Well, this post was finally found by reddit and I've had to close the comments to only paying subscribers.
I don't really want to address their issues, because I'll let the piece speak for itself.
But the idea I unfairly targeted Phoenix by choosing the worst part of town entirely misses what I do. I don't ever stay in the touristy parts of town. I don't use cabs or cars. I walk and use public transportation, and I stay at the lowest cost motels I can find.
The part of Phoenix I stayed in, and walked, is a large part of Phoenix. It's not some weird anomaly. Just like the South Bronx is very much NYC, as is East LA, or Central Cleveland, or Northside Milwaukee, all of which I've stayed in.
God, dude, this one hit me like a gut punch. I realized I've been waiting and hoping for you to have a positive experience in America, and I'm still reeling from your hellish journey to the Port Authority in NYC. With this one, I'm practically shouting (at my screen), "Go to a ballgame, Chris! The Suns are doing great! Check in to the Hyatt Regency for a coupla days and get a massage!" This unflinching look you're giving at what's happening all around us, even in my little town in Oregon, is vital and important. And deeply disturbing. Anybody hearing our political candidates talking about this?
Wow, just wow. I'm currently three weeks into a stay in Valencia, Spain. Over the course of three weeks I've seen maybe a half dozen homeless people and zero drug use. And no, we aren't in the nicest, touristy part of the city. It's very working class, but even the less "nice" neighborhoods are nothing like the hell hole you described.
"It’s fascinating to listen to street users, especially those towards the bottom of the mental capacity range, regurgitate Mickey Mouse versions of modern therapy talk, which is centered with the idea of trauma. It’s become a very modern way for them to justify their behavior. It’s not my fault. It’s my past trauma speaking!"
I wonder if this is an artifact of court mandated therapy/other interactions with the therapeutic state? If you learn that talking about your trauma is incentivized, you'd do it much more often.
What a piercing piece. As an American living in Europe, I'm often struck, every time I'm back n the US, not just by how dystopian it has become, but by how no one seems to notice it.
I am always astonished that Philadelphia and Phoenix have the same population but Phoenix is 4x the size in area. 4x! …. and it’s not like Philadelphia is Tokyo; a good 20% is probably park land. Great post as usual Chris. Hope you have recovered from the random virus.
The idea this is a problem created from “woke leftism” is astounding to me. My parents live in a small, rural town in Texas that has many of the same problems, just on a smaller scale. This is a problem created by policies of BOTH political parties. Both red and blue states and federal governments have seriously underfunded mental healthcare for decades. It was a conservative president who forever changed the way mental healthcare is delivered, who never put a solid plan in place before gutting what existed. Lives of desperation are almost always touched by poverty. No one in this country wants to do what needs to be done to prop up children and families living in poverty. I suspect if Chris had surveyed every person he encountered, he would have discovered that the “child protective” system had been a fixture in more than half of their lives. There are no simple fixes, but a good start would be to actually protect the most vulnerable-children and the elderly.
Your reports from places I don't want to go to in what little time I have left on earth are riveting.
This report brought to mind that once upon a time I was falling into a hell like the one you describe. But I was lucky and stumbled onto a different and far less hellish path among infinite parallel realities.
I suspect I turned down that fork the moment I was told I must strip and be hosed down with disinfectant or I would not be allowed to sleep one night in a flop house in New Orleans, clutching my battered sneakers as my pillow so they wouldn't be stolen.
That was when the only form of travel I could afford was hitch-hiking. Walking would have taken too long; I didn't have the money for all the meals walking requires, even when supplemented by stealing from grocery stores and sleeping on the ground.
Now I'm rich. I fly across oceans to walk from inn to inn along scenic trails. I pay local guides to explain to me--in my native language--the wonders of where I am.
Go figure.
My reality ain't nothing like the reality so many others live in.
Chris: Each of your reports is a powerful momento mori.
The things Chris describes are also present in central San Francisco, downtown Atlanta, downtown Portland, and downtown Seattle -- many U.S. cities -- but the climate and built environment of Phoenix sort of amplifies and frames them in a way that's even more jarring. As a country, we urgently need to grapple with the multitude of policy challenges identified in this piece, but even Democrats are entirely disinterested.
In an alternate reality, he jumped in an Uber at the airport and headed straight for downtown or Arcadia or Scottsdale or Tempe like a normal visitor and had a wildly different experience. Phoenix does have a bad homeless/drug problem and you’ll definitely see it if you go to the wrong places, but this is not a problem unique to Phoenix.
This was interesting to me because I was in the area for a walking-intensive time in January. I was visiting family in Scottsdale, about a mile from the walkable tourist reservation of Old Town Scottsdale. The sidewalks were fine, but the businesses were in stripmalls and you did get the sense that the difficult people were kept elsewhere, and of course the layout was all car-scale. At one point my mom and I took the bus west on Indian School aiming for the Heard Museum, and while the hardware was nice there was a definite sense that this was the option of last resort. My mom took the light rail away from the museum and couldn't pay ahead because the kiosks didn't work; one of them had been torched.
Interesting place for this NE quadrant guy , but your description described what I suspected I was missing. Very our grim meathook cyberpunk dystopia future.
Your note below on therapy speak struck a chord with me. I have given this issue a lot of thought recently when in the US so much is now called "trauma" and "PTSD"
If it helps some get through their troubles and resolve them, all the best. to them. This is a valid diagnosis for some people and I try to be sympathetic but......
"It’s fascinating to listen to street users, especially those towards the bottom of the mental capacity range, regurgitate Mickey Mouse versions of modern therapy talk, which is centered with the idea of trauma. It’s become a very modern way for them to justify their behavior. It’s not my fault. It’s my past trauma speaking!"
It’s drugs and the fact that a phony lying leadership group would rather rule over Hell than fix the problem
Secure the border
Rebuild institutions to house and/incarcerate those who refuse treatment and lure others into the life
Get them off the streets for both their own benefit and for the benefit of society as a whole. With ‘freedom’ comes civic responsibility. No one has a right to make others and society as a whole miserable to satisfy their own demons
Will this ever happen? Not a chance. There is no longer a collective ‘we’
Write off those who can’t/wont be helped to at least prevent them from spreading their poison to others
I live in Phoenix and this is over the top scare tactics . Pick ANY large city in the US or Europe and if you dig deep enough you can find horrific living conditions. There is so much more to Phoenix than this slanted piece.
Well, this post was finally found by reddit and I've had to close the comments to only paying subscribers.
I don't really want to address their issues, because I'll let the piece speak for itself.
But the idea I unfairly targeted Phoenix by choosing the worst part of town entirely misses what I do. I don't ever stay in the touristy parts of town. I don't use cabs or cars. I walk and use public transportation, and I stay at the lowest cost motels I can find.
The part of Phoenix I stayed in, and walked, is a large part of Phoenix. It's not some weird anomaly. Just like the South Bronx is very much NYC, as is East LA, or Central Cleveland, or Northside Milwaukee, all of which I've stayed in.
I knew you'd probay hate it. I have family there and have seen its dusty streets close up many times. I love the desert but Phoenix is grim.
God, dude, this one hit me like a gut punch. I realized I've been waiting and hoping for you to have a positive experience in America, and I'm still reeling from your hellish journey to the Port Authority in NYC. With this one, I'm practically shouting (at my screen), "Go to a ballgame, Chris! The Suns are doing great! Check in to the Hyatt Regency for a coupla days and get a massage!" This unflinching look you're giving at what's happening all around us, even in my little town in Oregon, is vital and important. And deeply disturbing. Anybody hearing our political candidates talking about this?
Wow, just wow. I'm currently three weeks into a stay in Valencia, Spain. Over the course of three weeks I've seen maybe a half dozen homeless people and zero drug use. And no, we aren't in the nicest, touristy part of the city. It's very working class, but even the less "nice" neighborhoods are nothing like the hell hole you described.
It's shocking how much of America is broken.
"It’s fascinating to listen to street users, especially those towards the bottom of the mental capacity range, regurgitate Mickey Mouse versions of modern therapy talk, which is centered with the idea of trauma. It’s become a very modern way for them to justify their behavior. It’s not my fault. It’s my past trauma speaking!"
I wonder if this is an artifact of court mandated therapy/other interactions with the therapeutic state? If you learn that talking about your trauma is incentivized, you'd do it much more often.
What a piercing piece. As an American living in Europe, I'm often struck, every time I'm back n the US, not just by how dystopian it has become, but by how no one seems to notice it.
I am always astonished that Philadelphia and Phoenix have the same population but Phoenix is 4x the size in area. 4x! …. and it’s not like Philadelphia is Tokyo; a good 20% is probably park land. Great post as usual Chris. Hope you have recovered from the random virus.
The idea this is a problem created from “woke leftism” is astounding to me. My parents live in a small, rural town in Texas that has many of the same problems, just on a smaller scale. This is a problem created by policies of BOTH political parties. Both red and blue states and federal governments have seriously underfunded mental healthcare for decades. It was a conservative president who forever changed the way mental healthcare is delivered, who never put a solid plan in place before gutting what existed. Lives of desperation are almost always touched by poverty. No one in this country wants to do what needs to be done to prop up children and families living in poverty. I suspect if Chris had surveyed every person he encountered, he would have discovered that the “child protective” system had been a fixture in more than half of their lives. There are no simple fixes, but a good start would be to actually protect the most vulnerable-children and the elderly.
Good to have you back in action, CA.
Your reports from places I don't want to go to in what little time I have left on earth are riveting.
This report brought to mind that once upon a time I was falling into a hell like the one you describe. But I was lucky and stumbled onto a different and far less hellish path among infinite parallel realities.
I suspect I turned down that fork the moment I was told I must strip and be hosed down with disinfectant or I would not be allowed to sleep one night in a flop house in New Orleans, clutching my battered sneakers as my pillow so they wouldn't be stolen.
That was when the only form of travel I could afford was hitch-hiking. Walking would have taken too long; I didn't have the money for all the meals walking requires, even when supplemented by stealing from grocery stores and sleeping on the ground.
Now I'm rich. I fly across oceans to walk from inn to inn along scenic trails. I pay local guides to explain to me--in my native language--the wonders of where I am.
Go figure.
My reality ain't nothing like the reality so many others live in.
Chris: Each of your reports is a powerful momento mori.
Thank you.
The things Chris describes are also present in central San Francisco, downtown Atlanta, downtown Portland, and downtown Seattle -- many U.S. cities -- but the climate and built environment of Phoenix sort of amplifies and frames them in a way that's even more jarring. As a country, we urgently need to grapple with the multitude of policy challenges identified in this piece, but even Democrats are entirely disinterested.
In an alternate reality, he jumped in an Uber at the airport and headed straight for downtown or Arcadia or Scottsdale or Tempe like a normal visitor and had a wildly different experience. Phoenix does have a bad homeless/drug problem and you’ll definitely see it if you go to the wrong places, but this is not a problem unique to Phoenix.
This was interesting to me because I was in the area for a walking-intensive time in January. I was visiting family in Scottsdale, about a mile from the walkable tourist reservation of Old Town Scottsdale. The sidewalks were fine, but the businesses were in stripmalls and you did get the sense that the difficult people were kept elsewhere, and of course the layout was all car-scale. At one point my mom and I took the bus west on Indian School aiming for the Heard Museum, and while the hardware was nice there was a definite sense that this was the option of last resort. My mom took the light rail away from the museum and couldn't pay ahead because the kiosks didn't work; one of them had been torched.
Interesting place for this NE quadrant guy , but your description described what I suspected I was missing. Very our grim meathook cyberpunk dystopia future.
Your note below on therapy speak struck a chord with me. I have given this issue a lot of thought recently when in the US so much is now called "trauma" and "PTSD"
If it helps some get through their troubles and resolve them, all the best. to them. This is a valid diagnosis for some people and I try to be sympathetic but......
"It’s fascinating to listen to street users, especially those towards the bottom of the mental capacity range, regurgitate Mickey Mouse versions of modern therapy talk, which is centered with the idea of trauma. It’s become a very modern way for them to justify their behavior. It’s not my fault. It’s my past trauma speaking!"
It’s drugs and the fact that a phony lying leadership group would rather rule over Hell than fix the problem
Secure the border
Rebuild institutions to house and/incarcerate those who refuse treatment and lure others into the life
Get them off the streets for both their own benefit and for the benefit of society as a whole. With ‘freedom’ comes civic responsibility. No one has a right to make others and society as a whole miserable to satisfy their own demons
Will this ever happen? Not a chance. There is no longer a collective ‘we’
Write off those who can’t/wont be helped to at least prevent them from spreading their poison to others
I live in Phoenix and this is over the top scare tactics . Pick ANY large city in the US or Europe and if you dig deep enough you can find horrific living conditions. There is so much more to Phoenix than this slanted piece.
Reading this reminded me of the old No Reservation episodes of Bourdain traveling to the southwest. I’m glad someone is telling this story.