Potential

 

Dear you,

Continuing my search for a new home in this slim and costly market, I thought about Panama City.  Not Panama City Beach, but the town. Hurricane Michael almost erased that place, but the locals (who are really locals) have hung in there and aim to bring it back.  Yes, the crime rate is staggering. Numbers from bestplaces.net note that on a scale of 1 to 100, the Panama City violent crime score is 43.6. (The US average is 22.7). The Panama City property crime score is 84.6. (The US average is 35.4). Not good. But crime aside, there is an effort to make the town a real place again; see Harrison Avenue downtown, organizations like the Panama City Center for the Arts on East Fourth Street, and the Historic St. Andrews neighborhoods in general.  Definitely potential here.  But . . . money is walking elsewhere, to the beaches and the surging 30A "scene".  How to shift the focus and make PC a real town where smart, competent, cultured people can live?  People have to take a risk and imagine the possible, the potential.

Semi-persuaded by participating in that potential, I drove East over the Hathaway Bridge to check out an open house in that area.  It wasn't downtown, literally, but I thought it was near the town center.  I drove as directed by Google through the Panama City strip-mall scene on 23rd Street and then headed north on Hwy 231.  Forever, I traveled this road and could not find the street noted as the first turn off. After 30 minutes of wandering, I turned around and headed back south.  Forget the open house; I decided to just study the area.  I am a camera:

1.  Approaching Panama City from Hwy 231, I saw countless shuttered stores.  The only open businesses were nail salons and auto shops.

2.  For miles, no decent food options, just a few fast food joints that looked beat.  I observed a few employees sharing a smoke in a Burger King parking lot.  They looked beat too.

3.  About a mile outside PC, an older man had set up a roadside Trump 2024 station.  He was eating peanuts under a "Biden and the Ho Gotta Go" banner. The car ahead of me slowed to cheer his patriotism, lots of arms emerging from rolled-down windows doing that thumbs-up thing.

4.  Back on 23rd Street, I passed better stores like Dillards, decent grocery stores, and a few acceptable restaurants.  Parking lots full of big, big cars and pickup trucks.  Pedestrian life limited to the movement between car and store.  Obesity reigned.  So did whiteness.

5.  Right before Hwy 98 and the road home, I saw another half-dead strip mall.  The open venue was that Trump Store featured in the photo above.  Yes, they also sell coffee.  One must sustain rage; caffeine is required.

My point?  Convincing diverse, interesting peoples to make their homes in PC, to be part of a mini-renaissance, is going to be a difficult task.  The types needed to create an urban environment are going to be repelled by that "1 through 5" reality.

Potential Panama City?  Possible, but the odds don't look good. The damage done by Mother Nature (Hurricane Michael in 2018) can be repaired.  But the vibe of despair and prevailing lifestyle (cars, strip malls, acrylic nails, fast food, enraged Trumpers) might be beyond fixing.

Still, I might give the town another look. Roll the dice.

Potential cannot be realized without risk.

Still trying,

Nomadic Joyce