I have to admit I've been pretty impressed with ASU lately. In one week, we hosted a crucial third presidential debate and one of our new professors wins the Nobel Prize.
I suppose it's always more fashionable to criticize your institutions, especially when you fancy yourself as some sort of a radical, but I grew up in Tempe and I remember how ASU used to be. In 1991, when I graduated from high school (please, no making fun of the old man), I never even considered ASU. Instead, I went to UA, which at the time had a far better scholastic reputation.
As we all know, ASU's academic reputation is now skyrocketing. Some of our programs and schools -- business, sciences, and various Master of Fine Arts programs -- are or soon will be among the best in the nation. It's an exciting time to be on campus.
Along with ASU, Tempe has become nationally known as well. But if something has been gained over the years at ASU, something has been lost in Tempe.
Tempe was a lot different 15 or 20 years ago. It was a quieter, quainter town. Mill Avenue especially was different, a place of character with more red brick and less neon. There were no fancy boutiques, galleries or sushi places: you went to Scottsdale for that.
The strip was seedier, a little more dangerous and exotic. The characters who roamed around down there were out of a "Mad Max" movie. There were more preachers, partiers, punks, people in heavy boots and heavy eye shadow, more homeless people, more drunks, and street guys with wild eyes who wore sandwich boards advertising the Armageddon.
Now downtown Tempe is less like Mad Max and more like the Main Street Electrical Parade, which is appropriate since the city has fallen in line with Disneyfication, like so many other public areas in America.
The places we congregate these days are all like malls, because commerce has replaced culture. Capitalism has become such an efficient machine that we can't even think up anything creative to do with our free time other than spend money.
I still enjoy Mill Avenue; it's still a pleasant place to hang out, but it's not a cultural area any more. It doesn't represent anything specific about the city or its people.
Of all the places that existed 20 years ago, only Lotions and Potions has miraculously survived. I suppose the Valley Art theatre is still there, but it's been totally renovated. It used to show movies like "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" and "Heavy Metal" every night and you had to be careful of the drunks and the perverts.
But it's clean now. Inside, body parts don't stick to things like they used to.
Many other old famous places, such as Long Wong's and the Spaghetti Company, have also gone the way of the Dodo. Most tragically, Changing Hands bookstore has moved. Sure, its new location at Guadalupe and McClintock is nice, but it's a far cry from the majestic three-story book haven that was the centerpiece of Mill for so many years. And now it's gone so they could put up a Borders in its place.
There's not much wild and free in Tempe anymore. Oleanders and Bougainvillea used to sprout untamed on vacant lots. An aboveground canal ran along University Drive and lush, tall vegetation grew. But they've paved over that canal and those vacant lots so they can put a Starbucks on every corner.
Even the Salt River, bound by rubber dams, has become Tempe's concubine: a fake lake surrounded by lawns and glass buildings. Rubber dams! Who the hell built those, Gymboree?
I'm happy for ASU, but I feel a shade of disappointment for what's lost in Tempe. But that's progress, I suppose. And you know what they say about progress -- it's made the world what it is today.
Michael Green is pursuing graduate degrees in creative writing and film and media studies. Send him your Christmas lists at michael.b.green@asu.edu.
