Alameda Street #91, El Paso- November 2009
This street is changing. New Medical School and renewed Medical Center just down the block. Oh yeah they have the Grand Plan.
But the south side has its own Plan and the hot paint keeps coming!
Yeah man, this street is the Grand Plan dealing with the No Plan, the natural plan, the reality plan of the people who hang here, hanging onto the funk, south side people.
Like me.
Like Letty.
Been on this street for a long time.
It’s a lot of things: long way home on a boozy night, hamburger joints, tons of Used Car lots, still a few Panaderias, some real Bible-thumpin’ iglesias peeking out from corrugated sheds, a couple of spots where the nasty corporate Grid has laid its mark (they are always trying), old motels hiding behind the crazy overlapping mechanic shops (Downum Radiator Repair…got to give you a special category for saving my steaming sled) from when this was the main strip into town on the old Highway US 80, the main way in from Texas. It was always Americana meets Chicano and the Chicano and Chicano always won.
But, the Medical Center is here. That’s that. Clean it up. Medicine Centers equals redevelopment and bucks.
But Letty is here too. And, for now, me too.
Orele!
