Longtime residents beginning to look out of place in newly revitalized Downtown

Albert Munch walks his dog on 11th Street: Photo courtesy of the World Wide Web.

While the recent revitalization of Downtown Astoria has been seen by most as a necessary and long-overdue breath of fresh air for the historic city, many longtime residents are beginning to complain that they now feel out of place in their own city.

Take Albert Munch, for example. He grew up in Astoria. To him, there is no other place in the world that he would call home. And while he occasionally has to go to Portland for cataract surgery, the longest he's been away from this city were the two tours he did in Korea.

"I came up in these streets," said Munch. "Back in my day, you wouldn't see all these bright colors on buildings. We used to paint everything either white or brown. It was a real deep brown, too. A fine color. Nowadays, everything just looks fruity and gay."

Stopping briefly to reorganize his wallet, Munch continued his annoying tirade.

Munch reminisces at Street 14 Coffee.

"This coffee shop used to actually be something," said Munch, as he lingered awkwardly in Street 14 Coffee. "As a young boy, I used to come here to buy these little toy guns. They were made out of real steel, right here in America. When you pulled the trigger, a flag would come out and it would have a nice lookin' dame on it. Jean Harlow, Barbara Stanwyck, Bette Davis, Jane Russell, Mae West, Grace Kelly, Betty White, all the old time broads."

Munch then went on to explain how he plans to write a letter to congress, demanding that everything be put back to the way it was "when Astoria was still a great city."

But while the grandfathers of Astoria look back upon their precious golden days with a sense of loss and longing in their hearts, their screams inevitably fall on deaf ears, as the sounds of our property values rising could drown out even the angriest of dying men.