The lot at Dick's is the last functioning small town in America

A hard case, but I'll make it.

There is a barter economy. There is a functioning informal courts system — try scamming someone in row F and see how long you last. There is childcare, unofficially. There is a guy who has fixed a hundred flat tires for free and everyone knows which row he parks in. There's food, obviously. There's a lost-and-found that works better than any airport's.

None of it is administered. All of it works for four days and then dissolves completely and reassembles nine hundred miles away in June.

I'm not going to pretend it's a model for anything. But I've lived in three cities and I have never once known which of my neighbors could fix a tire.