Storm please tell us about Lubbock

[savagewind]

This is what you get for talking to me. I see on your profile that you 'sigh' at Lubbock. I read it as not too satisfied but it might mean good. I think I'd love to hear about Lubbock. I am USA East. I have been US route 95 and US 1 from Canada to the southern most tip of Florida but I have not been West of Pennsylvania. The only thing I know about Texas living is it is either loved or hated. There seems to be no in between. Please tell us about it if you will!

I might have guessed that you are from England because of some words you choose. But you say you are in Texas. Are you still in Lubbock? What is it like?

 

[Storm]

Um, ok.

I'm a native Lubbockite, and I've hated this town all my life. It's ugly, boring, conservative, mean, and ragingly hypocritical, with a city council that's way too eager to invoke eminent domain and rampant corruption right down to the health inspectors' sole motive seeming to be shutting down what few nice restaurants we have to make room for the latest Applebee's.

We do have a pretty impressive roster of musicians for a po'dunk town in West Texas, having birthed Buddy Holly, Stevie Ray and Jimmy Vaughn, and the Dixie Chicks. All the same, the freaking Beatles could play here and the audience would talk over them and throw ice.

We made national news somewhere around '97, with the dubious distinction of having the country's highest per capita rates of teen pregnancy, drug addiction and churches all in the same year.

I attended Lubbock High School, which went on to gain notoriety via the documentary The Education Of Shelby Knox.

Pretty much the only redemptive feature this town ever had was the unity of subcultures. Since none of them were numerous enough to have their own clique, everybody bands together. Before I moved away THE local hot spot was a gay bar called the Luxor. More specifically, the women's bathroom, which had a lounge. When you got sick of the club scene, you went in there to talk, and it wasn't unusual to see a drag queen touching up a goth boy's mascara while a punk and a gamer geek debated Biblical evidence for God being an alien. It was awesome.

 

[savagewind]

OMgoodness if you are not a writer you should be!

Before I moved away

Are you not there?

 

[savagewind]

How far do you go to do shopping? Anything but grocery shopping and The Dollar Store I must go almost an hour away. We like it that way.

 

[Storm]

I came back to be with my family. The things we do for love....

 

[Storm]

How far do you go to do shopping? Anything but grocery shopping and The Dollar Store I must go almost an hour away. We like it that way.

About half a mile.

It's technically a city, just a pretty pathetic example of one.

 

[Storm]

Oh, I forgot - when we made the news we also had the highest per capita STD rate.

Yay, abstinence only education!

 

[savagewind]

If I went to Lubbock for something but I had an extra day or two to do something else, what could I do, even if it wasn't Lubbock, but it is in driving distance from there?

 

[Storm]

I'd say visit the street sign at 69th and Bangor, but the city seems to've given up replacing it.

More seriously, you could visit the Lubbock Lake Landmark just out of town, which is a massive archaeological dig that's been going on for decades. I did an internship there when I was 16, it was amazing.

My dad would be willing to give you a tour of the Vietnam Archive at Texas Tech, but since it has nothing to do with football, the university won't cough up the dough for a building, so it's just shelves of artifacts. That's pretty much Lubbock in a nutshell, right there: the world's premiere collection or documents and artifacts related to the Vietnam War? Stuck in the basement. Mediocre football team? State of the art stadiums every few years, and public support to rival the Red Sox.

 

[savagewind]

Thank you Storm. You are! You can write. My brother-in-law writes for a living. He has the right genre but you can write really. Now that the internet is here you can publish for almost free. You are a writer. I am fussy so I know.

 

[savagewind]

Lubbock Lake Landmark If I had my life to do over I would be someone who dug in the Earth for evidence of MAN. I am retired. I still have time to do something else but I am me taking care of my family.