Post 8 – Happier Times

If you read my previous posts, one of the smaller aspects of my project is mapping locations of bike racks for the city of Cleveland so they know where to put the ones they recently bought.  To do that, during periods of down time not at the shelter, I used Google Earth street view and “drove” down various important streets (Euclid Avenue had the most by a wide margin).  However, when technology failed on Friday, which was already slow, I decided to extend my lunch break into a driving tour around Cleveland marking locations of bike racks as I drove the city streets.  On my drive I found few bike racks, but many impoverished neighborhoods with derelict brick buildings at the corners of once popular streets advertising for beer and the lottery and occasional multi-story apartment buildings.  Adjacent to the apartment buildings are large vacant lots that appear to have once been the location of similar buildings, but have since been torn down due to lack of upkeep and demand for such housing.  Go three blocks away from the miniature (ie Cleveland sized) skyscrapers and one will inevitably encounter such an atmosphere of neglect that has caused the area to fall into disrepair since Cleveland’s demise.  The only nice buildings that line the streets are old, ornate churches and places of worship that are now abandoned, but provide constant reminders of happier times.  Upon leaving the forgotten, once-populous streets, you are left with a sense of nostalgia for the Cleveland that nearly doubled its population in ten years before the great depression or even the Cleveland that provided greatly to the war effort during WWII.  Since my project is about homelessness, I figured this analysis of the city-streets detailed a similar tragic demise of many of the homeless men in the shelter.