I sit in the lobby of the US Post Office in Downtown Long Beach. Maps mark it as the East Village branch. I’ve been here a handful of times this year. This trip is to get mail from a ‘vacation hold’. I have not been on vacation. Mail thieves have been stealing my mail, including client checks and Christmas cards, for the better part of this month.
I recall the series of events that led to me standing in line today:
After the seventh day of mail theft, I send an email to my management company. They note it, and say they will tell the Post Office.
After the ninth day of mail theft, I show one of the office workers downstairs the mailboxes, broken open. She says she will call the Post Office.
After the eleventh day of mail theft, I call my management company. They say there’s nothing they can really do, but they’ll call USPS. I tell them that without a solution, my rent will be late.
My neighbors call the management company. They get told the same.
This is the worst version of the 12 Days of Christmas, ever.
I call the police. When I tell them about the theft, they say it is under federal jurisdiction – the US Postal Inspector is the governing authority. I learn the only leverage the police have to spur action is to show the Inspector the number of police reports that are filed.
I believe federal institutions are important; in this moment it is hard to support them.
I ask to file a report.
I know my neighbors will not file a report; they have many reasons to distrust the police.
When an officer is dispatched, they tell me the thieves likely stole the keys to my building’s mailbox from one of the mail trucks sitting in the parking lot behind the East Village Post Office.
The cop tells me the thieves have crafted a slick system: first, they hotwire one of those electric scooters you see everywhere on the sidewalks – the instructions are easy to find on Reddit. Then they roll up on their targets with a backpack. Finally, they open the mailboxes, dump everything into the backpack and scoot away. All happens in under 30 seconds.
I take my report number, and wonder how long it will take my clients to send out new checks. Bureaucracies are slow, especially this time of year.
The next day, I go to the Downtown Post Office, and ask them to hold my mail.
Once you remove all the flyers, the advertisements, and other enticements for myself and my business to commit to commercial endeavors with new partners, it turns out there is little *actual* mail.
Thankfully, what remains is a pile of good tidings. I am glad I am doing this in December.
After I collect my mail and sort it, I put it into my backpack. The sky darkens a bit, a fact easily seen through windows twice as tall and wide as I.
Despite all of the light, the inside of the Downtown Post Office is very brown, very neutral. Aging fluorescent lights anchored in an even more ancient ceiling wash everything in a yellow tone that accentuates the age of everything it touches.
This branch of the Post Office has stood here for over 100 years. I think of this, and smile when I realize I am in a space where countless peoples’ ancestors have come through.
I wonder if those who dreamed and rendered this projection of federal power and service into reality considered what its end might look like – if they saw the death of a thousand cuts the USPS endures.
Even though this moment is surrounded by a century of history, that story feels… frail. This institution has not met its final end, so there is no 20/20 hindsight, no valorous retelling of past victories. The institution is alive, but seemingly consigned to an indeterminate end.
There are radiators, exposed, but unused. At night, some people sleep on the street tens of feet away.
There is hope hard coded into the artisanal marble, granite, and glass, dissonantly draped by that light which did not gracefully age.
There are people, quickly coming and going.
Spending half an hour in this lobby, I am the only one who stays more than five minutes. I am probably the only one that notices dust on the soffits. It is clear that no one here has looked up in a long time.
This building *feels* like 2022. Waning, experienced by all of us in one way or another, considered by many, understood by few.
I secure my backpack full of good tidings, thank the building and those working within it, and take my leave for the year.
Intersection 9 