Got a call the other day from a man who is not happy with the direction my columns have been taking. A lovely man, he wasted no time trying to spare my feelings.

“A bunch of us sat around today to discuss it,” the man said, between swigs of booze he makes himself in his bathtub. “The consensus is, you are getting too far away from your downtown roots. You never spend time down there and write about it. You might as well be a food critic or one of those namby-pamby art reviewers.”

At this point, his homemade hooch burst into flames and burned off his eyebrows and the 3-foot hairs protruding from his ears. The conversation was cut short, but his point hit the mark. I have been namby-pamby lately.

Let’s face it. Downtown Lewiston has been my sustenance for a dozen years. It’s where the richest stories develop and where the finest sources exist. Turning away from it would be career suicide.

The problem is this: Downtown Lewiston evolves like a living organism and my role in its social dynamic changes with the times.

Ten years ago, I spent 95 percent of my time in a cluster of streets off Kennedy Park. I lived there, my best sources were there and a whole bunch of my friends were urchins of the downtown streets.

Ten years ago, Brenda Williams was still alive and her vast and intricate web of associates was mine by proxy. For those of you with the audacity to have forgotten Brenda, she was a prostitute, a drug dealer and a hard boozer. When she died, at 30, a large portion of my inner-city network came crumbing after.

Back then, crafty and violent players from the Dominican Republic controlled the local crack trade. Since Brenda’s network crossed the Dominican network in many places, there was intermingling. I had prime seats for the creation of news in the downtown area. I had a strange sort of membership that allowed me access to many of the crack houses and most of the hard-drinking clubs.

Today, drug traffickers come from New York, Boston or Hartford. They set up shop in downtown apartments and never set foot on the streets. There is only one crack rock left in the city, so they have to take turns dealing it. These dealers are cycled in and cycled out, never taking time to socialize with local beat reporters. Snobbish dealers.

Back then I had safe houses all over the downtown area. I could stop in at any hour of the day or night, and trade 12-packs of beer for shelter and information. Many of those buildings have been lost to city bulldozers. Many of those old informants are dead.

Ten years ago, my base of operation was largely around Knox Street. In recent years, I had to haul stakes and move up a few blocks, to Bartlett and Walnut streets. I spend a good portion of my time up there, but I rarely linger. Gone are the days when 75 percent of the faces downtown were familiar. Today, transients rule the hood, people who are here and gone. Today, it is culturally confusing in the perimeter around Kennedy Park.

Lewiston evolves and never stops. To some, it is instantly apparent. To others, proximity blinds them to the changes. The nature of crime changes along with the faces. Today, there are fights with bats and knives rather than guns. Today, there are vehicle break-ins instead of home invasions. Child troublemakers from the 1990s are now adults getting into adult trouble. Meanwhile, crafty criminals from yesterday have grown old and tired, too tired to commit the violence that marked their youth.

As that weirdo David Bowie says: “Ch-ch-changes. Just gonna have to be a different man. Time may change me, but I can’t trace time.”

Which segues prettily into my next, more troubling concept. A longtime friend suggests that it is not the city that has changed so much, but me. I’m older now, and wiser, she says. I’ve settled down a bit and I have personal ambitions outside the streets of Lewiston.

I write fluffy items for a new section instead of dedicating my time to the movers and shakers of the inner city. Look at me! I’m wearing bright orange shoes! Wheeee!

Sometimes, I even take vacations. It’s not the city that is evolving, says my pontificating friend. It is me.

To which I scoff. And don’t you worry one bit about that silly notion, my ghoulish friend. You can take the boy out of the hood, all right. But you’ll never get the hood out of the boy.

Mark LaFlamme is the Sun Journal crime reporter. He is on a camping vacation this week with his lovely wife.