Thumbtacks outnumber flyers

Mounted between the vending machines and the restroom door, at a height calibrated for exactly no one, too high for children, too low for anyone over six feet without stooping, the board holds whatever the neighborhood has decided the neighborhood needs to know. Layers accumulate the way sediment does: a guitar-lessons flyer from March sits half buried under a lost-cat notice from May, which is itself overlapped by a church rummage sale dated for a Saturday already three weeks past. Nothing is dated for removal; removal simply happens, eventually, when someone needs the space more than the board needs the record. Thumbtacks outnumber flyers by a wide margin, evidence of postings that failed to leave a trace beyond four small holes. The single business card stapled dead center, for a locksmith operating at all hours, has survived four full seasons of turnover, a permanence no other notice on the board has managed, and its survival seems to owe less to relevance than to the difficulty of removing a staple cleanly. Studied at close range, the board reads less like advertising and more like a census: who is moving, who lost a cat, who is teaching piano out of a garage, who has furniture to give away rather than sell. No index exists, and none is needed. Anyone who wants to know what a neighborhood is doing with itself this week could do worse than stand here and read it top to bottom, twice.

Beatrice Womack