SitemapIt's Friday, July 9, 2021, and after three years of living in the Mahoning Valley, I’ve learned nostalgia plays a major role in Valley residents’ relationships to the region.
There’s even a Facebook Group titled: Good old days in Youngstown, Ohio in which current Valley residents and members of the Youngstown diaspora post vintage Valley advertisements and wax poetic about lunch at Woolworth’s. “Does anyone remember….?” many a post begin.
The sweet achy pangs of Mahoning Valley nostalgia have a hold on me, too. Heck, after the old Vindy closed, I even purchased an orange plastic newspaper box someone posted on Facebook about having found. (Shout-out to MM supporter Lori Factor!)
This week, I was working on a story about Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corporation’s latest project, the renovation of the old Foster Theatre, which, for the last few decades, has shown porno flicks — much to the dismay of nearby South Side residents. YNDC is now tasked with the unenviable job of literally and figuratively scrubbing the iconic structure of its unseemly past. One of the first things the organization did was change the marquee, which for years, has read “XXX videos,” to YNDC’s tagline, “Revitalize.” It got me thinking: For a town that loves to look back, what do we do with the seedier elements of our past?
To see the full story from Mahoning Matters, click here.