Free Love & Good Urbanism

& then there are times when I love this city. The hippies (especially those with children, their blonde curls dirty from playing in the hydroponic garden) who give me an idea of what my parents must have been like when they were young & happy. The alleyways which I know so well. The inundation of cafés & bars & breweries. The abundance of parks & how each one has a different feel. I love how, like so many others who moved here unsure of the reason why, even less sure now of why they're still here, I've slowly moved further west in the city, at a pace slow enough that each separate part of the city reminds me of a differing time in my life, of the growth I've experienced while living here. How Eugene continues to surprise me, just when I start thinking it has nothing left to offer.

I found a new alley today. I'm drawn to alleys, have been since I lived in Texas. I use to spend a good portion of my day in the alley behind where my family lived, on 33rd street, in Lubbock. There I'd play with the neighbourhood kids, patrolling the alley, whacking the heads off dandelions with our spears made from old mop handles. It was in the alley of 33rd that I learnt to dumpster-dive (a talent which came in handy many years later in the alleyways of Sandpoint, Idaho) taking whatever treasure I could get my hands on: GI Joe's with missing arms, the broken innards of a toilet, cut up Penthouses (contraband disposed of from the rehab clinic on the other side of the alley). It was from walking alleys that I developed my fear of large dogs, a phobia I've only within a few years broken myself of. & it was in an alley that I had my first real kiss. (that's a lie.)

Underneath Oklahoma City is the Metro Complex, a vast & elaborate network of tunnels connecting various parts of downtown. My father took me there once as a child & I remember being enthralled, it is the paragon of alleyway design.

Eugene's alleys have a feel all their own. It's only in her alleyway's that I begin to feel, to understand how old Eugene is, it is there that I begin to get a glimpse of Eugene's history. It is quite often in her underused parts that I love her most.