The Bypasses of Hidden Main Streets

Ah, State College, a line, or rectangle (including Penn State, obviously) containing the hustle and bustle of Beaver and College Avenues, Allen Street, the Pattee Mall, and the ever earthquaked maze of 50,000 students within its limits. For most students, college (specifically Penn State) is their first step outside the grey cinderblock room of a hometown. Trains of shops push their axles to a halt on the platforms of College Avenue everyday, treating students and locals alike with an array of tapestries, discount grocery stores, and even that occasional theft the entire street-crowd enjoys watching!

After all, who doesn't like the partial privacy that Penn State and State College give to humanity: the ability to look outside a window to see minor fist-fights and even that occasional car crash has not only shaped this university since 1855, but has also terraformed burgeoning American town squares about this time as well. Need milk? Walk to the neighborhood tavern. Need schooling? Walk to the one room schoolhouse.

Well, it turns out that State College had dodged a bullet that placed wounds on a vast majority of American downtowns. Just as the world was waking up from the long street-side spectacle of the Second World War, a new set of wheels crashed and ultimately crumbled the shelves of toy wooden trains that were vacuumed by children (admittedly a lot like myself with my eyesore of a Thomas track tangle) day by day. The automobile, whose primary mission was to get from A to B as quickly and conveniently as possible, has all but shunned humanity from the cordial relationships evident through neighborhood gatherings. Yes, I will confess that my street in Allentown had that occasional block party, but that was, to my brain at least, "forced," to make up for the grey zone that has become increased stranger interaction.

Stranger interaction, you may ask? To get the context of the scissors of society, have a look at the map below:

With the car and the movement back towards the classic 9-5 job, time was of mankind's upmost priority. Skip that lunch with Dave? No problem! Miss the neighborhood wedding? My flexibility is what really matters. But what did this flexibility truly bring? Think about this: as a high school student, visiting my local Target was like visiting a stop in India for the first time, forced to interact with somebody you don't know.

What the car really did was dump rows upon rows of big-box stores across the formerly rural landscape, away from town, yet close to the high-speed bypasses (think Route 220 in State College). People from all over the place, even if it meant a 10 mile hike "o'er the river and through the woods," to Big Box Store they go. There is definitely a plausible argument that as it is in New York City, "everything's only a stone's throw away!" But then again, everybody's only a stone's throw away too. Our brains have the inability to memorize complex Latin terminology or physics problems, so there is no doubt that we cannot friend everybody we meet later in the day on Facebook.

So what remains? Our world may be connected online more, but physically, the automobile has jutted cracks through our world, both physically through highways bisecting pristine greenery, an mentally, in that true, close connections are all but extinct except in classes, clubs, and that occasional all-night study time with others.

Think about it: Radiator Springs was a symbol of the bypassed Main Street of America. The few remaining struggled to do business, not to mention the waves of cars that chugged along nearby Interstate 40, without taking the beaten path and truly leaping into just one cave of our great big world.