Tomorrow night we will lose a dear friend ... after seven seasons on the air. For the unfamiliar (I envy the journey you have ahead of you, friend) Parks and Recreation is a mockumentary style show that chronicles the daily struggles of the Parks and Recreation department of the fictional town of Pawnee, Indiana. If you haven’t watched any of it, stop reading this right now and do so.
Back now? Good. In a Weeds-finale-esque
turn of events, this season of Parks
flashes forward three years and we see that the town and the
characters have drastically changed. What could be a
cloying plot device actually works and the humor has persisted at a faster clip than
usual this year.
Still, what I found most interesting
about this final season of Parks
and Rec is how
much fictional 2017 Pawnee reminds
me of current day San Francisco.Conversations
about tech booms, gentrification, and the many uses of kale made me feel right at home with this show.
Parks and Tech
The gang’s main adversary this season is a tech company
called Gryzzl that has taken
over the town. They seem to be a beanie-wearing
mash-up of Facebook, Google, and Apple who’ve
cornered the market in apps, social media,
and phones. They’re determined to build their campus in Pawnee, much to the
chagrin of small local businesses, and the delight of other
big companies. The Gryzzl gang plays into the “techbro”
stereotype that San Franciscans seem
to discuss at length: smart, with just a touch of
douchiness. To give you some
insight, their company motto is “wouldn’t it
be tight if everyone was chill to each other?” and their CEO is played by known
stoner Blake Anderson (aka one of your three
dream brother-husbands from Workaholics).
This show nails the laid back campus vibe of tech offices, the weirdness
therein, and the effect startups
can have on a town as they grow. Also, not
to nitpick, but it seems like the ratio of men
to women is way off in the Gryzzl office, so
art really does imitate life
here.
Local Favorites Fall
At the beginning of the season Leslie is feuding with Ron about a project called “Morningstar.” This turns out to be the name of an apartment complex he’s been contracted to build, and to do so he must demolish Anne’s old house and ruin the view from the Pawnee Commons, a park Leslie spent five seasons fighting for. When Leslie confronts him about it, upset at him for destroying the historic site where she “first perfected the smoky eye look," he offers a matter of fact “people always needs apartments.” San Francisco is faced with similar development woes and yet it seems like the city keeps building swanky condos like Morningstar instead of smaller, more affordable units.
Gryzzl’s influence also makes areas of Pawnee so
expensive that Leslie’s favorite haunt,
JJ’s Diner, is on the chopping block this season, to be
replaced with something called an “Elbow Bedazzling Parlor." SF residents feel her pain — just
swap “diner” with “dive bar." And
personally I’m way more crushed at the loss of a truly great Bloody Mary spot
than I would be stoked for new
waffles.
Oh Kale Nah
Another big change in Pawnee is the rise of upscale grocery
stores, and with that change came, of course, lots of
kale. Pawnee residents, whose
official motto is “first in friendship, fourth in obesity,” have never taken kindly to vegetables (fuck Sue’s Salads) and don’t intend to
start now. Leslie, a strident anti-salad activist, is
distraught to find kale in her milkshake. “My milkshake, guys,” she says
tearfully. San Francisco has also seen kale
riseto become a ubiquitous superfood that also
requires delicate massaging.
Gentrification … There’s No Snappy Way to Say it
After JJ’s Diner gets ousted from its original spot, the gang sets out to find any available real estate for it to relocate to. The only vacant storefronts are in a seedy part of town that is not well inhabited. April dubs it “Medicalwaste Buttsweat Grove" — add “Poop n Pigeons,” and that name could serve for a few SF neighborhoods as well. The only way to make this shady spot more desirable for businesses is to get Gryzzlto set up its campus there. The Gryzzl “Vice President of Cool New Shiz” agrees, partly because the neighborhood already has graffiti so they won’t have to call in Banksy to do a corporate gig. Hmm, a neighborhood with murals that got upscaled after tech money moved in? Sound like any place you know of?
There are other small similarities between Pawnee and SF (influence
of local blogs, the fact that Bill Murray’s been to both) but the biggest common
bond between the two is the strength of their communities. The
citizens of Pawnee are admittedly more apathetic at times than San Franciscans (we’d
only have a PauchBurger if they also served foie gras) but the enthusiasm and
the can-do attitude of the Parks Department never fails to rally and get things
done. We’ve seen in our own city the growing power
of vocal activist
groups and that’s the kind of spirit we need in times of crisis. If Leslie could see some of the things SF citizens have done for their community, I know she would be proud.
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