Falls Church Fight Club?
http://www.thefallschurchpost.com/2014/03/15/falls-church-fight-club/
Longtime readers of this column know that I fear the town and the country are both descending into some sort of Dickensian pluto/kleptocracy, where the filthy masses contract cholera in the streets while various Fat Cats eat kobe steak while chortling at the destitute. Unfortunately, it seems as if this reality is coming sooner than anticipated with the opening of a boxing gym in the project on Lee Highway. “But that just seems like a normal business moving into an area that they think will be profitable.” you might say. That would seem to be the logical and not-crazy explanation, but the truth is far more sinister. Clearly, this is leading to the foundation of some kind of Falls Church Fight Club (FCFC) that will result in anarchy in the streets.
For those of you who have never seen the movie Fight Club, crawl out from the rock you live under (whose tax rates have just increased) and read the novel by Chuck Palahniuk. For those of you who can’t read, it’s essentially the story of Edward Norton coming to the realization that he’s a tool and then meeting Brad Pitt, who leads him to wacky adventures that turn more psychotic as the film progresses. There’s some stuff about the effects of commercialization and corporations on society and how humans have turned from a society of hunters to a society of delicate hothouse flowers, but mostly it’s just Brad Pitt with his shirt off beating up dudes. While fears that the movie would start “fight clubs” around the country were overblown, this boxing gym could easily be a second attempt to convince victims of the Second Great Depression that we live in to abandon law and order entirely.
We should’ve seen this coming. The rate of violent crime has been dropping fairly steadily since the 1990s, and if all the pseudoscience I’ve been reading is correct, the human race is naturally barbaric and craves violence to replicate our savage ancestry or something. Naturally, a gym that promotes boxing as a workout plan would be the perfect cover. By day people park all over my street to walk over and work out, and by night people beat each other senseless in front of an amped-up crowd in order to feel something (probably.) And although I approve of almost all forms of exercise, the main problem of the FCFC is that there will undoubtedly be brawlers parking all over the street, making it slightly more difficult for the good people of East Jefferson Street to get fast food at 1:30 AM.
Things like this always start as a ripple before becoming a tidal wave. As mentioned previously, the number of yogurt stores in the city has grown from one to one hundred and seventy five in less than a year. The first boxing gym leads to a second, then a fifth, until all non-yogurt properties are boxing gyms. The competition between them becomes, leading to various competing fight club tribes. When all resources are utterly consumed, the hardened dead-eyed survivors will move on, leaving nothing but bruises and higher property taxes in their wake. If you need me, I’ll be hiding in my room. Across from the new boxing gym.