Spring Break 2010: Day 1
The Pennsylvania State University has decided that spring break will fall between March 8th and March 12th (counting only the weekdays) this year. I have decided that I will not be going anywhere. This means I’m spending a week in State College, PA, a town primarily heralded as being the home-away-from-home for the tens of thousands of students studying at PSU. This week, however, most of them are gone, making State College an empty shell. This is my story about that week.
Today was supposed to be my first day of experiencing the ghost-town that is State College. Unfortunately I went to bed late, and by late, i meant so late that it was already the next day for a while. And not because I went to some party or felt the post-Oscar rush, or had something important to do ( like I’m doing now, at 2 a.m., writing this post, this is important, right? ) it’s just because i did not feel tired enough to go to bed at a decent hour. Going to bed late usually means that the time you set your alarm for is too early. So I kept delaying my actual wake-up by a lot.
‘It’s Spring Break, I’m not going to get extreme on my schedule, right?’ I said to myself out loud while realizing that it’s 12:30 pm and I was still in bed. After dilly-dallying a while, vacillating for a bit and dawdling for a couple of moments (yep, that’s the only thing I gained from the GRE, lots of fancy words), I put on some clothes and strolled over to my meetings for the day - I took advantage of the fact that most of the people that work for the university are still here and made appointments and such. The breeze was perfect and with the cloud-free skies, the walk was very enjoyable. What made it more enjoyable was the fact that most of my part of town (north of the University Park campus) was either empty or almost empty. Meeting up with a friend after my meetings, we took the long route through a bizarre empty-yet-still-alive UP campus. College Ave., the main street at the convergence of the town and the campus felt weird. It was a bit after 4 and landmark locales like McLanahans and Irving’s were running on a reduced schedule, while some of the retail shops were closed altogether. Our discussions quickly segued from our topics of choice to the idea of the ghost-town.
And this lead to the axiom of self-sustainability. Not that we actually called it that way, but when you want to make it sound interesting enough to keep people interested in this long post, you coat it in something intelligent. We came to the conclusion that the stores and restaurants aren’t expecting a drop in business, per se, even if a large amount of their patrons are gone, on the contrary, they’re not equipped to deal with the same level of business. Most of their employees are students, we postulated as we went through the menu of one of the chain casual dining restaurants on South Allen St. The students need certain services in order to maintain their lifestyle, the people that manage the businesses providing these services need employees and most importantly, the students need to make some money, this way the circle is complete. Most places in State College adhere to this circle, making them weak when students leave in droves for really short periods. Thus they have to either close, work on reduced schedules or pay up for the ton of extra hours.
Walking back to the car, parked next to the Blue Band building, the city in the twilight seemed to have a different face, it reverts to the “regular PA town” personality. But we were tired of making up excuses for spring break. And after a few hours of relaxation and possibly time-wasting-on-the-internet activities, we decided on working off the high-calorie food we took in, and totally disregarding the fact that it was 9 PM, on a Monday during Spring Break, we tried to hit the Racquetball courts on campus. Hitting a wall with the IM Building, where we were admonished, a bit too harsh, for trying to balance both a healthy and a social life, we tried Rec Hall. The courts (all of them) were open. Unfortunately the equipment room was closed and the only thing we had to work with were racquetball balls and tennis rackets. We gave up and decided to try again tomorrow. This time maybe earlier.
Unfortunately, it’s already late again. I might be sleeping in again. I hope not.
- end of day 1 of 5 -