But yeah, I was reading this hand wringing nonsense up here about gentrification in older neighborhoods, like St. Johns and “No Lo” which is the area between downtown and St. Johns, and I just couldn’t stop laughing. You move 50 people who make $100k+ a year into a place where the mean income is $20k, and somehow expect that the place _isn’t_ gonna change? Same goes for Show Low and Bisbee and all the places south of Phoenix. You push a million bucks of buying power into a place and it all goes nuts.

I might even go as far as re-arranging the ending sentences to be:

“…The envelope shifts in my pocket and the bottom drops out of my mood. Guess it’s time to figure out what this shit is all about. I crane my neck around and make sure I’m not being followed.

Nobody but me and the pools of dirty light.”

You also might gain a bit of suspense by separating the followed. and Nobody by a little more white space. But mostly it would just be to emphasize that line since it’s so cool and all.

I also really like the part about the newspaper article. It’s weird, it made me think about how some guy in Chandler is trying to get the library to stop stocking the New Times. When I heard the story I thought that’s just ridiculous. When are people going to start complaining about their library not stocking porn? I suppose the New Times is probably guilty of writing the types of articles you are talking about. But, I have a feeling the guy complaining was upset about the liposuction ads and left-leaning politics and not the gentrification.