An Honest Tour Guide Takes You Through Your College Town

Nick Johnson
Jul 23, 2017 · 5 min read

You start downtown at a house party that people either are dying to be at or dying to leave but are there anyway. You swipe a cup, ignoring the $3 fee, fill it with watery beer, drink it down, leave, saying goodbye to people you didn’t talk to sitting on the porch steps. You make your way past some chain restaurants, fighting the urge to loudly push past the wall of crisp-shirted and bow-tied dudes occupying the entire width of sidewalk.

You cross the street, passing some closed boutiques and novelty stores on the way. You also pass the open windows of the richest bar in town, its cool mahogany interior beckoning and taunting you at the same time. You pass the homeless man next to a university building; he doesn’t ask you anything with words and he doesn’t want your pity either. He just wants you to be nice, but you’re not. You pass a wine bar with two suburbanites stumbling outside long past their bedtimes.

You slowly make your way past a music venue on a newly-cool block of town, but that block fades away as you get to car washes and car care centers and parking decks and more things to do with cars. A Domino’s store is in the middle of all of these motor vehicle establishments, with their own fleet of branded sedans. You pass the small bike shop housed in a crumbling craftsman house and cut through the parking deck, making sure to avoid eye contact with the single person coming the opposite way. One of the lights in the deck is out, adding to the ominous feeling you have and you project to the young person passing you.

Some people are smoking outside of the community arts center that doesn’t organize accessible forms of art anymore. Too many theater performances and rock concerts canceled for you to have faith in it. They have their own parking lot with a streetlight that’s constantly buzzing. Half of the lot is torn up, half is recently repaved to fit the image of the ersatz, bourgeois office space that has remained largely uninhabited since it opened.

Then you hit the train tracks, and across the street is the old beloved train station (now a bar). It’s a nice place to get a drink, but that’s mostly because finding another bar in this small town is like finding the Fountain of Youth. You pass the local co-op after that, no patrons at this hour but somehow still the buzz of the community. Then you pass the police station that no one remembers is there, except when cutting through the parking lot to get to the bus. You reach a crossroads that you walk across without hesitation because no one could be driving at this ungodly hour.

Last block remaining: the block where everything is closed. First you come across the auto shop, then the strangely upscale French restaurant with bad marketing. Then the corporate bank branch, the orthodontist’s office, and the artisan crafts store. At the end of it all is The Statue, a crude, immobile woman sitting on an ornate bench, with dead, indistinguishable eyes that somehow follow you all the way down the street. You find it representative of your night, as you’ve felt all eyes on you since you left the undesirable and overcrowded party. You feel the blind eyes pierce your back as you walk away, past the caddy-cornered gas stations always competing for the lowest price.

You make your way to the town plaza, which isn’t really the town plaza since it’s so far from downtown and few use it as a public space. Sometimes there are concerts, food truck rodeos, tai chi classes, but otherwise it’s a vacant field. You almost had your first kiss here, but you saw a police car in the parking lot and worried that your presence in this public space could be considered trespassing. (Really, the policeman was asleep.) So instead, you actually trespassed on government property at a local remedial school, but it was darker and private despite it being so open and you shared kisses and touched each other and sank into the dew-coated grass at 3 a.m.

You’re jolted from your memory as a fellow walker crosses the green. You’re cautious, wary at first, but then realize that he’s trying to get to a familiar place, just like you. No harm, no foul. You saw him because the full moon is out, lighting up the lawn enough that the candle-like streetlight doesn’t have to guide you home. You look at the moon and notice the craters don’t look like a face, but rather a striking crab, looking for its next bit of prey.

You cross one more street, eager for the sight of your porch steps. The trash bins smell like Brussels sprouts, and the nearest car is covered in a film of pollen grains. You cross the shallow courtyard up to your front steps. You test the loose doorknob, noting which lock to release. Once you’re inside, your cats look up at you expectantly, waiting for food, love, or something unknown. Cats tend to be mysterious. You head down the small hallway of your quaint, shared apartment, to your stuffy room. You realize you’ve walked the majority of your night, but that’s okay. There’s a pleasure in feeling the cracked concrete under your feet and the full moon’s crab casting shadows on your back. What’s more rejuvenating than a bit of moonlight inspiration? you think to yourself, as you tumble onto a plain blanket on top of a plain comforter on top of plain sheets. As you begin to drunkenly drift off, you hear sleepy sirens from what can only be police cars in the distance (the fire department is right down the street). The sound is soothing since you have a door that actively locks and skin that gets darker in the sunlight. You lie awake for a bit before your eyes mandate you go to sleep. You oblige, but then you dream about your town, your old dormitories and small businesses, your people who leave and come and go. It’s too much mental energy, so right now, you’re asleep, and the part of your brain that turns off material things defers to your imagination, inventing things that don’t work and seeing invisible things. You always see invisible things. You imagine this town as a booming metropolis, and you imagine this town pulling bunches of people from far and wide closer through its zany allure, its kaleidoscope of blue-collar and tie-dye and earth-tone. Perhaps one day. Perhaps.