What moral gate has broken open, allowing obvious social pathologies to fester without stigma?
By • September 16, 2019
Modesto has always been a have and have-not kind of place...............Unemployment is high, but more to the point, many incoming Modesto residents are not looking for jobs, incapable of holding them. Too uncouth or troubled to be employable, an army of marginal itinerants "not exactly homeless but close, without any attachment to the locale" is content with Section 8 housing and family services. It's a life of EBT and Medicaid, of getting by tomorrow, and tomorrow and tomorrow.
McHenry Avenue cuts through the center of town. There's an empty shopping mall with its anchor store boarded up and peeling. Down the street, a security guard in dark glasses with a serious pistol strapped to his leg holster is vaping outside the unmarked entrance to a turquoise warehouse building.
This turns out to be Phenos, a big-box marijuana dispensary. Dozens of cars sit in its huge parking lot. They come and go day and night, Mercedes SUVs and wrecks, truckers and teenagers, everyone doping up. Uptown, the handsomely built and landscaped Planned Parenthood Modesto Health Center is the place to go for quickie abortions. Close by, the Emerald Tattoo parlor pitches Tattoo Financing No Money Down on a bright day-glow green sign.
Who pays for the dope, abortions, and tattoos? That's often hard to determine. Inked, unexercised, pasty women with greasy ponytails range from plump to morbidly obese. Unkempt, bearded men flashing angry eyes dare anyone to mess with them. Modesto's demi-monde comes in white and color, much of it covered in florid body tattoos that reify insane slogans, fantasies, and ideations. Drugs, homeless, your shit being stolen, with sloppy drunken fights and even someone getting shot or stabbed, is how one resident describes low-life Modesto...............To Read More...
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