[Lyric] Local Business (Harrison Lemke)

In town for the weekend
Wedding of a former friend
And everything has changed again
The stores and bars on Sherman
Look just like Portland or Brooklyn;
It's all been rearranged again

It's a dirty tourist trap
It'll never love you back

Front page of the local press
Sings hymns to local business:
Sell whatever isn't nailed down
And the guy at the hotel bar
Still talks about the time he met a movie star
Right here, in our own town

They'll bruise you blue and black
But they're never gonna love you back

Granddad worked in a factory
(or was it a fishery?)
And saved up every penny that he earned
But to want a captive audience
And to be someone of consequence
Is the only trade you ever learned
And they'll tear your ticket in half
But they're never gonna love you back

And no one seems to know what to make of
The thing they exist for the sake of
And spin around like dim and dying worlds:
The resort at the center
Like a holy place no one dares to enter
But the priests with their attendants and their pearls

It's a dirty trick at that:
A god who'll never love you back

It breaks your heart
To see them lean in at the door
To catch some dying strain
Of what they're living for

Dusk falling on the empty pier
Hotel lit up like a chandelier
Bitter lake-sand smell, a jagged line of evergreen
As out of reach as the memory
Of the place when you were seventeen
And still in love with everyone and everything

The water is beautiful and black
But it'll never love you back