Gullible's Travels III: Roanoke, The City Which Isn't

Picture it:
Tuesday night, the bustling metropolis of Roanoke, Virginia.

Steven and I head downtown for a night on the town.
First, we make another trip up Mill Mountain to see the star and the city skyline at night.
It really is a spectacular sight.
Then we attempt to check out gay-life in Roanoke.
Roanoke has been described as a very progressive city in the South, with a supposedly substantial gay community with lots of gay-related activities.
Tim and Brenda just moved back to Roanoke after a 4½ year stint in Front Royal, in northern Virginia.
Before that, they lived in Roanoke for 11 years, including the time they spent going to school at Roanoke College, where they met.
From my own personal experience, I remembered there being a gay bookstore in the middle of downtown, where one could go to get information on the aforementioned gay-related activities or pride stickers or books or lube or whatever else the modern homosexual might need.
That place doesn't exist anymore.
So they have nothing.
Just two gay bars, one of which is only open Friday through Sunday.
We drove around downtown, and not only were there no people around, but a large majority of the buildings were completely vacant, abandoned, and boarded up.
wtf?
There's one little tiny section of downtown that's chock full of restaurants and breeder-bars, much like Church St. in Orlando, but the rest of downtown was completely dead.
We drove on to another section of town so I could show Steven Tim and Brenda's old house, then we stopped at a Walgreens where I picked up one of the greatest inventions known to man:
Energizer battery charger with rechargeable batteries.
Digital cameras suck the life out of batteries faster than...
...
...something really bad that sucks life out of stuff.
I don't know, but it's a lot.
So not only do we never have to purchase batteries again, but we haven't even had to recharge the first set of batteries that we put in the camera.
Ordinary batteries would take about 20-25 pictures before their untimely death, 30 if you were totally lucky and didn't use the flash or the timer.
This first set of rechargeables has taken about 120 pictures already, and there's still juice left.
Awesome.
Anyway, batteries in hand we trekked back downtown to find the one gay bar that was open on a Tuesday night.
It's fairly well unmarked, so it was pretty difficult to find.
You have to look for the Canada Dry sign that looks like it was painted in 1972, amid the wasteland of abandoned warehouses and factories.
We found it and went inside.
Including the bartender, there were exactly 4 other people in the bar.
They were playing good music, but clearly no one was dancing, not that there was an actual dance floor to dance on.
We eased our way to the bar and I nonchalantly asked the sweet little lesbian bartender, "Hey, what the hell happened to this city? When did it die?"
I was afraid I might offend someone, but she just said, "When you find out, let me know."
I was saddened.
Steven and I ordered a coke and a water.
That order probably kept them in business for another week.
Roanoke needs some revitaliz-gaytion.
They need a Queer Eye for the Straight City.
I feel that someone should step up to the plate.
Just not me.
Someone who lives there needs to turn Roanoke back into the progressive, gay-friendly city that it used to be so that I can be more comfortable when I visit.
Because it's all about me.

So we went back to the house, made plans for the next day's adventures, went to sleep, and dreamed the dreams that dreamers dream in Sleepytimeland.

To be continued...
Next episode: Liars go to hell.