Worth Saving

Sometimes I wonder if downtown's worth saving. Usually this happens on a rainy Sunday morning, like today...

Getting off the bus, I walked Fayette St. from Salina to Clinton. Looking across the street:

• Boarded up windows
• Boarded up doors
• For Sale or Lease
• Coming Soon
• Availability

And then there's the Clinton Street Pub on the corner with its fading residency hotel above it, and next to that, as you turn the corner, there's Ron Paul's local headquarters, which will be vacant once he runs out of money for his presidential run, and then another available spot just on the other side of the Hot Shoppe.

And when it's gray and there's no one else on the street, it's really damn depressing.

But by the time I got to Freedom of Espresso, and had a couple of sips, man, did I feel better. Sean Kirst writes today about a couple of guys getting off the train after the SU basketball game and sticking downtown for a bite and a beer.

And then Andy Breuer walked in to pick up some coffee. You might not know Andy, but if you're local, you've seen his name – on the Heuber-Breuer equipment everywhere there's an important local construction project going on. That dude knows what it takes, and he's working for it.