Imagine hearing every day throughout your childhood that a nuclear attack might incinerate you at any moment. Imagine schoolteachers holding drop drills and handing out maps showing the best routes to nearby fallout shelters. Imagine politicians from all major parties assuming that Russian Communists would attack us at any moment (and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev screaming, “We will bury you!” on TV). We all expected to die in a nuclear war. And even if we survived, we didn’t expect our society and economic system — or bank accounts — to make it through the holocaust.

Just for fun, I decided to take pictures of several rundown properties in the “new” section of Bradenton’s Village of the Arts (where I live), then look up the slumlords’ addresses and grab some photos of their homes. Quite a contrast! The city is investing big bucks in new sidewalks and streetlights here and is generally working to upgrade this neighborhood, but some of the people who own rentals around here don’t seem to be jumping on the fixup bandwagon even though they sure as hell live in plenty nice places themselves. Update Feb 2006: I’ve removed the photos because, after many months of inspections, notices, and hearings, Bradenton housing officials have managed to badger some of the worst housing code offenders into doing some exterior fixup. But there are plenty of other junkers in the neighborhood, many of which look okay on the outside but are horrible inside. Check out this “Inside Look” at a slum apartment down the street from us and you’ll see what I mean.

The signs at Bradenton’s city limits call it “The Friendly City.” It’s not a big-name Florida tourist destination; tell most people you live in Bradenton, and they ask, “Where?” But the place is starting to shake its reputation as a nowhere town with a decaying skid row at its heart, and its Downtown Development Authority [DDA] is one of the biggest reasons for the change.

One potential problem with this change is that a whole lot of people moved to Bradenton because it was an inexpensive, sleepy little town that didn’t have the typical Florida high-rise condominium blight along its waterfront. The condoms are coming to Bradenton now, in a big way, busily stealing large amounts of the area’s natural beauty. But if the DDA does its job right — which it looks like it will — the condomites and other despoilers won’t totally take over the town the way they’ve overwhelmed other once-pleasant Florida communities.