The Cabbagetown Neighbor

“Yup! Like it or not, Creed is back on top of the chart.” — Top of the Charts. Vol. XXXIII, Issue #7. July 2024.

This is the caption that greeted me when I opened this month’s issue of my new favorite publication, The Cabbagetown Neighbor, to the page where local editor Kyle F. Bidlack does yeoman’s work documenting the listening habits of our community via the local watering hole, Milltown Tavern. Every month, Bidlack checks the top plays of the jukebox in the back of this neighborhood’s proprietary dive, one of the last bastions of a good time in this ever-growing city. “What is Cabbagetown listening to? Good question,” he begins in perfect, Hemingway-tight prose. “Here’s this month’s hottest songs of the Milltown Tavern juke box.”

His column, “Top of the Charts,” takes place in a very special publication—printed on 8.5” x 11.0” bright white paper from what has to be a kitchen LaserJet—which a local team of writers, editors, and other volunteers publish and distribute to every house in Cabbagetown, free of cost and to the benefit of all. It’s the kind of publication that reports with guileless joy and unaffected optimism, posting everything from general community meeting minutes to volunteer calls to paint the community center to civil debates over slogans like “Keep Cabbagetown Shitty.” There’s a local gardener who writes about constructing makeshift birdbaths, and a column from a precocious girl who conducts surveys about the one word that best describes the neighborhood (“Home” was #1) and muses on a list of best “Summer Ideas” (“Sometimes my mommy and I like to have a ‘Chill Morning.’ All we do is try to stay in bed and just hang out. Maybe you can do that with the people you love too”).

I’ve replicated this month’s “Top of the Charts” report for Earwyrms, mostly because Bidlack, from documentary alone, recreates the kinds of playlists I could only hope to put together on my own. The jukebox is an imprecise tool, but it gets closer to the soul of a public space—to a group of neighbors, the SI unit of humanity—more than any streaming numbers ever could, contaminated as they are by lobbyist playlists like “POLLEN” and “RapCaviar.” The fact that I can feel the NIN heads in my vicinity? My Hozier homies, my Bryan buffs, my Creedites next to In Rainbows brainhoes? Unimpeachable. That’s what brings people closer together..

“Creed tops the chart for the fourth straight month.” — Top of the Charts. Vol. XXXIII, Issue #5. May 2024.

Since April, when I moved to the neighborhood and started reading, Creed’s “Higher” has been top played for every month, save one (June, where gold was taken by Marshall Tucker Band with “Can’t You See”). For two of those, Radiohead’s “Bodysnatchers” is #2 in the lineup—in a third month, it’s #5. It’s fitting that the most hated band of the 1990s is sharing space with the most critically lauded and popularly misunderstood—a sign that this is my Shangri-la. I’ve been called the contrarian my entire life; but in truth, it’s always felt bad to be different. The heart won’t always budge when the mind does; it fights hard enough to beat as it is.

Also? They sound damn good back to back. This is de facto democracy, a true public space.

“Creed tops the chart for the third straight month.” — Top of the Charts. Vol. XXXIII, Issue #4. April 2024.

I’ll be checking back in with the Milltown jukebox. Once every couple of months, just to see how we’re doing. Remember: There are more safe places than you think. Protect yourself against the fearmongers. Trust in the best of your neighbors’ hearts—and try to lift them up when you can.

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