HN Reader

A very poignant and well-written piece, which only gets sadder as you realize the scale and extent of these systemic issues landing people in such places, and it’s only getting worse.

Hopefully it's not taken in poor taste to compare the situation to a video game, but I can't help but think of Cyberpunk 2077's Dogtown. This zone that's become a den of all sorts of sad behavior, ruled by martial law.

That being said, I get the impression the author has a flair for the dramatic. On a whim I clicked on a random restaurant there on Google Maps (Red Rooster Overtown) and it was described as an "Artful restaurant offering Southern comfort food with a twist, plus craft cocktails, and happy hours." Doesn't exactly sound like a hellhole to me, though I guess it has been 15 years and a lot can change.

This touches on the "everybody else in the discipline" aspect I have been thinking about lately; my conclusion is that we have a spectrum of inclusive to exclusive sports.

Think about snooker: to live off it you need to be really good, as in train for 8+ hours a day, every day. The top player will earn multiples of 250k GBP a year, but already a 3rd ranker will at best do a "decent office job". Everybody else pays to play. This is an exclusive sport.

But look at UTMB[1]: A guy having a day job and training a couple of hours before and after work... was able to finish it under 100 hours, which is jaw-dropping. This is an inclusive sport.

Now pro boxing: you can't have a ranking without enough contenders, and by definition there can only be one champion at a time. So you have the champion, contenders, gatekeepers, journeyman and... everybody else is the filler. It's an inclusive sport, but by pure statistics most players will be filler.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-Trail_du_Mont-Blanc

What a fantastic piece of writing. Gripping. Thanks for posting it.

> He points up at the perfect blue sky. "I'll see him again."

By the time I got to this line, I could not stop the tears.

Just got done reading it, it’s a sad but beautiful piece.