Boycott Merced

Merced's local theatre company, Playhouse Merced, has gone  through several changes and transitions.  The current board has the vision of making it a regional theatre, utilizing top name talent and nationally known stars.  This is quite a lofty goal.  Sadly, this company has too many things that will keep it from attaining its ambitions.  The first problem is the quality of the shows.  Too often there is one performer who shines and a crew of lost souls wandering around the stage.  They tend to have no focus, no character, no reaction, no clue.  They stand where they are told to stand, move as they are told to move, and if they miss their cue, they quickly fix the error in an obvious, hasty scurry.  Of course, the ineptitude of the lost souls is probably why the stars look so wonderful.  If the professionals come to the venue, the stars will look like the wannabes and the lost souls will be laughable. The second problem is the lack of professional appearance by the staff.  The house staff is a hodge-podge of street people gathered from the dregs.  Wearing short skirts, go-go boots, and bare midriffs, the ushers ignore the patrons and have their own conversations in the aisles.  When asked for help, they seem to not have a clue as to how the house is arranged. If an emergency where to occur, I'm sure they would be the first to vacate the building. When I looked at them, the repeating thought was they weren't getting much work on the corner.  Then there's the beginning of show circus.  I've never seen in a professional venue a sloppily dressed technician (torn jeans, untucked shirt tail, disheveled hair) stand in the middle of the theatre and do a one man comedy routine while announcing the raffle, the concessions, the upcoming season, and any other non-necessary trivia.  Each sentence is filled with "um" and "uh" because the poor flunkie was quickly thrown on the stage without any preparation to badger the awaiting audience. No professional theatre known does the clown act, the snake-oil salesman pitch, the self-serving advertising unless it's a high school production.  Wait, even the high school productions in the area don't do it.  They run a much classier show. This company is stooping very low. The board needs to realize that this company is and always will be a community theatre.  The locals will wander around stage, the director will be the same person repeatedly because no one else will want to participate (I won't mention how the board tends to censor the quality plays available), and the technical aspects will appear to be mediocre.  Take "Waiting for Guffman" as inspiration and be happy when this company can achieve that level.  

On my morning trek to work I regularly encounter Merced City School bus 153 rounding a corner on a narrow backroad.  The driver always swings her bus through the narrow avenue in a wide, hasty arch.  I've learned to watch for her down the road because I know that I'll have to pull to the far right onto the narrow sandy shoulder in order to avoid a bus-yellow stripe down the side of my frosty white car. I understand that the bus is a large behomouth of a barge to manipulate and I grant her the courtesy to yield to her inpediment.  But, my fear comes from the fact that she uses only one hand to turn the monster steering mechanism.  Her other hand is holding a cell phone to her ear.  Who, at that ghastly hour, is she conversing with?  And why are they more important than the safety of the cherubs in the seats.  I'm sure there are other angelic beings floating near by because I've heard no report of a disasterous event. This has made me a strong proponent of banning all cell phones from motor vehicles.  Now, I realize that policing this is quite difficult for the professional law enforcers.  As soon as one of their beaconed chariots are viewed in the rearview mirror, it is very easy to drop the phone and assume innocence.  So here's my vigilante version of law-enforcement.  Whenever a driver sees another driver with the phone plastered to his ear and driving, lean on the horn.  I don't mean a small beep, or a courteous honk.  Nail it.  Hold it down.  Let it blare.  And stay next to the other driver.  Make so much noise that talking on the phone is difficult.  Drown out their conversation. Become as much of a nuisance to them as their driving is becoming to the rest of the commuters.  And if you see someone with their horn activated on a phone driver, join in the chorus.  Make more noise.  This way the driver will realize that talking on the phone is not worth the noise and attention he/she is drawing.  Maybe we can remove this selfish practice from the roadway and make the highways safer.  Now, if I could only find a portable signal blocker......

The census tells that the percentage of high school graduates in Merced is lower than that of non-graduates.  I'm not so sure it's because the Merced students aren't wise.  Maybe they realize that there is no chance of getting anywhere in Merced, so the intelligent ones move to another community where they have a chance to expand. Merced's decision-makers do seem to want to keep things as they were in the forties when they commuted here from Oklahoma and Arkansas. That includes the intellectually stimulating as well as the culturally uplifting activities and events.  Face it, when the highlight of the downtown street fair is a group of old cloggers who can barely lift their knees high enough to perform the routine or the regular gang oriented fight, the calibre of stimulation is quite low.  Hoping that the new university will raise the level of intellect is a pipe dream.  The students are already smart enough to realize that there is no reason to stay. They'll get their education (or start their education until a better option arises) and then flee from the pasture known as UCMerced to greener pastures.  Until the city planners and motivators realize they are the ones to develop something to stimulate the residents, this city will always be one step above moronic.

Recently, statistics have been overwhelming the Merced press.  Fact number one:  English is no longer the primary language in a majority of the homes in Merced.  Fact number two:  The percentage of adults in Merced over twenty-five who have a high school diploma is below fifty.  Fact number three:  the majority of residents in Merced cannot afford to buy a home based on the income they receive from a job in Merced.  Fact number four:  Merced has one of the greatest levels of foreclosure in the state of California.  Taking all these facts, it must be construed that Merced has moved to a third world country.  There is more poverty, lack of education, and inadequate living than anyplace else in California.

The local paper is very informative about what is happening in the area. I have been reading it for most of my literate life. My mother began the process by having me read the comics to her. We progressed to the advice columns and then to the front page. I often feel nostalgic when I discover an item that was lovingly wrapped in the newspaper of yesteryear. Seeing how the phone numbers transitioned from RAndolph 3-1234 to 723-1234, reading the ad for the drugstore on 17th and L instead of Main and Canal, and reading that the Stefani Building was once the location of Stefani's Men's Wear stirs a moment of reverie. The Merced Sun Star keeps abreast of the police records, the weddings, the school sports. It also has national news, world events, and items of interest. But, most of this information comes late. I also read other newspapers from the area and feel priviledged to read in them information a day before the Sun Star will run the story. It's like being in a time machine and knowing the future events before the rest of the community. I feel that maybe the Sun Star has a team of editors whose job is to read the other papers from the area and select the best stories. It saves money on using the news wire, it cuts down on salaries for research teams, and it provides access to stories already proven to be of interest. That leads to another ponderment: The Sun Star is a fifty cent paper. My other papers are also fifty cent papers, but are usually twice as volumnous. Is someone being gipped?

Merced is a small little community that sits in the middle of the Central Valley. To the east are the coastal mountains, a buffer from the west coast torrents. To the west lie the Sierra Nevada mountains, the mammoth peaks which provide a scenic view on a clear day. Merced sits in the bottom of this bowl. Breezes from the coast pass through the gaps in the coastal ranges and blow the industrial pollutants from the bay area into the valley. The Richmond refineries, the south bay exhaust fumes, the hot air from the San Francisco plutocrats all provide remnants of refuse to the air that filters into the Valley. Ths air is trapped in the bowl. It cannot move eastward because the Sierra Nevada Range is too high. So it settles into the valley. Add to this the exhaust fumes from the many bay area commuters who have moved to the lower housing but continue to travel daily in their SUV to the coast, the dust stirred up regularly by the farmers who make the valley the bread basket of the world, and the many pesticides, herbicides, and whatever-cides sprayed on those crops, and the valley has become a cesspool of inhalable gunk. As if the problem isn't enough. Now some "investors" want to build a raceway in Merced so the "fans" can pump more garbage into the air. Gas is on a downhill supply curve, so they want to waste it for recreational rather than survival needs. Is there any intelligence in this town?

They have refined the art of not seeing you. As they sit at their desks in the open court, phones attached to their ears, they keep their eyes rivited to the top of their desk, staring at the blank post-it note. Lips moving, sound muted, heads nodding. He stood at the counter for ten minutes waiting for one of them to look up. Some appeared to want to let their gaze flit to the counter but they knew that once they did, they would be committed to practicing the skill of customer service, helping a potential client garner the benefits of their product. He waited patiently for another five minutes. If he had not been a captive of necessity, he would have left to another vendor. But they had a monopoly of sorts. The next vendor was across town and transporation was difficult. And his financial resource instructed him to go here. So he continued to wait. The sun began to set. Finally, just before closing time, one of them realized that he was not going away. He would stay until he was serviced. She looked up, smiled, and pushed the off button on her phone. "Welcome to Enterprise. Would you like to rent a car?" Thirty minutes later after dilvulging his life story, personal ambitions, and deepest desires, he drove away.

He was a life-time resident. Never had a problem with anyone. In fact, he was quite unknown because of his obscurity in the area. He was just one of those people never noticed as he made his way through the town. He had a talent, a skill he wanted to share with his community. So he secured a lease in a nice location in town. He secured all the permits, acquired the license, and then set out to refurbish his future business site. First he repainted the walls and refinished the refinements. He laid a new floor and installed the finest of equipment. His salon of body art would be one of the classier locations on the street. But she didn't like him. She ran off to city hall and complained about his being one of "those" people and didn't want "those" kind of businesses to ruin the pristine environment surrounding her establishment. Yes, the businesses around American Fashion Tale consist of one porn shop, four bars, a transient hotel, and an "unproven" meth house. It would be a shame to ruin the neighborhood with a body art salon. Alas, the city leaders bowed to her demands and rescinded his permits after he had completed the renovations. 'Tis a shame the best looking store in the area never opened. Instead an over-priced rag retailer rules the lane.

It seems the city leadership is allowing too much to happen too soon. When you see the development of the residential areas, there are more homes than are currently needed. Now, the idea of new homes is acceptable, but they are priced above the income level of the Merced resident. So, who's buying these homes, the bay area investor who is renting the home back to the Merced resident who can't afford to buy the home. And the reason the resident can't afford the home is because the bay area immigrant has jacked the market price up. And then he rents the home for the amount of his payment. And the realtors, who are also the city council members (or their cohorts) have let this happen. Thus, those who want to live here can't afford to buy the home yet those who want to live elsewhere are controlling the property values. Consider Merced the slums of the bay area........