BY DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY

(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, THE WEEKEND EDITION MAY 24-26, 2019) — You missed it.

You missed it because Downtown Pittsfield Inc. — that useless, vampiric drain of public money — has for Mary Jane and Joe Kapanski all the relevance of Shandoff’s, the Bridge Street Lunch, England’s, Rosenfeld’s, or any of the other city institutions when downtown was “Upstreet,” all gone now.

“Upstreet.”

You went Upstreet with your mom. She wore a dress and heels. You wore your “good clothes.” Why? Because, man, you were stepping out, in public. You had to be presentable.

Liggett’s had the best lime rickeys on THE PLANET, Mark Belanger could sell you a “Clete Boyer” model Rawlings X-PG8 baseball glove at Besse-Clarke’s,  and you might be forgiven if, in a memory lapse, you thought you were standing on 43rd and Broadway for the crowds, the bustle, and the ordinary swoons of tolerant hope, the kind of benevolence that the ’50s and early-to-mid ’60s produced as a cash crop. Carr hardware was there then. It’s there today. The rest of the street, though, has lost its constants, devolving into a depressing, nightmarish still life, maybe “Mystery and Madness of a Street.”

The Kapanskis don’t go there anymore. There is no “there” there, as Dot Parker once observed. Parking’s a hassle. Safety’s a concern. Trash is everywhere. They can’t afford it. Downtown Pittsfield misses the Kapanskis. North Street now has the crowded emptiness of, at best, a personified, vile, gangsta lyric boomboxing about “hoes” and rape — this, where gilded chariots and two-tone Ramblers once paved the way and waylaid the pavement, especially on Thursday nights.

———- ooo ———-

For two months of the year, July and August, North Street “enjoys” the counterfeit of a revival thanks mostly to South County’s leftovers, the bored, rich Mr. and Mrs. Leonard Sheckner from North Bellmore or Wantaugh who, as Lenny Bruce might say, think show business is a pair of Capezio shoes and the projectionist at the Beacon. They attend shows at the Barrington Stage. Mrs. S sits on its board, bored and actually believing she knows theater. They room at Hotel on North. They spit on the Kapanskis.

The dead are alive in downtown Pittsfield, and the survivors daily march like zombies to the Tower before their summary executions. And that’s on a good day, where at Persip Park you can sleaze forever. Ah, but downtown Pittsfield has Downtown Pittsfield Inc., whose best eyes never see but weep. The tears are covered with pasted on smiles and an insular agreement to fake belief in a fable that defies all evidence, the fairy tale that business is booming, the daisies are blooming, and the traffic is zooming.

No trophies, however, get raised over the triumph of dead memory.

DPI, you see, just had its awards night.

You missed it because you were up late worrying about your rising taxes. The water-and-sewer bill you can’t pay split your cocoanut. You were trying to decide what bills not to pay this month. You decided in this cold spring that the heating bill could wait and maybe a prescription that, while it makes your life less painful, won’t kill you if you have to suffer for a month without it. The Kapanskis don’t pay 85% of your health insurance. You suck it up, alone.

You missed the DPI awards night. Let THE PLANET fill you in.

———- ooo ———-

DPI executive director Cheryl Miller gathered the DPI staff together to hand out awards. In the audience, the usual assortment of Suits, “Players,” “See and Be Seens,” office holders, suck-ups, wannabes, and bums hoping for free eats. THE PLANET attended disguised as an empty seat.

Berkshire Pride Festival came in for the biggest kudos. That speaks tomes about the state of “pride” in the city among ordinary citizens, who prefer it straight.

Pride. One of the Seven Deadly Sins.

Miller called the BP Festival “a touchstone of the community … that has ignited a fire of inspiration.” Fortunately, the Pittsfield Fire Department was on hand to contain the blaze. Later in the evening, the “touchstone” led many stones to be touched. We shall spare the details of the “inspiration.”

It seems the event began when some 10-year-old kid wondered in 2010 why he wasn’t a lady in a cape and why, for that matter, there wasn’t a Queer Fest in Pittsfield. Apparently, he grew up before there was free skating all winter long at the Common. Now, they hold  their once-a-year hoedown where there be no more skating. The gays and queens from the Isle of Lesbos got their award from Adam “Man of the Future” Hinds. As Adam knows, all entries are through the back door, except for the ladies. They can come and go from the front or the back, as they wish. As for the transgenders, it depends on the plumbing. For games, the BPF on the Common features cornhole.

The mayor rose at dawn to compose a speech raving about all the new business flocking to the downtown. It’s proof, you see, of “a strong local economy.” It’s so strong, she pledged to send more money to DPI. The little dog laughed to hear such a thing, and the dish ran away with the spoon. Tyer failed to mention to flood of downtown businesses that have gone bust in the past year, for example, Tyler Street’s millennial bakery with its $4 coffee and $3 donuts.

After more awards, Miller noted the work of the Downtown Ambassadors. She called these kids a “welcoming, information-sharing resource.” They are trained, she said, by the Pittsfield Police Department, who gave beyond the call retraining the kids’ thumbs from texting to getting adept at pressing the “squelch” button on their walkie talkies.

Observing all of this, Jesse Cook-Dubin, as fine a lad as you would meet on a sunny May morning. He is Miller’s boss. JC-D is a lawyer, a good one. He’s a decent, clean-cut family man, the kind who provides the city with enough glue to keep the parts from exploding and enough hope to entertain other associated and capricious rays of hope. Over the years, he and THE PLANET have shared more than one cuppa Joe and many syllables of advice. Jesse’s a good man, in other words, the kind you would want with you in an embattled foxhole.

How he got into fronting, or is it backing, DPI, remains for the scholars and future Ph.D. students. Other “messiahs” preceded him, all good friends: Peter Lafayette, Kate McGuire. They, too, died for urban renewal’s sins and had to play the part of The Great Pretender. Now, Jesse Cook-Dubin carries the cross. If you see him, allow the general vogue to lend him a hand on the march to Calvary.

Better yet, send in the cavalry.

Have a great weekend, everybody.

“I look into my glass, / And view my wasting skin, And say, ‘Would God it came to pass / My heart had shrunk as thin” — Thomas Hardy, first stanza, “I Look Into My Glass.”

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”

LOVE TO ALL.

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