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Cursed In Cairo
In 2009 three punks moved to a ghost town called Cairo. Cairo lies in the southernmost tip of Illinois, where the Mississippi River meets up with the Ohio River, in a region known as Little Egypt. They moved to Cairo with big dreams. They wanted to create a community of like minded people that could live outside of mainstream capitalist society. They wanted to build a home for themselves and their friends. This book is a recounting of events that took place in Cairo, Illinois, between May 2009 and September 2010.
463 pages, Kindle Edition
Published January 26, 2017
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June 4, 2024
**SPOILERS AHEAD**
I’m giving one more star than I want to because I did genuinely enjoy getting a first-hand view of the residents and inner workings of this remarkable town. And there were some genuinely nice moments with the kids. But, wow, did this book leave a bad taste in my mouth.
It’s the story of some young punks (both literally and pejoratively), who move into a sad, down on its luck town with dreams of starting an artists’ community. It’s a nice idea, and through a stream of unintentionally unflattering anecdotes, the author often pauses to remind the reader of what an unqualified blessing he and his friends were to this town. What’s actually happening, by his own description, belies this idea.
From day one, they systematically and boastfully pillage the town’s many abandoned buildings and resell the proceeds all while pontificating about the evils of capitalism. They don’t have the funds or knowledge to properly care for the building they acquire and openly admit that the place was, as a result, ridden with mold, but they opened their coffee shop anyway. There are several places in the book where they brush off mold concerns, when this is an ongoing blight in the lives of the residents of this town, causing major ongoing health issues to a community with very poor healthcare options.
The assumption that they are superior in wisdom to the long-term residents is baked into every sentence, though they have no prior knowledge of the town and their entire stay comes up just short of 18 months, consisting of rotating and alternating short-term stays among the friend group. They harshly judge all the other out-of-towners who roll through and ask questions, but show themselves to be largely ignorant of the place they so quickly claim ownership of. There’s a passage where the author sadly concludes that Neil Gaiman was never actually in Cairo before writing American Gods because “there is no funeral home” in Cairo and “no bridge”. In fact, Neil Gaiman is explicitly on the record as having stopped there during the road trip he took while writing that book. Setting aside artistic license and the fact that Gaiman was there almost twenty years prior to the author of this book, there is a giant rounded bridge on the highway right at the town limits, which the author of this book would have driven through regularly. There is also a prominent old funeral home building with an impressive onion-domed tower just two blocks off the main street on 8th, which still has its “Burkett Funeral Home” sign affixed to its exterior wall. It took me about two minutes of research to find both.
This is just one example of many assertions stated as fact that don’t stand up to even a cursory inspection. Someone who grew up in this town or currently lives there would doubtless see more than I did, but the author shows no more humility when taking the actual, long-term residents of the town to tasks for the the “offensive” wish for to-go cups for their sub-standard drinks and a Walmart so they don’t have to drive 40 minutes each way for basic household goods and groceries at a price they can afford. This, while the author unironically muses about starting a food co-op so they could truck in their gluten-free pasta. (They’re vegan and gluten free– Did they mention that? Ah, yes, they mention it… several dozen times). They complain about the alt-right christian missionaries next door as if foreshadowing something sinister, when from start to finish the missionaries only offer unconditional welcome and repeated practical help, demonstrating an awful lot more empathy for people of different beliefs than the author and his cohorts. They never push their beliefs on the atheists next store and actively spare them from the embarrassment of trying to participate in their religious activities.
If the protagonists really cared about this town, and really wanted to see it loved, they could easily have learned about the surviving buildings instead of giving them silly names and stripping them of the remaining evidence of their stories. They could have made stewardship of the town and their own building a point of care and honor, instead of badly using both with little regard to anything but their own caprices. Instead, they recreationally ransack abandoned buildings, encouraging their out-of-town friends to do the same, and shoot off fireworks inside their building, endangering themselves and the building, and traumatizing their pets, not to mention worrying the townspeople.
Where was the titular curse that plagued the protagonists? Yes, the electrical company sounded very shady, but electricity was virtually their only expense. With no rent, very little labor cost and no off-site housing costs, a trickle of additional income or a small buffer of savings for lean months could have kept them above water indefinitely. Someone of very modest means could have made this work. Meanwhile, things that I expected to develop into untenable roadblocks– the town council, the cops, the health inspector, were all threads that lead nowhere. None of them ended up being obstructions, except for just being generally underfunded and unresponsive. That neglect clearly helped much more than it hurt, as any one of these entities could (and probably ought to) have shut them down for running a business with residential equipment out of a building that wasn’t safe.
But nothing gets in their way as they rifle unapologetically through abandoned buildings (some of them only just vacated), checking locks when they’ve exhausted all the obviously uninhabited ones, going to increasingly great lengths to steal fodder for their business venture and amuse themselves. Their complete disregard for safety or common sense eventually, and very sadly, gets one of their number killed in an accident. This was all so preventable with a little money, a modicum of basic respect, and a pinch of forethought.
The book ends with a passage about how, repeatedly and in all ways, they have NO REGRETS (their caps). Honestly, if they had admitted to some regrets or at last omitted this defensively self-serving epilogue, I could have enjoyed the book more and remembered it more fondly. Instead the psychological backflips just stuck all my objections in my craw. There’s no shame in attempting a venture and deciding that you don’t want it as much as you think you did, or can’t make it financially viable. There is shame in blowing into a place and treating the whole of it like your own personal property just because you don’t know whose property it is. There is shame in exposing your customers and friends to unsafe conditions. There is shame in thinking you know better than its lifelong inhabitants, who have been through so goddamn much already. There is shame in disrespecting a place so brashly that has already been so ruthlessly beaten down over decades upon decades.
I don’t have any issues with the author’s expressed leanings or ideals. It’s actually because I agree with so many of them that this book upset me. Trying to breathe life into places like this is great, even if it doesn’t always work. But treating an entire town like it exists for your plunder is about as imperialistically minded as you can get. Not a good look for an anti-capitalist. And yes, big corporations like Walmart do have big downsides for small communities. Unnecessary trash generation should be avoided at all costs. Being vegan or gluten free is a totally justifiable personal choice. But it was the hypocrisy, utter lack of perspective or consideration for the real people affected by their actions, the self-aggrandizement and relentless unintended irony that left me feeling sad for days after reading it. It’s things like this that make people disconnect from progressive ideas, and siphon the dregs of hope out of a town like Cairo.
Almost every paragraph is dripping with self-congratulation, but my main takeaway was that this all could have actually worked if the people involved had had even been moderately prepared. In the end, they were just more in a long line of people and circumstances who’ve swept through this sad, beautiful town and left it worse off than when they came. The building they bought could easily have been saved and stayed saved, instead of turning to the hollow, blown out shell it is today.
As of this writing, more buildings have been lost, but the community does have an operating food co-op, owned by the community, that attempts to provide affordable (not specialty or luxury) groceries at home. I hope that this is the start of a positive trend for the people who richly deserve some wins. If the town does have a curse, it’s been a string of bad actors. Enough good faith, constructive and decently funded counter-initiatives might just help turn the tide. Sending all my best wishes to the people of Cairo, IL.
I’m giving one more star than I want to because I did genuinely enjoy getting a first-hand view of the residents and inner workings of this remarkable town. And there were some genuinely nice moments with the kids. But, wow, did this book leave a bad taste in my mouth.
It’s the story of some young punks (both literally and pejoratively), who move into a sad, down on its luck town with dreams of starting an artists’ community. It’s a nice idea, and through a stream of unintentionally unflattering anecdotes, the author often pauses to remind the reader of what an unqualified blessing he and his friends were to this town. What’s actually happening, by his own description, belies this idea.
From day one, they systematically and boastfully pillage the town’s many abandoned buildings and resell the proceeds all while pontificating about the evils of capitalism. They don’t have the funds or knowledge to properly care for the building they acquire and openly admit that the place was, as a result, ridden with mold, but they opened their coffee shop anyway. There are several places in the book where they brush off mold concerns, when this is an ongoing blight in the lives of the residents of this town, causing major ongoing health issues to a community with very poor healthcare options.
The assumption that they are superior in wisdom to the long-term residents is baked into every sentence, though they have no prior knowledge of the town and their entire stay comes up just short of 18 months, consisting of rotating and alternating short-term stays among the friend group. They harshly judge all the other out-of-towners who roll through and ask questions, but show themselves to be largely ignorant of the place they so quickly claim ownership of. There’s a passage where the author sadly concludes that Neil Gaiman was never actually in Cairo before writing American Gods because “there is no funeral home” in Cairo and “no bridge”. In fact, Neil Gaiman is explicitly on the record as having stopped there during the road trip he took while writing that book. Setting aside artistic license and the fact that Gaiman was there almost twenty years prior to the author of this book, there is a giant rounded bridge on the highway right at the town limits, which the author of this book would have driven through regularly. There is also a prominent old funeral home building with an impressive onion-domed tower just two blocks off the main street on 8th, which still has its “Burkett Funeral Home” sign affixed to its exterior wall. It took me about two minutes of research to find both.
This is just one example of many assertions stated as fact that don’t stand up to even a cursory inspection. Someone who grew up in this town or currently lives there would doubtless see more than I did, but the author shows no more humility when taking the actual, long-term residents of the town to tasks for the the “offensive” wish for to-go cups for their sub-standard drinks and a Walmart so they don’t have to drive 40 minutes each way for basic household goods and groceries at a price they can afford. This, while the author unironically muses about starting a food co-op so they could truck in their gluten-free pasta. (They’re vegan and gluten free– Did they mention that? Ah, yes, they mention it… several dozen times). They complain about the alt-right christian missionaries next door as if foreshadowing something sinister, when from start to finish the missionaries only offer unconditional welcome and repeated practical help, demonstrating an awful lot more empathy for people of different beliefs than the author and his cohorts. They never push their beliefs on the atheists next store and actively spare them from the embarrassment of trying to participate in their religious activities.
If the protagonists really cared about this town, and really wanted to see it loved, they could easily have learned about the surviving buildings instead of giving them silly names and stripping them of the remaining evidence of their stories. They could have made stewardship of the town and their own building a point of care and honor, instead of badly using both with little regard to anything but their own caprices. Instead, they recreationally ransack abandoned buildings, encouraging their out-of-town friends to do the same, and shoot off fireworks inside their building, endangering themselves and the building, and traumatizing their pets, not to mention worrying the townspeople.
Where was the titular curse that plagued the protagonists? Yes, the electrical company sounded very shady, but electricity was virtually their only expense. With no rent, very little labor cost and no off-site housing costs, a trickle of additional income or a small buffer of savings for lean months could have kept them above water indefinitely. Someone of very modest means could have made this work. Meanwhile, things that I expected to develop into untenable roadblocks– the town council, the cops, the health inspector, were all threads that lead nowhere. None of them ended up being obstructions, except for just being generally underfunded and unresponsive. That neglect clearly helped much more than it hurt, as any one of these entities could (and probably ought to) have shut them down for running a business with residential equipment out of a building that wasn’t safe.
But nothing gets in their way as they rifle unapologetically through abandoned buildings (some of them only just vacated), checking locks when they’ve exhausted all the obviously uninhabited ones, going to increasingly great lengths to steal fodder for their business venture and amuse themselves. Their complete disregard for safety or common sense eventually, and very sadly, gets one of their number killed in an accident. This was all so preventable with a little money, a modicum of basic respect, and a pinch of forethought.
The book ends with a passage about how, repeatedly and in all ways, they have NO REGRETS (their caps). Honestly, if they had admitted to some regrets or at last omitted this defensively self-serving epilogue, I could have enjoyed the book more and remembered it more fondly. Instead the psychological backflips just stuck all my objections in my craw. There’s no shame in attempting a venture and deciding that you don’t want it as much as you think you did, or can’t make it financially viable. There is shame in blowing into a place and treating the whole of it like your own personal property just because you don’t know whose property it is. There is shame in exposing your customers and friends to unsafe conditions. There is shame in thinking you know better than its lifelong inhabitants, who have been through so goddamn much already. There is shame in disrespecting a place so brashly that has already been so ruthlessly beaten down over decades upon decades.
I don’t have any issues with the author’s expressed leanings or ideals. It’s actually because I agree with so many of them that this book upset me. Trying to breathe life into places like this is great, even if it doesn’t always work. But treating an entire town like it exists for your plunder is about as imperialistically minded as you can get. Not a good look for an anti-capitalist. And yes, big corporations like Walmart do have big downsides for small communities. Unnecessary trash generation should be avoided at all costs. Being vegan or gluten free is a totally justifiable personal choice. But it was the hypocrisy, utter lack of perspective or consideration for the real people affected by their actions, the self-aggrandizement and relentless unintended irony that left me feeling sad for days after reading it. It’s things like this that make people disconnect from progressive ideas, and siphon the dregs of hope out of a town like Cairo.
Almost every paragraph is dripping with self-congratulation, but my main takeaway was that this all could have actually worked if the people involved had had even been moderately prepared. In the end, they were just more in a long line of people and circumstances who’ve swept through this sad, beautiful town and left it worse off than when they came. The building they bought could easily have been saved and stayed saved, instead of turning to the hollow, blown out shell it is today.
As of this writing, more buildings have been lost, but the community does have an operating food co-op, owned by the community, that attempts to provide affordable (not specialty or luxury) groceries at home. I hope that this is the start of a positive trend for the people who richly deserve some wins. If the town does have a curse, it’s been a string of bad actors. Enough good faith, constructive and decently funded counter-initiatives might just help turn the tide. Sending all my best wishes to the people of Cairo, IL.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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