Democracy in America, Part Three

On the corner there is a drug store, brightly lit with an automatic door and a blast of air conditioning and gleaming white floors and smiling pictures of women and children, even in the incontinence and foot odor aisles.

Next is the pizza place, the two flavors of cherry and mystery blue Icee continuously rotating in a case near the window, crumbs on the tables, the menu written with smudgy magic marker on paper plates taped to the wall. Somewhere between four and six garlic knots for a dollar.

Then there's a bank, a scratched glass counter top and a black pen attached to a metal string. Side compartments stuffed with deposit slips and withdrawal slips and credit card payment forms and new account offers. A security guard watches the door and doesn't smile.

The door to the laundromat is propped open with a mail crate. Sometimes the TV is on and overweight mothers watch soap operas and fold underwear while their kids push carts around the floor or beg for change for the arcade games in the back.

The cell phone store is crowded. They don't let you browse; you have to type your name on a touch screen, figure out that you need to mash the letter to the left of the one you want for it to work right. A young man in a vest and tie and expensive watch tells you about the song downloading and mobile TV and unlimited web browsing and texting you'll need to sign up for.

On the end of the block is a Subway. The bread smell drifts all the way to the crosswalk on the next block. The meats are terrible.

It's quiet and safe, but there's plenty of nightlife.

You'll need a guarantor.

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All the passions which are most fatal to republican institutions increase with an increasing territory, whilst the virtues which favor them do not augment in the same proportion.