In 2007, Andrew Warner quickly emerged as Cincinnati's premier street magician. Following in the traditions of David Blaine and Criss Angel, Warner brings his own urban sensibilities to in-your-face magic. After a cross country magic tour sponsored by CiN Weekly, Warner is back in Ohio, now based in Columbus, re-establishing himself as a local presence.
Lately small towns seem like a good idea.
Living in mid-size, disjointed cities has always deprived me of a sense of community. Communities exist within these larger cities, but you always have to look for them. That, and these small sub-communities have splintered natures that always make them feel separated from the rest of the world.
So this weekend, Tracy and I decided to go to a smaller town, stay at a quaint bed and breakfast, and see if a small town felt any different.
We went to Yellow Springs, Ohio— a small rural village with a three-block downtown and a progressive college that is all but extinct. The kind of place where everyone knows everyone and they’re not afraid to gossip. The only difference between Yellow Springs and the average American small town is the fact that the people of Yellow Springs fancy themselves to be progressive thinkers. I read in their local newspaper that Barack Obama received over 2000 votes while John McCain received a paltry 200 and some change. Aside from that, there was an anti-war protest that wasn’t stopped by a small blanket of snow.
In some ways it was exactly what I expected. We saw the same people over and over again (because there is only a handful). We ate at pretty much every restaurant in the span of two days. We saw the one movie that was showing—a Robert DeNiro movie that we talked about with some of the friendly, older locals. We checked out Tom’s Market, the only grocery store in the small village.
Tracy noticed some different things, though. The people at Peach’s, the local bar and grill, didn’t really talk to each other or seem to know each other. You couldn’t really get a good cup of coffee easily or spend hours in a coffee shop on a Saturday night (closed at 7). In her words, the people there seemed to lack “purpose.” There were a lot of people in their 30s with dreadlocks that seemed to make them progressive, but they were mostly just working at a pizza place or going to a bar.
So I kicked that around in my head for a while because it was sort of strange. It was starting to feel like a village full of transient posers and not so much like a tight-knit forward-thinking community. But it occurred to me also that this might be the point. A place to go where there doesn’t have to be a “purpose.” The small town may be a throwback to another era in America where we weren’t all trying to climb up on the next rung of the ladder to become someone “better.”
Or maybe it’s just a place where people can surround themselves with people who think exactly the same. And they can throw out anyone who thinks different. Maybe in the cities quest to create a perfect, forward thinking little utopia, they’ve created a vacuum for intellectual thought and diversity—ironically exactly what they would accuse their political opposites of doing.
Regardless, I don’t know which side of life has it right. Ultimately, I think city-folk and small-town folk both have it half right. And it seems like that’s they closest we’ll get to perfection.
