The Right Permits Lyrics

Every house on the block got sold to the city; it's sad, but some offers you just can't refuse.
Mortar and brick once towering tall;
When a city is changing, you can't have it all.

Now the building's a bike shop where we went to high school.
The house where my mother lived is a restaurant.
The old public housing holds gallery art walks.
The tourists ask where the wine tasting is.

All the pneumatic drills and old bribes in the paper;
Machinery thrashing and throwing off steam.
Big business and councilmen laughing about it:
If you've got the permits, you can do what you please.

Now the bulldozers tumble out over the rocks
And the mold in the clapboard is making me sick.
Some worker in denim keeps calling me Linda.
I sign all his papers, but that's not my name.

I pocket his money and then walk away.