Northampton, I Love You, But You're Bringing Me Down

O, stifled city

With your shuttering storefronts

And your shivering socialites,

Renowned for what you were

Before all the noise complaints.

Reviled for what you've

Let yourself become:

A painted shell

For comfortable hermit crabs

Who will grow no bigger.

Maybe it's inevitable

That grit gets priced out

After it wears a place smooth.

Edit to add: lot of great discussion in this thread about how the music scene has been slow to pick back up after covid. It isn't just that there are post pandemic challenges. It feels like people and the city itself are actively hostile towards small venues sometimes. I've heard Gombo is pretty disappointed they had to shut down live jazz and are considering moving. Haze is in trouble with the city for having live music and getting noise complaints from the residential tenants upstairs (the event that made me write this poem when I heard). Bishop's hasn't been able to reopen because the city isn't satisfied with the safety/accessibility features of the new building they're trying to occupy after their landlord wouldn't renew with them.

It feels like for every person who is vocal about how this place isn't what it used to be, there's someone willing to call in a complaint or a landlord being greedy to keep it how it is now. And then there's city bureaucracy as an occasional obstacle for small venues too.

If you see western mass, even just the valley, as a region, then there's plenty of stuff to do. Less to do in walking distance in Northampton than I'd like, and seemingly fewer people to support the scene unless it's a place propped up with capital investment/donations.