Whitlough - N.E. 0

A minor celebrity had once come out of Rohnert Park, California, and described it to an interviewer with a flip of sophisticated hair, a roll of tinted eyes, and the word shithole. Though timeless, the escape cry of the young and mobile, the city council publicly deplored the image she tarred them with, and feathered her name from a large-font public interest pamphlet before the ink had a chance to dry.

Privately, the council did not disagree. It wasn’t so much that the charge was inaccurate. It was simply unfair. Rohnert Park was no worse than any other chain-linked suburban drowning in the states in 2025. No, it didn’t have 19^th century shop fronts, or a gushing wine industry, and it had never supplied background scenery for an Oscar-winning film. It didn’t have a bootstrap history to instill local pride, or a quaint tradition to reenact, or a public forum in which to display either of the former. But the city did put up lights for the holidays on the trees of the main strip.

The idea was floated that the city’s public statement should include not putting weight into the inarticulate opinion of a cocaine-addicted, D-list actress, but as that implicated their own schools, both educationally and somewhat criminally, the suggestion was only enjoyed in closed session. Rohnert Park wasn’t a shithole. It just wasn’t anywhere worth a postcard home, but if the spoiled, drug-addled bitch thought growing up in Rohnert Park was some dirt-scratching, third-world background to overcome, she should have tried Biloxi 4, the country of Chad, or what was left of Florida.

In a way, hating the celebrity gave Rohnert Park a cohesion it had never had before, and someone made a postcard that said Rohnert Park! Home of Fine Dining, Lovely Parks, and Marietta Rhys, with the last crossed out.

But she would prove merely prescient.