The Off Season
A time of the year, or an epoch?
In the early days of 2020, I proposed a long-form project loosely called The Off Season. I had intended to document the highs and lows of seasonal places. Iconic, bucolic, deserted. The peace of a down season, the challenges of making it through.
Within months, as we were collectively plunged into the longest off-season, a radical refocus happened, and the project came to encompass a broader approach. Economic collapse, political and social upheaval, an attempted coup. Was it off-season…everywhere, all the time?
The first of many trips across and up and down the US sent me looking. Coastal towns, sure we all share a certain thing. There is a remarkable, nostalgic charm to a shuttered coastal town in the off-season.
Why is it so sinister looking when a non-coastal town is shuttered? Why is urban emptiness scary and coastal emptiness wistful? (Unless you chase ruin-porn and climb through the wreckage of recently deceased civilizations- then it is a super playground of amazing light, shapes, history and wonder.)
McLean Texas
McLean will need it’s own whole story, this “seasonal town” on a Route 66 Bypass is the home to the Devil’s Rope Museum of Barbed Wire and the McLean Cafe. It is bustling in the peak Americana road-trip season and becomes slowly stripped bare by addicts during the off-season.
Dollar General
Along the way and over thousands of miles, a few constants appeared. At the head of every dead Main Street was a Dollar General. It stood like a beacon of decay, carrying poorly made products, paying low wages. David Purdue made a fortune in removing jobs from Main Street and consolidating retail.
There are no boogeymen.
People are angry, as if someone or something has taken their places away, when, by and large we do it to ourselves. We want variety, or cheap or fast. And then speak nostalgically about the old five and dime. When you picked between the black shoes or the white shoes.
It is up to us to make choices every day about how we want to act within the places we live and the people we live alongside.
The only way to end this current season.
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Very powerful images!
Crazy timing that, I was just at a dollar general in a small twin a few weeks ago. Very interesting read!