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Sunday, February 27th

Mayors to Testify Against Virtual Elimination of the CDBG Program**
U.S. Conference of Mayors President and Akron (OH) Mayor Don Plusquellic will testify before the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Federalism and the Census on Tuesday, March 1st in opposition of the elimination of the Community Development Block Grant Program (CDBG) -- the signature program for cities and counties to create jobs, increase economic development opportunities and expand homeownership.

Mayor Plusquellic and the Conference of Mayors is part of a larger coalition of national organizations committed to fight the program's demise.

Under a new Administrative proposal, CDBG as it has traditionally been known for the past 30 years, will be consolidated with 17 other programs into a new program, called Strengthening America's Communities Grant Program. The proposal, in effect, eliminates CDBG in its current form and will have a devastating economic impact on cities, counties, and local communities of all sizes.

Members of the coalition to fight the elimination of CDBG include: The U.S. Conference of Mayors, The National League of Cities, The National Association of Counties, the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials (NAHRO), National Community Development Association (NCDA), and Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC).

Eric Miller (editor@newcolonist.com), on 02.27.05 @ 18:12PST

Water, Power, and Unwarranted Assumptions
"Far from being 'green,' many hydroelectric power schemes release more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than large coal-fired power stations, because of the rotting vegetation they contain. So says the World Commission on Dams, a group of scientists, engineers and environmentalists supported by the World Bank, the world's biggest funder of large dams."

This article, which you can read at www.monitor.net, highlights an aspect of supposedly green hydropower that we have, as a community, given little thought to before: the emission of greenhouse gases from rotting vegetation washed into hydropower reservoirs.

Besides the obvious solution--don't be so damn profligate with energy use--which our adolescent Western mentality won't permit us to consider yet, there is another way to avoid the use of large dams, which also displace agriculture, wildlife habitat, and millions of ordinary folks worldwide: the use of small-source distributed hydropower.

By this I mean nothing more than a high-tech version of millponds, spaced every few kilometers along every minor river and stream that's near or within a populated area. Millponds often did not need to barricade an entire river, but merely diverted part of the flow (using semi-permeable weirs) into an elevated sluice powering a mill--in the modern case it would be a small turbine--a short way downstream. Where a dam is in fact necessary, it would not bet very tall, so fish ladders would be easy to build, and cleaning of the reservoir simple. (The debris could be converted to a fine mulch and sold!) If one needed to take a turbine offline to sluice out the pond and dam, there would be plenty of others nearby to take up the slack while one did so. (This concept underlies the architecture of the Internet and works quite well.)

Such millpond-turbines would be cheap and easy to build; they would also, I confess, require more labor-hours per kilowatt of electricity--but so what? The money would stay in the area where it was paid, instead of being siphoned off into the distant pockets of Enron equivalents, benefitting local economies by reducing unemployment in an intelligent way. Paying a wee bit more for electricity, when that wee bit comes back to you many times in homegrown commerce, is well worth it. And the reduced dependence on a complex web of giant corporations and turgid regulatory agencies should please both liberals and libertarians alike.

Most large cities outside the desert southwest of the US have plenty of large and small watercourses running through them--and the southwest cities have intense sunlight and plenty of wind to take up the slack.

A little imagination (and conservation, especially insulation, fluorescents, and less junk light) is all it would take.

Let's think about it, eh?

Richard Risemberg (rrisemberg@newcolonist.com), on 02.27.05 @ 12:43PST

Tuesday, February 22nd

New London, Jane Jacobs and Eminent Domain
I have a long-standing distaste for the practice of eminent domain. The Supreme Court is expected to hear a case today brought by homeowners in New London, CT. In my own neighborhood, the destruction wrought by political whims is widespread. Once a vibrant city next to Pittsburgh, the downtown of Allegheny was razed for a now-defunct mall. In the 1980s a highway (perhaps one of the more justifiable uses for eminent domain) cut the neighborhood of Deutschtown in two. The now "vibrant" North Shore sat vacant for years while the wheels of government squeaked. It was decades until their "progress" resulted in more than surface lots.

Then of course there is the Garden Theater. It's still there while the owner battles the Urban Redevelopment Authority in court, losing along the way but preventing the last remaining part of Allegheny City from being saved and contributing further to the blight that likely would have been eradicated had the power of eminent domain not be there to use to take these buildings from private owners.

Of course there is the Inner-Harbor in Baltimore and other examples of popular attractions created through the use of eminent domain. That's not to say equally popular (and more creative) alternatives wouldn't have resulted without the power in place. Jane Jacobs, also helping to fight on behalf of the New London residents, was there when Robert Moses' major expressways threatened Manhattan neighborhoods. When Moses said, "You can draw any kind of picture you like on a clean slate, but when you are operating in an overbuilt metropolis you have to hack your way with a meat axe," that meat axe was and is eminent domain.

Our neighborhoods are not design tools for architects and government officials. They are businesses, offices, stores, churches and homes. I welcome incentives to improve both property and well-being. There's also code enforcement, zoning and normal market forces available--tools that will allow those who have an existing stake in these neighborhoods to be a participant in and beneficiary of publicly administered changes.

Here's a bit from a release on the matter from the Institute of Justice.

"A diverse group including world-renowned urban policy scholar Jane Jacobs, civil rights groups including the NAACP and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the AARP, noted legal scholar Richard Epstein, and the American Farm Bureau among many others has filed amicus curiae (or 'friend of the court') briefs with the U.S. Supreme Court urging the justices to end eminent domain abuse in Kelo v. City of New London.  Eminent domain abuse is where governments across the nation take one person’s private home only to hand that land over to another private party for their use.  This landmark constitutional case, filed by the Institute for Justice, will decide whether the 'public use' requirement of the U.S. Constitution allows the government to use eminent domain to take one person’s non-blighted home or small business so a larger business can make more money off that land and pay more taxes as a result."

MORE

Eric Miller (editor@newcolonist.com), on 02.22.05 @ 06:08PST

Saturday, February 19th

New Passenger Rail Station at Milwaukee Airport Dedicated
Amtrak officials recently dedicated a $6.8 million passenger rail facility at Milwaukee County's General Mitchell International Airport (GMIA).

The approximately 1,600 square-foot heated station includes restrooms and a seating area. Covered walkways lead from the drive-up area to a 400-foot passenger-boarding platform. The station is located on the western edge of the airport along existing Canadian Pacific Railway lines and includes parking for 300 vehicles.

Amtrak says the station will serve rail passengers connecting to the airport, along with rail-only passengers utilizing Amtrak's Hiawatha Service that provides seven daily round trips between Chicago and Milwaukee. Milwaukee County and GMIA are providing a free shuttle bus connection between the airport and rail station.

The Milwaukee terminal follows successful rail hubs at other airports. BWI (Baltimore-Washington International) is in the top 20 of the more than 500 Amtrak destinations, with more than a half-million passengers annually to and from the station in suburban Maryland. Along with the BWI and GMIA stations, Amtrak has two other stations serving airports in the U.S. (Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport in California and Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey).

Along with offering the best on-time performance of any Amtrak route at more than 90%, ridership on Amtrak's Hiawatha Service continues to increase - totaling 470,186 in 2004 - and setting a new record for a calendar year. December of 2004 also recorded the highest monthly ridership ever for the Hiawatha Service (45,791).

Each year, about six million passengers pass through GMIA, which is serviced by 14 airlines that offer direct or non-stop flights to 90 cities. There are 230 arrivals and 230 departures out of GMIA every day.

Eric Miller (editor@newcolonist.com), on 02.19.05 @ 20:27PST

Thursday, February 17th

Taking from K-Mart To Give to Wal-Mart
The fight against eminent domain What is a public purpose? That's the question that may be answered soon by the Supreme Court when it hears a case brought by residents of New London Connecticut who decided to take their homes to lease the land to a private developer which would then profit from it (assuming the venture was profitable). It reminded me of a past more ridiculous case in which a church group in Pittsburgh wanted to develop a shopping complex housing a K-Mart, but a government entity decided it wanted to take the land using eminent domain to develop a complex housing a Wal-Mart.

What is public purpose? Most would conclude a road, a school, a courthouse. These days public purpose commonly includes removing what those controlling a government entity considers "blight," and perhaps just as commonly, increasing the tax base.

Can the government take your home to build a different one that will bring in more tax revenue. Today I am afraid that is the case.

Here's a recent article on the case. Let's see what happens.

Eric Miller (editor@newcolonist.com), on 02.17.05 @ 17:33PST

Is Smart Growth Driving Up Housing Costs?
As you may have read in my previous post, HUD has released a report saying that "smart growth" principles are driving up the cost of housing and making "affordable housing" harder to achieve.

In economics, certainly restricting access to some land makes the price of developable land go up. While limiting the use of some land may make other land more expensive, achieving smart growth principles are necessary to minimize other costs, both private and public. These can include transportation costs, infrastructure costs and pollution costs. Building things closer together is simply more efficient.

It seems the problem may be that we have forgotten how to develop efficiently in a dense manner.

Addressing some of the other concerns cited in the HUD report could go a long way in easing the pressures inside developable areas, building codes and permit requirements for example. I personally own a building with two apartments. I am unable to use one of the apartments for anything but storage because the building is only zoned for one unit. As I would have to go through a zoning hearing, I have chosen not to try to use the unit as an apartment. In this example, I should be encouraged, not deterred from providing an additional living space inside a developed urban area.

More, affordable housing needs to be located near transit and employment centers. "Affordable housing" on green-fields in the suburbs is not acceptable as living there requires an occupant to spend a great deal of their already low income on transportation.

As I look around me there are plenty of urban spaces available to be developed. Barriers to building higher-density in-fill housing should be removed and urban development encouraged. Greenfield development should continue to be be discouraged.

Eric Miller (editor@newcolonist.com), on 02.17.05 @ 15:25PST

Affordable Housing: Is Smart Growth Driving Up The Cost?
HUD says a misuse of "smart growth" principles are among the factors driving up the cost of construction and keeping affordable housing out of reach for many Americans.

A new report by HUD finds that outdated, exclusionary and unnecessary regulations continue to block the construction or rehabilitation of affordable housing in some parts of America.

The report points to a number of trends in today's housing market concluding that complex environmental regulations can significantly increase the length and cost of home building review and approval processes; "smart growth" principles can be misused to justify limiting affordable housing production by restricting available land that could otherwise be developed; impact fees may not reflect the true infrastructure costs of a development and can artificially inflate the cost of housing; slow and burdensome permitting and approval systems remain serious impediments to affordable housing development, especially infill development in cities; and, obsolete building and rehabilitation codes may not reflect modern building materials or methods for cost-effective rehabilitation.

In an effort to spark a national dialogue on the issue of barrier reduction, HUD launched America's Affordable Communities Initiative in 2003. Among the Department's highest priorities, this initiative is designed to help communities across America identify and overcome regulatory barriers that impede the availability of affordable housing. Barrier reduction is also a central part of President Bush's strategy for increasing the supply of affordable housing by seven million over the next 10 years.

Eric Miller (editor@newcolonist.com), on 02.17.05 @ 15:00PST

Monday, February 14th

Michigan Land Use Institute Releases 'Follow the Money' Special Report
New research by the Michigan Land Use Institute documents for the first time a pervasive pattern of public investment that is encouraging runaway sprawl in Michigan. The research recounts an extensive history of spending on roads, jobs, government offices, and business development that is contributing to urban decay, environmental degradation, poor public transportation services, and increased hardships for people in general and for those with disabilities in particular.

The study, Follow The Money: Uncovering and Reforming Michigan’s Sprawl Subsidies, is the culmination of a year of research by the Institute in partnership with United Cerebral Palsy of Michigan.

The report describes how certain public investments accelerate sprawl; it also provides state lawmakers with a new way to evaluate how the state makes its economic development and investment decisions, and whether that money can be invested in new and more economically useful ways.

Follow The Money provides compelling evidence that existing economic development policy exacerbates state and local budget deficits, harms Michigan’s overall economic competitiveness, and makes communities less, not more, supportive of people in general and people with disabilities in particular.

“Sprawl cannot exist without massive public spending for roads, water, sewers, public buildings, and business development,” according to the report. “These intense, taxpayer-financed intrusions into the market have distorted the landscape, ruined central cities, harmed the environment, and reduced the quality of life.”

Eric Miller (editor@newcolonist.com), on 02.14.05 @ 15:08PST

Sunday, February 13th

A Little Road Music
Let's indulge for a moment in what Einstein used call a "thought experiment." Very convenient, requires no equipment nor even pen or pencil. He conceptualized many of his theories, he said, while riding his bicycle from office to office...!

I came up with this one while riding the bus a few days ago and looking at the people around me in it, and through the windows at the cars around us outside it, on Wilshire Boulevard.

I made a quick count and saw that there were a little over 40 persons on the bus that morning. Another quick glance at the cars outside confirmed that each one contained the usual 1.2 persons--most cars carrying only the driver, some carrying one or two besides, but that was rare.

As the cars lined up beside us at stops, I saw that even small cars took up as much room as half a bus; so, a bus took up as much room as two cars, while carrying forty-plus people. (It wasn't packed, either.)

But to carry forty people in cars would take up as much space as...hmmm: 40 divided by 1.2 gives...33 cars! But let's be generous and assume that LA will soon be filled with enlightened drivers who will carpool everywhere. How many cars to equal a bus then, with four riders per car? Easier math this time: 10 cars, or five buses' worth of road space.

Wait, there's more: each vehicle, when it's moving, needs a margin in front of it and behind it, and since this margin depends on its speed, not its size, it's the same for all vehicles, from a motorcycle to a Mack truck. So for each of those cars you must add the margin space, meaning 10 to 33 margins added to the space the cars themselves physically occupy.

The one bus uses only one margin.

So, even under ideal conditions which will never be attained in an autocentric culture, cars would still require more than five times as much road space to move the same number of folks as buses do! And in real life it's 33 times the road space much-maligned buses need.

No wonder there are traffic jams out there.

Oh, then there's parking...the bus drops you off and moves on; your car waits for you, a cold hulk, everywhere you go...ready for another thought experiment? This time you do the math....

(And when you're through with that one, figure out how much road space subways need to move a thousand riders at a time...and what we could do on the surface with all that space that cars are taking up...just imagine....)

Richard Risemberg (rrisemberg@newcolonist.com), on 02.13.05 @ 17:16PST

Thursday, February 10th

New Poll Gauges Baltimore's Jobs Situation; Public Safety,Education are Key; 'Good Job' Means Good Wages, Benefits
Baltimoreans cite local hospitals that offer the latest medical technology and treatments, and the superb quality of the area's colleges and universities as key selling points for job creation and economic development in the area. But they have real concerns about public education and safety, and how those issues relate to attracting jobs to the area.

They also see unique and important roles for government, business and themselves when it comes to local jobs.

Poll respondents say that high quality public schools (86 percent), low crime rates (86 percent) and quality of life (82 percent) are the absolute/high priorities for creating a positive jobs environment, but only 18 percent of residents rate the region as strong in public education, and 13 percent give the region a good mark on public safety. Satisfaction with the area's quality of life is higher, however, with 29 percent rating it as very strong. Seventy percent rate the state-of-the-art local hospitals as a strength in Baltimore and as an absolute/high priority for creating jobs. Respondents also gave an impressive grade to the area's colleges and universities with 56 percent rating them very strong and 62 percent listing them as an absolute/high priority for local job creation.

According to the survey, providing health insurance coverage (90 percent), good wages or salary (88 percent) and retirement benefits (81 percent) are the critical/very important qualities of a "good job." Baltimore area residents also believe that the "intangible" elements of a job are important, such as opportunities for advancement and job security (both at 79 percent).

Baltimore area residents also see important roles for government, business and themselves when it comes to jobs. More than four in five (86 percent) say that government should have a role in job creation. A majority (51 percent) say that the best role for government is to ensure that the infrastructure that businesses need to operate effectively is in place, such as good transportation, hospitals, schools and safe neighborhoods. More than one-third (35 percent) of residents say that government should be aggressively offering lower taxes and other incentives to encourage businesses to move to the area. They also believe that government could help attract businesses by making improvements for workers, such as providing health care and child care for people who do not get them at work, raising the minimum wage and lowering personal taxes.

Respondents also see an important role for government when it comes to companies that relocate business functions to overseas facilities. Rather than doing more to regulate and restrict companies from being able to move jobs overseas (35 percent), half (50 percent) say that government should provide tax incentives to companies that create jobs in the United States.

They also see crucial roles for the private sector. Nearly three-quarters state that access to investment capital through an investment bank or other financial services institution is very/fairly important, including 41 percent who believe that it is very important. When asked to name the most important things that private businesses can do to improve the jobs and employment situation in Baltimore, three items are at the top of the list: providing job training and education opportunities (40 percent), offering good benefit packages (38 percent) and providing ownership opportunities in the business through stocks and pensions (24 percent).

With an eye toward the future, respondents listed technology/biotechnology (41 percent) and health care (29 percent) as the industries most likely to create good jobs in the area over the next few years, and believe that small private sector companies (45 percent) will create more new jobs than large private sector companies.

When it comes to their own individual role, Baltimoreans say that improving their education or job skills (41 percent) is the most effective way to get a good or better job. When asked to identify the biggest problems for local job seekers, most say that many jobs require more experience or education than people have (34 percent).

Eric Miller (editor@newcolonist.com), on 02.10.05 @ 18:28PST

Tuesday, February 8th

Rebutting Jeremy "petrol head" Clarkson
Jeremy Clarkson, the British car enthusiast, presenting the “big picture"
tells the world that "Speed is useful. Speed means we can get where we're
going quicker, which means we can see more, do more and learn more. Speed
makes us cleverer. Speed also means we can leave work later and get home
sooner so it makes us richer, and our families more stable. Speed means we
can have a more varied diet because we can have fresher produce from further
afield every day in our local shop. Speed therefore makes us healthier.
Speed means we can expand our horizons. It means we can explore strange new
worlds and new civilisations, even Bermuda! This gives us a better
understanding of the world and its peoples, and that makes us more tolerant.
Speed brings peace. Most of all, though; speed is fun. Watch the face of a
toddler on a garden swing as you push them higher and faster. It's a face
that screams 'I am enjoying myself'. And you'll see the same face on a man
whose pushing his 360 to the limit on his favourite piece of black top.
Speed then is both the face of civilisation and the core of our inner
primeval being. Speed is everything."

Clarkson has hi-jacked human pleasure at speed to make a flimsy case for the
flesh maiming speedophiles of this world referring to "we"--a pronoun
kidnapping habit criticised by Tonto, after the Lone Ranger observed, "We're
surrounded by Indians," and T said, "Who's 'we,' white man?" A certain type of
motorist is forever saying "we" as though "we" included me and you and
everyone.

Clarkson's selects a child's glee on a human-powered swing to justify going
vroom-vroom in a £20k metal box between traffic jams. If you want "primeval"
watch a hawk stooping from the sun at 100mph or an expert surfing a big one
off a Pacific beach. If you want speed combined with hi-tech imagine Ellen
McArthur speeding alone through the ice strewn dark of the southern ocean in
a catamaran. I love cycling down a long country hill at a wind-in-my-face
35mph after a hard pedal to the summit, or, to take up Clarkson's reference
to "useful," how about a bright minority speeding, uninterrupted, at 15mph
along the Strand past queues of semi-stationery steering wheel tappers.
These are the speeds--driven by muscle, lever, wind and wave--that express
efficiency, expand horizons, and, as HG Wells observed of people on
bicycles, give hope for civilisation. And if it's food-miles that Clarkson's
celebrating, try the time it takes to get a wheel barrow of fresh vegetables
from an allotment just round the corner compared to the 1000 kilometres of
rubber-burned black top it takes to get the average herbicide-sprayed
selection of veggies to your nearest supermarket.

Simon Baddeley (sjb@newcolonist.com), on 02.08.05 @ 10:05PST
Sunday, February 6th

Philip Johnson Dies
It was only this past summer I saw the AT&T building for the first time. Of course I had seen it in photos many times, and been to New York many times, but before this summer I hadn't looked at it.

That's certainly not because it's not worth looking at, I had just missed it. When I saw it finally, it stood out clearly from the many other towers providing a breath of clear character and postmodern charm to a city with its feet straddling the past and the future.

Unlike many architects who seem to build slightly different versions of the same building, each of Johnson's buildings could stand on its own, even without the name of the architect and yet strangely each was identifiable as being the work of Philip Johnson.

The National Trust said "Deftly blending artistry with showmanship and combining a love of innovation with a respect for the past, he produced masterworks such as the Glass House in New Canaan, Conn., that showed just how beautiful a Modernist building could be – and then, with his witty references to historicism in the design of New York’s AT&T Building, he ushered in the era of Postmodernism. His buildings were sometimes amusing, often surprising, always elegant and almost never “ordinary” – qualities that are in lamentably short supply on the streets of most communities today."

Let's not forget Pittsburgh's PPG Building, a gothic glass skyscraper or the Neiman Marcus Building in San Francisco. The Neiman Marcus building sadly replaced the City of Paris Building on Union Square, yet proved worthy first by preserving an ornate rotunda inside and then by becoming a landmark in its own right.

Philip Johnson will continue to be with us as each of his buildings is part of their respective cities. That's not the end of Johnson's legacy, however. Johnson, like Frank Lloyd Wright and Daniel Burnham before him became part of popular culture themselves and built a bit of their own personalities into the streets and skylines of our cities.

Eric Miller (editor@newcolonist.com), on 02.06.05 @ 16:18PST

Thursday, February 3rd

Garden Theater Update
I spoke with someone at the Urban Redevelopment Authority this morning. Apparently the news reports that the Garden Theater block was intended for demolition were wrong. The work being done on one of the buildings was stabilization, not preparation for demolition. Also contrary to the news reports which said that no damage estimates would be prepared, the URA reports the fate of the fire-ravaged buildings will depend on the extent of the damage.

Eric Miller (editor@newcolonist.com), on 02.03.05 @ 11:47PST

City That Doesn't Exist
I really feel like I'm in fly-over country or worse, living in a place that doesn't exist. I received a call yesterday from someone in New York who was browsing the Pittsburgh real estate listings. He said he would be coming into town and wanted to look at a house. I asked if he would be flying in. He said no, he would be taking public transportation. I scratched my head, then heard the question "how far is the commute?" "Ten hours by Amtrak," I said.

This has happened before. I posted an ad giving away wringer washers that are still in my basement. A woman in Philadelphia called and asked how long it would take to get to Pittsburgh. Apparently she thought Pittsburgh was a suburb of Philadelphia, perhaps somewhere around Lancaster or the King of Prussia Mall.

Air transportation has apparently made it so a sense of geography is lost and the space between New York and Los Angeles is completely absent from the minds of coasters. There are the Philadelphia suburbs and the Los Angeles suburbs and somewhere the main line and the basin must meet.

What the airlines take away, the internet might replace. It's pretty frequent that I find a New York accent on the other end of the line when I answer my phone. They're calling about a $15,000 house they think must be a typo, or the price of a months rent. Just this past week a friend of mine in San Francisco, having visited Pittsburgh this past fall, purchased one of these houses for eventual use as a summer retreat or if not that, a rental property.

I've written about this before. In Pittsburgh we worry far too much about the perception people have of our city and how that differs from the reality. That's not our problem anymore. Our problem is two new nations on either coast who have no idea what Pittsburgh is or even that it exists. If they did, they'd be here.

Eric Miller (editor@newcolonist.com), on 02.03.05 @ 11:41PST

Wednesday, February 2nd

Iteration vs. Variety
I was in one of the Great American Bookstores last night--one of the usual suspects, a vast store with a fairly good simulation of a coffeehouse in it, a section for music CDs, and two or three stories of books, books, books, books.

I rarely go into these places, because they tend to carry mostly cookbooks, self-help, celebrity photo collections, and bestsellers. however, my future in-laws, knowing I love to read, gave me gift cards to this establishment for Christmas. So in I went, looking for some light humor by a couple of authors who seem to me not to be the most obscure: Gerry Durrell and Oscar Levant.

Of course they didn't have them in stock.

I stood there, defeated, on the third floor of the vast building, having also dedicated a half-hour to shelf-scanning on spec. Little of interest, though.

I could of course go to Skylight Books on Vermont and probably find exactly what I wanted, or something just as good. But I had to use the gift card sooner or later.

I went home and logged onto their website. I managed to find one book by one of the authors, and ordered it. Otherwise, nothing of interest again.

Then it struck me...they operated according to the same principle as any other bigbox store: iteration, not variety.

Rows and rows and rows of books, to make an impression of plenty...but not much diversity in theme or origin.

I remember years ago looking for a special high-quality wrench I needed for some mechanical work I was doing. Home Depot? OSH? "Don't have it; can't get it." Village Hardware on Larchmont? "It's a little expensive, but it's the best. Is Friday soon enough for you?"

For more on this, see my article, "The Self-Service Economy."

Richard Risemberg (rrisemberg@newcolonist.com), on 02.02.05 @ 20:48PST

Slated For Demolition
If news reports are correct, the buildings damaged by the fire are slated for demolition. This is news. Where's the public input into this process? When was this decision made? Perhaps someone from Central Northside can fill us in--since they removed me from their email group. Gawd knows things in Pittsburgh have to happen in secret.

Eric Miller (editor@newcolonist.com), on 02.02.05 @ 11:10PST

The Garden Theater is NOT burning
Police and fire vehicles are lined along Pittsburgh's North Avenue where several buildings, vacant for more than a decade after being purchased by the Urban Redevelopment Authority, are on fire. Actually the fire seemed to be mostly out when I walked back from the site minutes ago.

The buildings to the East of the Garden Theater seem to have been damaged substantially by the blaze. A recent email to the Central Northside neighborhood email group indicated one of the buildings had developed structural problems and the owner faced choosing between demolition and stabilization until the site could be developed (the project has been on hold for more than a decade while a legal battle between the authority and the owner of the Garden Theater continue).

The fire seems to have avoided the Garden Theater, leaving it undamaged by the fire and avoiding a possible end to the decades of saga.

What will occur now is anyone's guess. The fire seems to have happened in the buildings that were, I assume, in the process of being stabilized. At least two of the buildings were damaged, raising new questions about whether they will be saved or lost. In my view, the fire it makes it more likely the attractive century-old buildings will not be saved, instead replaced, eventually by a new complex.

I'll keep you updated.

Eric Miller (editor@newcolonist.com), on 02.02.05 @ 10:53PST

Tuesday, February 1st

Another "street story," as he calls 'em, from my friend Harv:

The last day of January, about 68 degrees at noon, and I have a check that needs to go into my account at Wells Fargo, about an 11 mile round trip. I pedal the bike through Highland Park and toward South Pasadena via Monterey Road. In between, there is a tiny historic town called Hermon. Monterey goes uphill out of Hermon and over the South Pas city limit. As I am cranking up this hill in my Fuji's granny gear, a huge, silver colored SUV passes me. I think nothing of it at the time.

As I approach beautiful downtown South Pasadena, I use my whole bag of tricks--alleys, parking lots, driveways, and sidestreets--to avoid traffic, but I am not trying to go fast. I filter through traffic light queues and zip into the parking lot of the Wells Fargo, which now shares its building with Starbucks. It is full of yuppies (and others) getting their afternoon caffeine fix. I lean the bike against the wall next to the ATM and fish around in my bag for my deposit envelope, already filled out.

That previously encountered silver SUV pulls in right next to me and two yokels hop out. One, a guy about my age (old!) but twice my weight and with only one visible tooth in his head. The other is a few years younger and much shorter. Shorty walks up to me and says, "Hey you sure made good time." Disbelieving that these were the guys who passed me about two or three miles back, I had him confirm the exact spot that they passed. Seems that they had left from the trailer park in Hermon (that explains the toothless guy, he fit the stereotype perfectly) in their quest for that famous Starbucks elixer.

Shorty went on to explain (without my request that he do so) that the D.A. had taken away his driver's license because of his lack of child support payments. So now he used a mountain bike for transportation, but today he tagged along with Toothless for a cuppa joe in town. Then Toothless asked me, "Whai yew rahdin' a bike, aint yew gotta car?" I told him I did have a pickup truck but preferred to use the bike. "Can't yew afford no gas?" he continued. Yes, I can afford gas, but I would rather pedal and not burn up the gas. "Whai?" he said. I gave up talking at that point, turned, punched some numbers into the ATM keypad, fed the deposit envelope, withdrew cash, and returned to my bike.

The Laurel and Hardy look-alikes wandered into the Starbucks, and I pedalled out of the parking lot to take a different route home, rolling my eyes and chuckling to myself. Sometimes its just tough to explain, isn't it?

Yes, it is.

Richard Risemberg (rrisemberg@newcolonist.com), on 02.01.05 @ 22:07PST