Welcome to Anyburb, USA where the prototypical strip mall is alive and well. The hair-pizza-laundry-liquor-flower-nail-Chinese-convenience store all fun-sized and bundled cozily together in a paint overdue broken AC set from a low budget Troma movie. “Toxic Avenger 4: The Strip Mall Years.” If not for the presence of a prepaid cellular shop you’d feel like it were actually 1984 all over again. Suddenly, and as if to drive the point home completely, the tinny sound of “Working For the Weekend” bleats over the Reagan-era radio and seems to confirm this surreal time travel moment. Doc Brown rolls up in his smoking Delorean. Apparently the Flux Capacitor doesn’t have a spin cycle.
The patrons of the strip mall at night are a breed unto themselves. Sitting outside the Wash & Dry they engage in idle chit chat and like traffic school students they are brought together by a common shame. In the humid chill of the October eve they bare the badge of inconvenience and brandish indifference with cowboy arrogance. This is precisely where they want to be tonight. This is without question a regularly scheduled gathering, not some dire tragic turn of events and like that member of the Saturday Traffic School Crew I can’t help but rationalize that this is not my scene…I don’t belong here anymore.
Overdressed in sweats and a “the dryer just broke” t-shirt I can’t help but remember a time that I existed in this Strip Mall World; moving from station to station just barely fulfilling my creature needs. Even then I was the champion of chipped paint facades, luke warm nickel beers and ashtray sidewalks. I strode briskly along, averting my gaze from the prying eyes of the laundromat zombies and nickel beer-a-holics knowing that soon I’d be out of here. I’d do my time at the Strip Mall at this corner of time and space and pass effortlessly to the next rung of life. You see, eventually the weekend traffic school comes to an end and like the Breakfast Club we all must move on a little bit wiser but forever changed.
Mannino Acid 