A neighborhood imagines itself

Ashtin McNicoll has written and illustrated a children’s book that suggests Mid City has crossed an important threshold. A neighborhood becomes a place not merely when people live in it, but when it begins to tell stories about itself. Let’s Meet on Government Street does that work for Mid City, passing its sense of self to the next generation.

McNicoll tells the story of Mid City through the eyes of two brothers, whose mom, the story's author, takes them to Government Street to play with friends. As they travel the road, they dream of the places they might stop - for cookies at Counterspace, coffee for mom at City Roots, to eat tacos at Barracuda or meat pies at Elsie’s, to play at Goodwood Park. They end the trip at Red Stick Reads for storytime. 

You can pick up the book for $25 at Las Brujas, Mid City’s newest coffee shop and bodega, itself the kind of business that opens in a place that is a neighborhood.