Dopecentury XLIX --- The Island Neighborhood
This short fiction is part of Dopecentury, an experimental project where I attempt to channel the aural aesthetics of Dopesmoker into written text. (Dopesmoker is the legendary stoner-doom metal masterpiece by the band Sleep, of which it is said: "the monotony rarely becomes tedious.") My plan is to listen to the single hour-long track of Dopesmoker while writing each of these "Dopecentury" entries. And repeat that 100 times. See the Dopecentury project page for more details.
Technically an island, located in the middle of the bay, with strip of main road slicing down the center, connected to the mainland on either side by a causeway, there's only a toll taken on one side though.
The island is narrow enough, and the main road wide enough, that the neighborhood that built up here is a mere half-block wide on either side of the main road, the houses wedged in between the road and the shallow, swampy water. Each half-block sticks off the main road like a finger — some of the streets are paved but others are little more than hard-packed sand — with no cross streets breaking them up; as a result each street became something of mini-neighborhood, that is, the residents of each street know their neighbors on their street better than they know anyone else in the whole city.
The brown water laps at the end of each block, so most blocks have a rickety marina of sorts, half-sunk in the mud, small channels dredged out to allow the residents to get a small pleasure boat into the docks.
When the water is warm and the air is chilly, the fog comes in, picking up soot and smog from the city that rises just across the water. The fog sticks to everything, carrying it's load of scum with it and depositing it in a thin, slick layer on the homes, the sidewalks, the windows, and the streets.
The island is, of course, very low, hunkering just above the level of the bay. When the rains come, the storm drains back up, and if the rains coincide with a high tide, the water will fill the streets from both ends of the blocks. Nobody in the neighborhood has a basement. The newer houses, and the richer folks willing to get their homes up to code, stand above the potential flood on stilts, some very high above their neighbors old bungalows. It's a look that seems strange to an outsider, but has begun to feel natural to the locals in this shoreside community.
The neighborhood floods often, not every time it rains, but most times when there is a heavy rain. A few times a year it floods where there is no rain. Many of the men, having blown some significant portion of their income on buying and maintaining one of the boats lashed to the collapsing dock structures at the ends of the blocks, relish the occasional opportunity to justify the expense of their boat with a rescue of a neighbor from a flooded house. Lips pursed with grim competency, but at the same time unable to repress their pleasure at being the neighbor who happens to own exactly the right tool for this particular job when it is called for, they might pilot their small boat carefully up the flooded street, and nose the bow up against the dry upper steps of their neighbor's stoop, and idle the engine while someone hands across a baby; or maybe they make a run to the grocery store to pick up cases of bottled water and ramen noodles for delivery to the stranded.
Despite technically being a neighborhood of a major international city — a fact that is not forgotten when the tall buildings of the city's core stick out like teeth on the other side of the water, blackened when the sun sets behind them — residents to not have much tolerance for outsiders. Like a small town in the north, there are only two types of people: those born on the island, and those not. Regardless of how long one might have lived on the island, those who were not born there remained perpetually of a lower class, tolerated but not promoted to others. It seems like just a humorous local quirk, until someone from the city comes to the island looking for a place to dock their boat, maybe at one of the local yacht clubs. Then the outsider finds that the prejudice isn't just a wink and a smile, in fact they cannot in any way convince the locals to rent them a slip if they have no firm family ties to the island. A person from the city who comes knocking at the local clubs, with their dark interiors and quiet music-less bars, is typically asked to leave, often not so politely.
This isolationist nature has its benefits — it was possible to make a good living in the city (while enduring a long commute (though the ones who commuted by boat always prided themselves on the particular clever beauty and fun of their ride into work — even if it could only be done seasonally, cost a fortune in fuel and maintenance, and actually took longer than public transit) and live in this inexpensive neighborhood close to the water. The outsiders-discouraged attitude actually helped keep prices down, since the very wealthy were not tolerated if they had no ties to the island.
On the other hand, the benefits that much of the rest of the city held from the contributions of many diverse cultures blending together: the creativity, the entrepreneurship, the workers willing to do the job for a low price — all of that passed by on the island.
More that that though, where the city was always moving forward and exploring new ideas and building new things, the island was somewhat unmoored in time and civilization, not exactly frozen, but disconnected. Strange ideas about other cultures developed there — within sight of those cultures prospering in the city across the causeway, on the island they developed their own particularly sharp kind of racism that conveniently melded well with their isolationism. In other parts of the world, where racism might be based on nothing more than skin color, on the island they have very specific criticisms of entire cultures that they did not like. This extended to all kinds of cultures beyond the island — remember the residents have little tolerance for anyone not from the island — and this was somewhat ironic for surely many of the cultural mannerisms of the island were, frankly. insane. They were perfectly adept at being racists, of course, but island isolationism was always the highest priority.