They’re by no means necessities of life, but people sure are passionate about what kind of furniture they can buy and where they watch live football. In some towns there’s a wide array of these stores (there’s even more than one of the same brand!) and world class venues for live sports and entertainment. In others, people argue until they’re blue in the face about the particulars and viability of these new ventures. The escalating fuss about things that don’t even exist yet threaten them from even materializing at all, and distracts the rest of us from some of the real issues that confront our towns.
Sometimes we see commercials of funky-looking shelves that look fun to put together. The ads portray the shelves as unique and odd enough that we have to have them. And if there’s no place in our town to buy them, they become even more exotic. So we take off in the car to the closest town with this store. We come back and brag to others about how fun it was and how our apartments look so much better with said shelves. The demand for this store grows. The store gauges this, and decides to get the wheels in motion to build one in our town. But others catch wind and take issue with where the big box will be placed and how it’ll be developed. So it stalls.
If it’s hard enough getting something like that off the ground, imagine what it’s like trying to build a football stadium! Something that’s bigger but in lesser demand and will need money outside of private interests. The “not in my backyard” people scream even louder, as the stadium proponents take a cookie-cutter to a map and try to figure out just where in the town it’ll go. No matter what, people won’t be satisfied. They’ll debate for years about big buildings that aren’t even there.
The people who want to build these things have lots of money. And those who are against them live in homes they worry are too close. All the while, others in their town go hungry. Others need a home. And others have to deal with violent and unfair circumstances none of us could imagine. But these behemoth projects will keep grabbing headlines, even they’re nowhere close to becoming real. Nowhere near to kickoff, and nowhere near to packing a weird-looking side table into a trunk. Not as real as dying in the street.
