Author Archives: Steve

Six years on it might be easy to lose sight of the original purpose behind the creation of this website: to address topics related to cities that aren’t Superstar cities in ways that don’t just adhere to the narrative of urban pathology, to separate mistaken perspectives from real challenges so as to confront them. I began to question some of what I’ve been writing, wondering if it wasn’t simply becoming too contrary when I realized that it is precisely what I write which is contrary to the received wisdom which is most important.

Websites, blogs, and news coverage of the bookends of American cities, from San Francisco and Boston on one end, to Detroit and Oakland on the other leave out so many communities in the middle, believing they are saying much about a great many places, all the while saying nothing meaningful about most of them. 

This week a truly accomplished city blogger wrote the following:

I have no doubt that from his perch in the Great Northwest this makes perfect sense. If we woke up tomorrow with 20 more square miles of San Francisco, Seattle, or Portland, those blocks would be filled in the blink of an eye with fantastically successful, walkable urbanism and even more Millenials and retiring Baby Boomers would fall all over themselves to be ensconced in the best of North American urban lifestyles. 

But here, in western New England, it’s just pure ridiculousness. It’s not just downtown Springfield either. There are a handful of Main Streets in this region with “to die for” urbanism and architecture within a metro area that is in the top half of ALL urban metros in the United States for income and prosperity. They sit in what is arguably the world’s #1 economic corridor and contain housing stock which is second to none. But demand is, at best, somewhat slack. There are “too many cities”. Springfield, Hartford, Worcester, Bridgeport, New Haven, Providence, Portland, to say nothing of the third tier cities like Waterbury, Chicopee, New Britain and dozens of similar places…and that’s just New England!

The blogpost, in the context of refuting a recent suburban triumphalism, is not from a perspective which I dislike, but it’s useless to me. His point is that while only 17 of 53 metro areas have core neighborhoods growing at a faster rate than their suburbs, and that IS down from a high of 25 just a few years ago, it’s up from 7 in prior decades. In other words, Boston, D.C., Atlanta, San Francisco, Seattle, Austin, and the like are still doing well. Maybe I don’t speak for everyone in Akron, Syracuse, Youngstown, Gary, and Scranton, but…who the hell cares?! That is supposed to mean something HERE?

THESE PLACES are a hard sell. Things could turn around, things can improve, but the evidence for just HOW difficult this path is going to be can be gleaned from our biggest supporters. Take Gracen “A New Place for Me” Johnson and her poetic pieces about the beauty of Fredericton; many spectacular elegies to the mesmeric quaintness of a struggling little maritime city. She lives in Toronto now. I don’t fault her for that, but, in truth, it makes it WORSE, not better, that she instructs us all on how wonderful a place Fredericton is for years, and tells us how lucky anyone would be to be linked to that place. And then leaves.

“I can’t believe she broke up with you. You’re smart, you’re funny, you’re so thoughtful and caring. Any girl would be lucky to have you as a boyfriend.”

“You wanna hang out?”

“Ummmm. I think we’re better off as friends.”

This week Rachel Quednau of Strongtowns wrote an excellent, heartfelt piece about how people in places like Akron should struggle against negativity and pessimism; avoiding the “psychology of decline”! Last I heard she’s moving to…Rochester? Cleveland? St. Louis? Detroit? 

Boston.

It’s like Ike: “Watch out for that military-industrial complex.”

Good call. Hey, wait, weren’t you a four star general before you became President? Seems like the kinda guy who could have DONE SOMETHING about the problem! Nope. 

“Yeah, ummm, the house is a little bit on fire but I’m gonna take my fire truck and head down to Florida for Spring Break. Good luck with that though.”

When I worked with my local civic association I called it the “no job is too difficult and unrewarding…for YOU to do.” 

“Have fun storming the castle!”

“I’m behind you all the way. Way behind you. At a really safe distance.”

This piece was just published about my very neighborhood. Note the blue dot; it shows you exactly where I sit as I write this post.

Read it. It’s pretty accurate. I’ve published entire photo essays on the bad behavior I can see from the very widows I am looking out as I write this piece. It’s a tough ask to expect a young person, a young couple, a young family, to commit to one of those places “rich in potential” but in no way guaranteed to succeed and yet, that is precisely what is needed for these places to succeed. 

We have the sidewalks, the parks, the museums, the bars, the restaurants, the colleges, the libraries, the transit, and, an incredible variety of EXTREMELY affordable housing, but the people who know this the most thoroughly STILL end up drawn to the certainty of the Superstar Cities. Everybody’s got a reason why YOU should stay, but THEY are gonna need to go. That’s the issue. That’s the problem. That’s the whole god damned point. Thanks for the “thoughts and prayers”, but we could use some actual help. The psychology of decline exists because those of us who have spent decades working to improve these places keep getting ditched by people who have “other priorities”. Thanks, Dick. Around here the chirping from the sidelines is loudest from the people whose abandonment OF the city is what has done the absolute most to harm the city. 

Thank you, thank you very much for your concern, but you want to maybe grab an oar there, buddy?

There are some game changers. Things are happening. I can see a chance for a real turnaround here, but that doesn’t come from the opening of a new coffee shop, or a neighbor putting in a granny flat, it comes from enormous shifts in connectivity and livability here due directly to governmental actions at the state level spurred on by trends that are as much out of our control as the ones which have caused this place to struggle for the last half century. So why even try? This is why.

One of the maps I’ve seen dividing the United States into separate regions puts Springfield into the category of “recovered” or “revitalized” Rust Belt city. The study whose data created the map is a year old, and came from data covering the years before that. The takeaway from the report was that location was by far the most important factor in determining which cities succeeded and which failed at revitalizing themselves. Proximity to larger, vibrant metropolitan areas created positive growth pressure in housing and employment which translated into economic vitality. Conversely, similar cities which are more isolated or are located near struggling larger metro areas struggled to create jobs and retain population.

Supporters of the communities which have experienced the most success, and critics of those which have experienced the most failure would point to policies, initiatives, budgetary priorities and claim that this or that alternative decision would have drastically altered the outcomes in question; the reality is that most of what determined success or failure had nothing to do with these things but “true believers” will claim that their pet policy led to success or that its imperfect implementation led to failure.

Springfield sits in a very unusual spot; on the outer edge of two enormous and enormously vibrant metro regions and right next door to yet another struggling one. Culturally and logistically connected to New York, politically connected to Boston and neighbor to Hartford, Springfield has most certainly not been the most robust example of a revitalized or revitalizing Rust Belt city. If the trends continue, which is to say if prosperity continues to spread from New York and Boston then both declining Hartford and stagnant Springfield are next in line for major transformations. 

The country’s newest commuter rail line, seeing its first day of service as I write this post, has the potential to be an absolute game changer in bringing Hartford and Springfield both closer to New York City, and closer to each other. Together the two geographically small metro areas are home to two million people, dozens of colleges, and a handful of major employers. The introduction of the service has pushed politicians from eastern Massachusetts to take seriously the idea of connecting Boston to Springfield by rail, the inland option to the shoreline corridor that’s always seemed surplus to requirements. Beyond that, the idea of connecting the Berkshires and Franklin county to this system could turn around the population declines of the two most rural counties in Massachusetts. 

For me, these should have been priorities in Boston for decades already; not for reasons of altruism, but just to rid itself of some parasitic dependents. 

So despite some really boneheaded people in the private sector and their attitudes toward auto-oriented development that place Springfield squarely in the 1970’s, the public sector has presented Springfield with one of the finest transportation hubs in the United States on its newest commuter rail line and, in two totally unconnected developments, a brand new rail car manufacturing facility, and a billion dollar resort casino including millions of dollars of improvements to public parks, sidewalks, pedestrian signals, bike lanes, and pavements. This enormous boost in investment, infrastructure, attention, and optimism may be the springboard that lifts the city out of its doldrums; certainly if this doesn’t do it then nothing will.

So, am I preaching urban Calvinism? Yes. The ultimate fate of your community is likely to be determined by powers much greater than any tactical urbanism, incremental development, or block by block strategy can hope to equal. But that was never the point, at least to me. Those things can, do, and will make your place better whether the fates dictate it be a winner or a loser in a broader perspective. 

I bought this house, planted flowers, repaired the façade, planted an apple tree, cut back the shrubs, painted the fence, and picked up trash before there were plans to implement the New Haven to Springfield rail line, before MGM set its sights on the South End, and before there were Transformative Development Districts. The two historic buildings across the street from my house were empty and Develop Springfield didn’t even exist. As far as I knew I was rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. I may still be. 

Anyone with the money, or access to credit, can live in a great neighborhood where all there is to do is enjoy the fruits of success. Watching a place transform, for better, for worse, fighting the good fight, winning some and losing some, is about as selfish an act as I can imagine. Savior or martyr it’s an interesting path to trod. 

There were two tomes I took to Brigham Young University every autumn: Clyde Smith’s New England and his Enchantment of New England photo books. The trees, the green grass, the rolling hills, and the mountains of my little corner of the world reminded me that there was life on this planet, even if very little of it existed in the desert southwest. I understand the allure of New England’s countryside from the Hilltowns and the Berkshires to Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. In urbanist circles the small cities and towns of the region act as a sort of template for achievable American walkability when Manhattan or the European model seem unreachable. 

It makes it that much harder then for a struggling industrial city in the post-industrial era to retain population. The alternative here isn’t all, or even mostly, suburban cul de sacs and generic townhouses swimming in asphalt. There are authentic small towns with traditions dating back to the colonial era, college towns brimming with youthful energy, genuine rural homesteads, and cottages on dozens of ponds and lake fronts. Add to that the fact that Boston and New York are a little over an hour, or just over two hours away and I suppose it’s hard for non-residents and residents alike to not come away with the sensation that Springfield is left wanting, not just in some way, but in every way. 

There isn’t anything we have which someplace nearby doesn’t have more, better, larger, more impressive, more famous, more quaint, easier to get to, better run, or more accessible. Mattoon Street meet Beacon Hill. Forest Park, say hello to Central Park. Basketball Hall of Fame, have you been to Cooperstown? 

What I find interesting is how this, I believe, has started to boomerang and have a really negative impact on the communities around Springfield which by and large not only take the city for granted, but actively loathe it. The last 30 years of almost complete stagnation here have finally begun to ripple through places which previously seemed impervious to our problems in the City of Firsts. The demographic reality seems to be that white Millennials who want a suburban lifestyle are moving south and west, and Puerto Ricans don’t feel any need to escape the city to get away from other Puerto Ricans and they’re the ones having children and staying put in, or even relocating to Springfield. District after district in the suburbs and ex-urbs are laying off teachers, closing schools, and trying to plug budget gaps.

The surge that’s taken place in the last few years here in Springfield’s densest neighborhoods has been remarkable. It’s hard to point in a direction where hundreds of thousands, or even millions aren’t being spent to build new schools, renovate apartment buildings and townhouses, rebuild parks, and create new institutions. The paradox is that housewives, teachers, town managers, realtors, and shop owners miles away, who will tell you that they literally go out of their way to avoid the city physically and probably spend even greater energy to wall off their minds from any concerns whatsoever related to Springfield, may have more at stake in these efforts than the residents of the city itself actually do. 

The city is improving. The city has reversed its decline. The city is growing. The city has retained Mass Mutual. The city has a major new street car manufacturing facility. The city will be home to the brand new MGM resort. We will be better off. Will the city become strong enough once again to be at the heart of a revitalized region? That clearly remains to be seen. For decades people took advantage of the employment opportunities provided by the region’s largest employers and the business opportunities provided by the region’s largest population center without any thought for whether or how the city would continue to be there for them to exploit. They might want to think about it now.

Just some precious nuggets of wisdom I was fortunate enough to overhear in the discussion regarding the future of a certain downtown parcel. Seriously.

1)Although some people say that downtown has enough parking, on some nights “the only people downtown are the ones citing visitors for parking illegally.”

This is the Russian nesting doll of pro-parking lot intellectual jujitsu: It combines the solid reasoning of Yogi Berra’s “nobody goes there, it’s too crowded” with a criticism of the gestapo like qualities of municipal parking enforcement (jack-booted meter maids) and the city’s anti-business mindset all the while expressing the All-American belief that only when we can drive and park everywhere all the time without government interference will we be truly free!

2) The removal of an historic building is actually preferable because it makes the other historic buildings in proximity to it more visible and, one might extrapolate, more valuable because it makes them even more rare and therefore benefits historic preservation overall.

This could revolutionize human behavior! The Prado should destroy one Velázquez every year until, you know, the ones that are left are really valuable. Think of endangered species; what if we endanger all the species? Parents could start culling their children to maximize the love and attention they give to each child. This is addition by subtraction, the town with the fewest historic buildings is the most historic place of all! Think jazz. You need gaps in the historic fiber of the city to really see the history that remains.

3)It’s possible for a structure to lose its historic significance over time and therefore documentation of historicity must be updated and contemporary to a proceeding or it has no value.

 I mean, what has the so called Freedom Trail done lately? When was the last time Williamsburg even colonialed? Did you know that some of the pyramids don’t even have dead pharaohs in them anymore?  Historic places need to be judged on what they’ve done this year, this month, today. Too many protected places are just sitting back and making the rest of us do all the “being historic” . And why isn’t there a White History month? Sorry, wrong stupid argument.

4)As a corollary to the wisdom of the prior axiom, gainsaying any statement of fact establishing historicity is, of itself, proof that a building has no historic value whatsoever. Also if one isn’t paying attention when a list of historic attributes is read aloud in a hearing those attributes cease to exist; this also holds for members of commissions whose sole purpose is the protection of a community’s historic attributes.

Adults don’t put their hands over their ears and yell “la la la la”, that would be childish. Just assert that what was said wasn’t said, what was read wasn’t read, and that the documents you’ve been given don’t exist. 

5)There is a number, X, greater than zero whose value is equivalent to zero when establishing the number of active tenants in a building for purposes of claiming that a building has 0 tenants.

I’m not really a math person. Perhaps this is post modernist mathematics? Observer theory: If a tattoo parlor is open in my building but the building isn’t at the public hearing, is it really a tenant? Dude. You just blew my mind.

6)A building can only be considered to have great architectural value if it has Corinthian columns. 

So many of these other truths are deep and philosophical, but this one gets down to the nitty gritty of what it means to truly be historic. Fact: all history is Greco-Roman. Fact: All things Greco-Roman are historic. Fact: We can streamline all findings of historic significance by taking the time and effort to systematize our understanding of the classical orders. No more “blah blah blah” about people, events, or even dates. The statement remains operative even if a particular building has applied pilasters of the Ionic order, obviously, but what remains ambiguous is whether Doric, Ionic, bud, and/or bell shaped capitals on columns establish significance and/or if applied pilasters with Corinthian capitals are sufficient. Ground breaking.

Last weekend was all about the outdoors and food. The annual pancake breakfast celebrating the founding of Springfield in 1636 got us up and out the door before 8 a.m. in order to beat the rain. It was great to see the usual cast of characters, from the mayor to an eccentric local we call Superman Guy because of his affinity for wandering the city streets in costume; as we were walking by the two of them shook hands! Unfortunately I was too slow to catch that moment of magic. We had our pancakes, talked with friends, and wandered up and down Main Street for an hour.

From there we visited the new and improved Gardening the Community base location and got a tour of the greenhouse, the grounds, and the fields from an immensely likable, if not omniscient, young man. These are the people who deliver our CSA share on bikes every Wednesday. Great food. Great community building. They’re adding to the weekly delivery and the farmers market a small on-site store which will be open on some of the other days of the week. We went home and began planting our seedlings and the flowers LuLu had decided on for her bed.

On Sunday we drove out to the hinterlands of Copper Hill Farm and weeded our fields of garlic. LuLu helped some. Wandered around with the dog some. Harassed the chickens some. And pestered Greg (the farmer) some. It took her a while to warm to it, but by the end we had to pretend to be driving away to get her to hop in the car. In the end, Liz got manual labor for Mother’s Day and we didn’t abandon her child in the wilds of Connecticut.

All great stuff for an urban apocalypticist like me: Community building and food production. But a little nasty weather during the week nixed our Tuesday visit to the Forest Park Farmers Market for milk and other items, which meant this weekend we needed to go to the supermarket. It had been a while since my last Big Y excursion, my wife is the one who does most of the food shopping in the winter and to purchase what can’t be acquired via or garden/CSA/farm activities. Things had changed somewhat since my last visit. There were wider aisles than I could recall and lots and lots of stuff labeled as local. At one point I wandered down an aisle and found a box containing, it seems, a polyresin fountain depicting a dog humping a bucket.

At the same time I was listening to, I kid you not, a rendition of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Nirvana done in Frank Sinatra crooner style being played over the store’s p.a. system. Not being able to distinguish the urban from the rural is one thing, a polyresin Dali sculpture with accompanying soundtrack is another.

Paradoxically, this surrealism brought me back to the real world. Johnny Sanphillippo is correct: We do “have the infrastructure we have”. Even in one of the oldest regions of the country, in terms of European colonization, which had dozens of traditional town centers before the metastatic post World War II automobile oriented development Ponzi scheme, and which has grown almost not at all since, there are miles of ridiculous stroad ways with dozens and dozens of big box stores, mega supermarkets, strip malls, and apartment complexes. And plenty of suburban homes where a plastic resin fountain of a dog humping a bucket would look quite at home. Not only are these areas never going to be reconfigured to be re-urbanized to align with more efficient land use, but we are going to build more and more of more of them until we absolutely cannot do it anymore. It will only be years after that, perhaps, that most of us may realize that the era of Happy Motoring (Trademark Jim Kunstler) is not coming back.

I’ve known this for a while. A long while. A decade or more. But recently, when I wrote about fighting against the encroachment of auto-oriented crap into my city and my neighborhood, Johnny Sanphillippo commented, well, this:

Very reasonable. Very rational. I understand. And I agree. But it is of extremely limited significance to me. Perhaps an analogy will make the reason clear. 

The opioid crisis sweeping the United States is an inevitable outcome of an empire in decline, not in the precise composition of the chemicals people are using to destroy themselves (in post Soviet Russia it was vodka) but in the way in which a society sheds the vulnerable in the process of coming apart. I do not think that there is anything I can do to stop this crisis. The poor, the ill, and the weak are going to suffer as things begin to unravel. But I can try to protect my family, my friends, and my neighbors and perhaps make a difference in my immediate vicinity. When the history books are written 400 hundred years from now about the fall of the United States no historian will register that this or that individual didn’t die of a heroin overdose in the spring of 2018; it won’t make any difference to the overall narrative. 

But I don’t care about the overall narrative, I care about my place and my people in my community right here and right now. 

America will suffer for creating an infrastructure of daily life which cannot function without the car. Nothing I can do will stop that. I know. If anyone wants to keep reminding me of that fact they may continue to do so, but I don’t care about “America” as a vast continental entity, whose enormity I can scarcely comprehend, I care about one infinitesimally small fraction of it being marginally better than it would otherwise be without my efforts. Perhaps. Perhaps I will have no impact whatsoever. So be it.

Documenting what “is” is important. Attempting to nudge it one way or another is a fool’s errand for the society at large, but retaining a handful of walkable blocks in one specific place and preserving a few acres of farmland nearby is not; and it is what I choose to do at the same time I make incremental improvements to my own preparations for whatever lies ahead.

This is what I’m trying to say regarding incremental development versus mega-projects:

In my (well documented) experience the lived reality on the ground over the last 40 years is:

Incremental steps toward more auto orientation.

Or giant steps preserving a traditional development pattern.

The only exception has been some historic preservation, which has incrementally preserved a traditional pattern, though lots of that has been very expensive and very top down.

Apart from some ridiculous Kobayashi Maru stance which just wishes for a different reality in the here and now I’m stating that I would take, and will take giant, perhaps risky steps in the preservation of a traditional development pattern over incremental steps toward more Taco John’s. I’m fighting for, lobbying for, educating those around me for, and working for an Age of Enlightenment when the popular response is to support a traditional pattern such that incrementally doing so is truly possible. The record of the last 40 years shows that we, in this place, are not there yet.

I’m not sure why that’s “stupid”, and I don’t think it’s dickish to point out the irony of the circumstance that a man who is calling bullshit (correctly, in my opinion) on the basic development pattern on which American society has been built for 75 years would call anyone else out on showing a lack of humility! Dude. The bar for dickish is set pretty low in Minnesota, like the bar for success in sports I guess. Now that’s dickish.

 (Only 10 since 1991 though. Thanks, btw, for KG and Big Papi, I can’t imagine what things would have been like without ’em!)

(If you’re not familiar with A Chorus Line, and I wasn’t, you’ll need to watch this…not the version my niece was in!)

What is the “dance 10, looks 3” of cities? Given it’s a metaphor I’m sure there are multiple answers that could work, but the first one that springs to mind in my little corner of the world is the curse of “good bones”; that sort of backhanded complement delivered with a shake of the head, or a scratch of the chin. Their lips say: How could a place with such good bones be so overlooked, so down on its luck, so much in decline?

They’re thinking: this place is a $#|%hole.

As in: cold winters; humid summers; wet, well, all the time; the wrong type of “diversity”; lots of legacy coolness, not so much in the here and now; no Ivy League school; not the state capital. So what do you do? 

Whatever it takes.

As I watched my niece play the role of the “dance 10, looks 3” girl in her (impressive) high school production of A Chorus Line I couldn’t help but see in the carefully crafted and delineated types of Broadway dancers, with their differing strengths and weaknesses, goals and desires, motivations and fears; an allegory for the urbanists I know, and read, and listen to. I’m this Johnny-One-Note with my community of concern tucked away in a little corner of the Northeast. A real Johnny, Johnny Sanphillippo, treks all over the continent taking notes on and photographs of everything from declining Rust Belt cities to the most cutting edge places and ideas on the Left Coast. Kunstler, he’s said his piece, written his books, fiction and non-fiction, and now just scrawls a new “The End is Near” sandwich board every Monday and Friday. And all the rest,  just like the winners and losers in “A Chorus Line” they have their stories and their demons.

I have to ask myself what it means to not “give a fuck about the red shoes” in my urbanist allegory? I think it’s being purely about results, not process. For some of the others it’s a philosophical, theoretical, esoteric activity. If the complete implementation of the purest ideological urbanism doesn’t create the vibrant successful city they’re looking for, it’s off to the next. It reminds me a bit of the people who give professional development programs to teachers and present those great ideas for engaging the students. Cool. Now to just do that 179 more times…this year…in every class and across every course! Yeah. Not every lesson is going to be the “Citizen Kane” of classroom instruction. In school teaching, in urban design, expecting the actual execution to resemble its platonic ideal is a recipe for frustration and burnout. 

And for those of us who experience all of the strident lectures about what this or that should be like or just how much more of a positive attitude we should have about this or that remarkably difficult challenge…the one thing that can be counted on is that the person expressing these impossible to live up to standards will be g o n e before too long. In teaching, as in building community, anyone can “bring it” for a year or two, or even three, but staying in it for the long haul, staying around long enough to watch what actually happens, decade in, and decade out, is the real test. There was one particular blogger, years ago, lauding the attributes of a down on its luck provincial city and talking all about what a great place it was to live; until she got a better offer! Adiós. What every town needs is a millenial willing to tell everyone how it’s a great place to put down roots, make a life, be in it for the long haul…and then move to the hottest hipster haven.

People who stay might experience something like this: The owner of your AHL franchise, after years of weak support, decides to move to Tucson, Arizona. So your MGM enabled business community steals the well supported Portland, Maine AHL affiliate right out from under Portland’s nose…a nose which has just paid millions to refurbish their arena. If you weren’t selling your soul to an enormous resort casino would a local partner in that development have cobbled together an ownership group to bring a replacement franchise to the city with the lowest attendance in the league? Doubtful. Nice guys finish last. Ugly dancers don’t get gigs on Broadway. Tell me that for you, in your town, the ends don’t justify the means and I’m guessing you’re willing to switch towns. That’s not really the moral high ground. Above me maybe, but still not the high ground. 

If Springfield were in the running to steal the AAA Red Sox from Pawtucket, like Worcester is, would an argument that spending millions of public dollars on highly profitable entertainment ventures is wrong make me demand that my local political leaders cease and desist in this race to the bottom? No it would not. Show me a system where everyone else has unilaterally disarmed then maybe (maybe) I would too, but knowing the winner of this competition will need to sweeten the pot, I’d find every nickel I could to throw at the millionaires of the Fenway Group. 

Dance 10, looks 3.

If this were about what it should be about we’d be in better shape than we are. When you sneak a peak at your dance card, or “just look around and see who is getting hired” and you can see that it’s not about what it’s supposed to be about, then I’d be surprised if you didn’t go in for a little “T & A” augmentation as well. I’m in this thing to see my city come out of its funk, not to convince Peoria to improve its walkability. If you’re not about that one place, that particular place, that special place, then I’m probably not for you. 

In A Chorus Line terms: I’m getting the boob job. In baseball terms, I’m bunting to break up the no hitter. In soccer, I’m diving in their box and parking the bus in my own. If you’re not willing to do those things it’s either because you don’t need to, or you have no loyalty to the team anyway.

Viva el Betis manque pierda.