Viewing Main St. from a coffee shop, say the one next to Bob Hart Square c. 2006, the special characters that stood out on the sidewalk were chunky fellows in designer California casual attire and cellphones glued to their ears as their mouths made real estate deals. Today, looking out the window of a new coffee shop near the Art Kananger Center the special characters on the sidewalk are the homeless pushing babycarts bearing all the person's worldly goods and someone barrelling down the street on a mountain bike spouting off because she's off her medication for Tourette's Syndrome.
Yet so many of the people who made the decisions that turned Merced into the least affordable real estate market in the nation and then into one of the consistently highest per capita foreclosure-rate metro regions in the nation are still doing business at their old stands. They aren't sleek as they were once. In fact, some have aged so badly they can't be easily recognized beyond the confines of their offices and labeled public seats.
But, the chatting classes are expanded because of the arrival of UC Merced, which produces larger numbers of vacuously confident, subsidized students, youth in numbers still insufficient to become a municipal profit center. Alas, the students of UC Merced may never live up to the myth of their eternal prosperity-producing powers during the heyday of the Boom.
Badlands Journal editorial board
1-28-12
Merced Sun-Star
