Karate
[Rod Dreher  03/15 02:32 PM]

Just back in from Belmont Abbey College — what a great place, and what good people — and getting caught up on my e-mail. Dave from Georgia sends in a novel “canary in the coalmine” sign for how you know your downtown is dying:

Downtowns are dead or dying all over the country, and have been for over a generation. Easy to blame Wal-Mart, but the fact is this trend was happening long before Mister Sam ever got out of Arkansas. Now, of course, they all want block-grants for redevelopment (my old home town in Pennsylvania is now on its third downtown makeover, via "free money" from the federal government, with no discernable rise in business).

Go to any county set in any county, and the downtown is the courthouse, banks, lawyers' offices, and the town newspaper office. This provides the unholy alliance to "revitalize" downtown — the federal government will give you money to refurbish an old building downtown into a money losing coffeehouse, but won't give you a dime to put in a Ruby Tuesday's out on Highway 53 — go figure.

The symbol for smalltown decline — a karate studio on Main Street. As soon as a karate studio moves into an old furniture store or clothing chop, throw dirt over your downtown, because it is dead, dead, dead.