Honestly ... you are from Maine, right? What would you know about life in a "real city" anyway?? Answers on a postcard j/k

Turning off the sarcasm button that Whalers so capably utilized earlier ... it's honestly disappointing to hear this about Burlington VT in general, and Church St. specifically. The city used to be part of my work "beat" for decades, and I loved the place, but haven't been in the city for close to 15 years now. Coldest night of my life - work or otherwise - was doing an all-day mediation in an old granite building down at the base of the big hill (Route 2 IIRC?) right on Lake Champlain, in early January, and it ran into the late evening hours. Funniest part is that the mediator - someone I worked with many times before and since, and only recently retired - had left the premises an hour earlier without us knowing, heading south for his working farm home base close to Bennington. The defense team was "scalded" by brisk winds off the lake after leaving, and temps were already close to 0F without wind chill. But we made our way up to Church St. and a watering hole whose kitchen was still open, so we got some quality grub and a few pops, and three hours later I rolled back into the WIS Estate with a ton of great stories, and lifelong warm memories of the Church St. vibes, despite the ridiculously Arctic conditions. Reading reports of the area's demise makes me very, very sad.
How much have things changed in the area since? Well, a couple of years after the all-day mediation, we took a HS age soccer travel team up to the Tree Farm fields complex, which IIRC was in Essex Junction, for one of the annual June Spring tourneys they regularly hosted (at least back then). The traveling adults did two treks into town and did a pair of Church St. venues, one upon arrival in the evening, and the second on a Sunday afternoon when a microburst blew out the final group stage game, and the divisional title game that we'd already qualified for with 2 W's and a draw. This was not too long after the Great Recession and it was pretty clear things were not as they were before. And maybe five years later, my last professional trek to Northern VT, was held in Middlebury near the college with another mediator, and was memorable for a very granola-crunchy opening meeting that just barely stopped short of choruses of
Kumbaya, where the key defense witness was (unbeknownst to me until the hearing) a real life "Lola" (channeling the Kinks memorable classic here). Our star witness had previously been interviewed, and I'd seen the tape ... but afterwards, he'd been deposed by the opposition, and watching the video being run by counsel for the opposition, I could hear the same gravelly New York accent ... however, much to my surprise, the witness' "presentation" was far different that day. I apparently was the only person in the room who hadn't been let in on the "change of status", something I did bring up later with my substitute counsel lol.
That session turned out fine for everyone, so no long late-night frostbitten treks through the Green Mountains on that occasion ... but the postscript of that encounter was that our "star witness" apparently ran for VT Governor a year or two later as a Democrat and narrowly lost in the statewide election.
I guess VT used to be a bright Red state after WW2, but the old-school Vermonters will tell you that migration of NY and MA folks over the last 50 years has steadily turned the ship of state into a deep Blue only matched by the color of the waters on magnificent Lake Champlain. And not for the better, see Church St. sadly. Favorite trip was Fall 1997 to see my last ELP gig with the full band intact, a night after they'd played at Club Casino in Hampton Beach. So long ago now ...
