Unsavory City. The air is brown, the river is murky, the streets are paved with grime. On those streets, the only friendly people are bunco artists and whores. On the streetcorners, narrow-eyed men slouch against lampposts. They size you up as you pass; sometimes they mutter incomprehensibly, offering drugs or weapons or threatening mayhem. Sometimes they more than threaten.
Surprisingly, businesses have not abandoned Unsavory City, though unemployment is high and the Mayor must do an annual mating-dance of ritual tax breaks and zoning easements to keep them. Unsavory City is a wonderful test-market for durable goods, for anti-theft devices, for surgical techniques, anti-depressants, and anti-psychotic drugs. In fact it's a wonderful place for biotech companies: you can always find volunteers for any dicey experimental drug or process. "What the hell", Unsavory City's people say, "money's money."
For most people, Unsavory City is, shall we say, not a nice place to live. But some -- misfits, losers, misanthropes, eccentrics and artists of every sort -- choose to live there above all other cities.
Because in Unsavory City, people leave you the fuck alone. Citizens don't care what kind of schmuck you are. They've seen worse. If you look mean enough, or determined enough, or just like you know what you're doing, people stay out of your way; and that means you can submerge yourself -- into your chosen addictions, into your chosen perversions, into your chosen work -- and no one will think of stopping you.
Unsavory City. It's dirty. It's nasty. It stinks. It's home.
Copyright 1995 Edward Gaillard. All rights reserved.