Wikaryasz

In my role supporting The News’ editor, I get the opportunity to put together the paper once in a while. This means I am communicating with our dozen or so local and guest columnists, reading, editing, writing, et cetera, et cetera.

On Friday, I had the opportunity to read Lenny Avery’s “What comes next?” column and I finally felt like someone had written the words that I haven’t been able to express myself these past few months: uncertainty regarding the future of my community.

Fitting since my last column was about uncertainty in my own life, but Avery’s column made me consider uncertainty in regards to my environment. My community. My peers.

Avery noted how development projects can stir up passionate discourse online, which has its benefits and its negatives.

“Social media has given everyone a voice and expanded conversations that once took place only in public meetings or around kitchen tables,” Avery said in his column. “But sometimes the speed of those conversations can make it harder to listen.”

I completely agree with this statement. I believe discussions from both sides of an issue are important to recognize but it is hard to humanize someone’s position when you are only reading text. This is when empathy becomes unreachable.

While living away from Alpena, I forgot how traditional this town has always been. I moved back because I missed that tradition, but then I remembered how Alpena’s tradition stagnates progress.

I remember the angry people on Facebook complaining about Starbucks coming to town, and look how busy that place is now. I remember the criticism of Marshall’s breaking ground – that parking lot is never empty. I always hear my peers and parents of children complain there is nowhere to go clothes shopping in Alpena — especially for men.

People rag on restaurants for only being open five days a week, but they don’t realize that those restaurants don’t have enough people to work those extra shifts. Then restaurants raise prices because they have to make money from the limited number of people who have the discretionary income to visit those establishments a few times a month.

I’d wager that the average family in Alpena can’t afford to eat at a mom-and-pop restaurant more than bi-weekly, especially if they are living paycheck-to-paycheck.

Parents complain about the school system in Alpena too, but how are we supposed to attract good educators and administration to the area if housing is too expensive and the most value they get out of the area is accessible recreation three months out of the year.

If we wish to only cater to the locals, and not market Northeast Michigan to visitors, locals will have to bear the weight of sustaining businesses from their own pockets. We will have to accept living in a vacuum as the only way forward.

Avery asked thought provoking questions in his column, considering what the current generation is leaving behind for the next. This is not a new conversation, but I think it is a conversation that keeps building on itself.

Avery reflected upon his nephew’s graduation and wondered how many of those graduates would be able to sustain a thriving life in Northeast Michigan. Like many of my peers when I graduated, I saw no future in my hometown. I didn’t want to be a teacher. I didn’t want to go into healthcare.

What else is there for me here?

I considered entrepreneurship, but watching businesses close one after another in Alpena made the idea feel too risky for the small benefit. I considered being a career bartender, but I want children one day.

I moved to Lansing for school and had every intention of never coming back – I believed Northeast Michigan was cursed with poverty. When I moved back home, I thought it’d be temporary. But since finding a purpose and joy working for The News, I don’t want to leave anytime soon.

However, my uncertainty remains.

When I was working one job, I spent my weekends alone and doing every free activity I could imagine. I dedicated time to fitness. I went for hikes. I rediscovered the quiet joys of Northeast Michigan.

Living as a hermit gets old, though.

I yearned for the friends I abandoned in Lansing and I could never seem to pitch Northeast Michigan as a place they should drive over three hours to experience.

“We have cool lighthouses!” I said once.

They didn’t seem interested in spending the money to get up north for lighthouses they can look at on the internet. They’d rather drive farther to go to Mackinaw City or catch a ferry to experience the island.

My one friend asked me about the nightlife in Alpena, and I reluctantly explained that most bars do not stay open past midnight, and only on the weekends, and we don’t really have anywhere to go dancing unless you like old country music.

I told them we’d have the pick of three or four bars downtown and we would need to arrange rides because there is a limited Uber presence.

They didn’t seem too interested in the bars on the outskirts of town, either, for simple reasons like proximity to my home, novelty, or for the simple fact that we’d likely be the only young, single people there.

I did, however, host one of my own friends this past fall. I wanted her to experience Alpena, but it was October and there was nothing exciting happening warranting a trip into town to sit at a bar. Instead, we drove all the way to Rogers City to experience the Pumpkin Stroll and Knaebe’s.

She said she enjoyed herself but joked about how desolate the area appeared to her and how boring my life must be now.

“Would you ever move back to Lansing or a bigger city?” she asked. “I can’t see you living in BFE the rest of your life.”

I myself had gotten used to the novelties of Lansing so adjusting back to living in Alpena has been a struggle. I have less peers my age to spend time with so I got a second job bartending just so I could meet people. Most of my customers are much older than me, though …

In Lansing, my friends and I liked to go to resell book stores, try new coffee shops, and find affordable, hidden eateries to support. We’d go clothes shopping, hang out at the pool at our apartment complex, or go see a movie. We also liked to go to this one bowling alley that had glow bowling on Saturdays and played our favorite music.

We loved to go dancing, too. Once a month we’d get dressed up, drink cheap vodka at the apartment, and grab an Uber to take us downtown. We’d get into the bars for free and only drink the cheapest liquor.

Though we certainly weren’t keeping the lights on at those establishments, the few hundred (or thousands) of young adults seeking thrills certainly were helping those bar owners pay the bills. Our pockets were small, and we were not lifelong Lansing locals, but I would doubt that any bar owner or bartender would treat our money any differently than the next person’s.

Likewise, I got to visit Florida for the first time this month and it was a whirlwind – I drank more vodka and Redbull than I have in my entire life.

While there, I finally understood why people from Michigan flock to Florida – Florida is the fancier version of Michigan. The natural beauty, recreation, and the energy of hard working people made my visit feel a lot less distant than my home state.

While visiting restaurants and bars in St. Petersburg, I picked out attractions that would be nice to have in Northeast Michigan. A nice seafood restaurant on the water, a multitude of vendors at the pier, a bar themed as a disco nightclub.

Our traveling companion said that St. Petersburg never used to be as fancy as it is now. He said that you could get a beer and a bucket of oysters for $10 back in the ’80s.

I thought about that evolution and how locals might have pushed back on the changes to St. Petersburg.

Was that evolution painful? Did development ruin their lives? Would a bar or restaurant close today to return St. Petersburg to what it once was? Would parents agree to make their school systems less appealing to deter families from moving there, to keep the system small? Would street vendors and local businesses agree to accept less people in the community in return for less revenue but a return to old ways?

I don’t think Northeast Michigan has to become St. Petersburg, but it’d be cool to see Northeast Michigan evolve into something more exciting and attractive. Families would benefit from a Sam’s Club or Costco. Bars and restaurants could expand. Young people would have more to do than just sitting at the same bar every weekend sipping on cheap beer and flavored whiskey, listening to the same country band play songs from fifty years ago.

I just don’t know if Northeast Michigan will have an open mind to accept this change.