{"id":284,"date":"2012-03-12T23:54:12","date_gmt":"2012-03-12T23:54:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8080\/wordpress\/?page_id=284"},"modified":"2014-09-30T20:25:48","modified_gmt":"2014-09-30T20:25:48","slug":"1970s-beyond","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.becomingrichardpryor.com\/pryors-peoria\/era\/1970s-beyond\/","title":{"rendered":"1970s &#038; Beyond: &#8220;Pryor&#8217;s Peoria&#8221; After Pryor"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Until the phrase &#8220;Will it play in Peoria?&#8221; becomes an antique expression, journalists will continue to visit Peoria to take the pulse of middle America. During the Watergate scandal, the\u00a0<em>Washington Post\u00a0<\/em>published a <a title=\"The View From Peoria: It\u2019s Not Playing Well\" href=\"http:\/\/www.becomingrichardpryor.com\/pryors-peoria\/1974\/06\/30\/the-view-from-peoria-its-not-playing-well\/\">remarkable account<\/a> of how the city&#8217;s politics and culture were shifting in the riptides of the early-1970s. The\u00a0<em>Wall Street Journal\u00a0<\/em>landed in Peoria a decade later, and saw in the city&#8217;s struggles <a title=\"City\u2019s Woes Reflect Budget Conflict\" href=\"http:\/\/www.becomingrichardpryor.com\/pryors-peoria\/1984\/02\/17\/citys-woes-reflect-budget-conflict\/\">a mirror of the disaffection<\/a> that had gripped America during the 1982 recession. As recently as 2013, <em>The Economist\u00a0<\/em>dropped into town and held up Peoria as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.becomingrichardpryor.com\/pryors-peoria\/2013\/10\/12\/how-the-shutdown-plays-in-peoria\/\">&#8220;Anytown, USA.&#8221;<\/a><\/p>\n<h3>Fading Voices and Persistent Legacies<\/h3>\n<p>Richard Pryor&#8217;s original North Washington Street neighborhood was bulldozed in the early-1950s, and there are fewer and fewer physical traces of &#8220;Roarin&#8217; Peoria&#8221; as the city has reconfigured itself in the decades since. The Murray Baker Bridge\u2014the construction of which brought on the bulldozers\u2014<a href=\"http:\/\/www.becomingrichardpryor.com\/pryors-peoria\/1998\/12\/12\/key-bridge-has-changed-face-of-city\/\">fundamentally reshaped the business of its city<\/a>, in part by contributing to its sprawl. The world of &#8220;Richard Pryor&#8217;s Peoria&#8221; is, in no small part, turning into a world of memories and ghosts.<\/p>\n<p>Yet memories are powerful, as are ghosts. Just as Richard&#8217;s grandmother Marie lives on in the performances she inspired in her grandson, and just as Juliette Whittaker lives on in all those she mentored at the Carver Center, so \u00a0&#8220;Richard Pryor&#8217;s Peoria&#8221; lives on in Peoria and elsewhere\u2014arguably, wherever someone takes in a Pryor performance and is awoken by it, into hard laughter or hard thought.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Until the phrase &#8220;Will it play in Peoria?&#8221; becomes an antique expression, journalists will continue to visit Peoria to take the pulse of middle America. During the Watergate scandal, the\u00a0Washington Post\u00a0published a remarkable [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":57,"menu_order":60,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"categories-test.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-284","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>1970s &amp; Beyond: &quot;Pryor&#039;s Peoria&quot; After Pryor - Richard Pryor&#039;s Peoria<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.becomingrichardpryor.com\/pryors-peoria\/era\/1970s-beyond\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"1970s &amp; Beyond: &quot;Pryor&#039;s Peoria&quot; After Pryor - Richard Pryor&#039;s Peoria\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Until the phrase &#8220;Will it play in Peoria?&#8221; becomes an antique expression, journalists will continue to visit Peoria to take the pulse of middle America. 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