Alleyways, Pt. 1
A story about connection
My old neighborhood was full of multicolor bungalows. One even had a pair of giant metal bugs mounted on the roof—no H.O.A. in these parts—which meant the streetside views tended to be entertaining, not to mention full of friendly people in their front yards. But whenever I went out to walk the dog, I usually chose to veer off the sidewalk altogether, preferring instead to stroll down the alley.
Because, as far as I can tell, the alley is at least twice as interesting as the sidewalk.
You never know what you’ll find. In a small town like mine, it was like a back window into who people really are. Sometimes you’d find a meticulously kept garden, other times a junkyard. Or you’d see those passion projects: people slowly fixing up an old car, maybe assembling a nice backyard collection of kitsch windmills and whirligigs. Whatever the case, those alleys were a treasure trove of raw and unrefined life.
Some say be wary of the alley, that’s where you get mugged. But I say be wary of the sidewalk. That’s what people want you to see—their best look, their profile picture—a well-curated facade. Curb appeal cannot be trusted.
Alleys have no such agenda. If the sidewalk view is the proverbial smile of a restaurant hostess, the alley is life after clocking out. I don’t mean that one is more “real” than the other. It’s just that of these two sides of the same coin, one is a little more polished.
This reminds me of a course I took in college called the Anthropology of Tourism. The professor talked about the “frontstage” and “backstage” of the places we travel: the former being your resorts / evening entertainment / public spaces, the latter being your local haunts, or the places tourists don’t go.
Sometimes people actively seek out this “authenticity”—the whole tourism vs. traveler thing—and other times you stumble into the backstage without even trying.
This happened to me on a trip to China, after the tour bus stopped at a small-town market beside the Yangtze river. Seeking relief from the fifty other foreigners behind me, I strolled ahead of the pack looking for signs of life that would surely disappear when the mass arrived. Behind a sprawl of exotic vegetables, a flight of stairs went out of sight, and I took them . . . right into the meat market and a hundred pair of eyes staring me down. Butchers held onto their cleavers, stuck in pork bellies as I circled the area, all conversation silent, the locals shooting daggers up until I quietly shuffled back down to the tour group.
Uncomfortable would be an understatement.
The backstage is not a welcoming place—not by default, not like the all-inclusive you paid for—but this possibility of discomfort forces us to examine our real and shared humanity and connect beyond some travel-agent experience, beyond some high-gloss rendering of life.
And in the more everyday sense, this is exactly why “connecting” on social media can feel so hollow. Facebook is like the new cul-de-sac, featuring the well-manicured lawns of the digital age. Our personal alleyways are rarely found online (though I have found more honesty here on Substack than just about anywhere else), because alleyways are where people stash their literal and figurative garbage—not typically something we make an active effort to display.
Our alleys only come to the forefront when we have no other choice. And when they do, as the saying goes, people come out of the woodwork. All of us have experiences we don’t readily share, maybe for fear or guilt or shame, and it’s too bad there’s a stigma to this. A little more honesty could do humans some good right now. Because we end up caring a whole lot more about each other when we see the alley-side view along with that from the sidewalk.
Maybe this is why a place like New York City is so interesting—it has no alleyways. The garbage gets piled on the sidewalk. You can’t ignore it. You must see past it, accept it and move on. How else could you have so many people from so many places with so many different histories living side-by-side? To me it’s no wonder that NYC is the center of so much cultural conversation. But I’ll save that conversation for Alleyways, Pt. 2.
For now, here’s to looking beyond the façade.
- Martin
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Nothing can prepare for a true 'Wet Market' as they are called. Peta would feint En masse. I was on a business trip to several cities in China. While in Guangzhou, on that same Yangtze River, our contingent stayed at an extremely nice hotel named the White Swan. One night after several drinks, okay a few more than several, an associate of mine joined me for a walk to explore a little. Not four blocks away from this five-star hotel, was what started out as a narrow side street, then turned into a very long alley and of course, we headed down it. It was fairly dark but bustling, almost noisy. Earlier on the trip, our translator had already given us the do's and don'ts, one of them being if you are being stared or glared at and make eye contact, make it short and we certainly did in that particular place and time. Down the middle ran what I'm pretty sure was raw sewage along with blood and guts. I can only guess that you didn't see the type of market that I saw - or you're providing a community service by not going into detail. Dogs, cats, rodents, snakes you name it, basically anything that walked or slithered - was hanging on display or live, in cages. I'm not squeamish by a long shot but it was something that I'll never, ever, forget and while understanding that alleys can be interesting and show the other side of things/people/life, sometimes there is an alley you should not have gone down. I'm not judging another culture that I know very little about or questioning customs here - or anything really, just telling a short alley story that your post reminded me of. Enjoyed the read Martin. - Jim
Your initial description of sidewalks and alleyways reminds me of some of the older neighborhoods in Colorado Springs. I like the comparison of sidewalks and social media. I would go so far as to compare social media to picture windows that display a carefully cultivated image as opposed to reality.