an-apartment set, the ethnic families, and my favorite, the I’m-30-and-don’t-have-to-do-a-goddamned-thing-my-aging-liberal-parents-think-I-should-do set. Video stores, bars, grocery stores, corner stores, coffee shops, these all are socioeconomically flattening indicators of any economy’s consumer health. If I landed in San Francisco from another planet and you tried to convince me that we were experiencing the greatest depression since the beginning of space and time, I’d laugh in your face — if I came from a planet with vocal chords and laughter as a social convention.
So, whether human or alien (the verdict is still out), I laugh in the face of this great recession/depression/ragnarok. Perhaps others should, too. It’s easy when you stop paying attention to the news. Or reading other people’s blogs.