Downtown…

The movie Girl Interrupted where Angelina Jolie plays a broken selfish mental patient who ruins people around her to feel good about herself made the song Downtown by Petula Clark stick to me with special significance.

When it was repeating on cable a million times a day in 2002, I watched it a bunch and drew up plans for a community and commerce center I would call “Downtown” and place in small towns. Living in Missouri at the time, the biggest complaint from people was that there was “nothing to do”. A gripe that always annoyed me because there is more to do now than in the history of the world – people have just gotten more and more boring. Everyone thinks there is only fun and excitement in a city (ie: where other people are already doing things and boring people can just latch onto the fun already happening instead of ever make their own). I imagined my “Downtown” being a place with restaurants and arcades and theaters and gyms plus more unique activities, attractions, live events and gatherings. At dusk every day, the lights across the Center would raise for the evening as the rumbles of Petula Clarks song would play over the speakers and the place would transform into its night version, providing a visually exciting diverse appeal to the area that would incite a sense of wonder. The inspiration was the two lost souls in Girl Interrupted who just desperately needed guidance and an outlet for their unique personalities but were trapped in surroundings that didn’t foster these traits or successfully aid their struggles. I imagined a place that would attract families and couples but also teenagers and younger kids in smaller towns showing them a taste of imagination realized in the physical world to make them all feel less isolated, lonely and bored and hopefully inspire many to actualize their own ambitions and passions.

In a way, its how I’ve always seen this website, as many have found it a digital incarnation of something like my “Downtown”. I’ve always tried to make it an eccentric but welcoming empire, with the 1939 rendition of the Emerald City in mind. The moment when Dorothy, the Lion, Tinman and Scarecrow have escaped the dangers of the deadly poppy field and skip toward the glittering majestic metropolis serving as a green oasis in the middle of the fairyland wilderness is one of my favorite images, ever.

I mostly shelved the idea of building “Downtowns” across America’s small towns, but only in favor of a more immediate version I could actually achieve.

Years later, a lost and isolated soul myself, I am working on a full-force attack of something that has been in my hopper for a few years now that I recently decided must receive full dedication and attention.

I can’t talk about it too much quite yet, and it is a few years from becoming a reality. But in many ways it will be my Downtown.

And you may find somebody kind to help and understand you.
Someone who is just like you and needs a gentle hand to
Guide them along
So maybe I’ll see you there.
We can forget all our troubles, forget all our cares.

and go Downtown.
Things will be great when you’re downtown.
Don’t wait a minute more. Downtown.