Friday, December 29, 2006
The Crunch
We've never been clever here in North Georgia with looking ahead. Why should we? Things are economically flush; go with the flow. Sure, traffic's a real bitch, but we can deal with it by amplyifying the creature comforts of our rides. Bigger, more sumptuous cargo-mobiles, equipped with enough electronic gadgetry to make an F-16 blush, transport us to realities away from the universal impasse of our roads. DVDs, satellite radios, wireless cellular get-ups, customized MP3 players, miniature PCs--all with names copied from a botany textbook--distract us from the great rush hour stall, the toggling of brake lights like a switchboard, a hell apparently deemed too agonizing for the Titans. As far as the physical problems of our roads are concerned, the DOT, we trust, will apply a local anaesthetic: a widening project, a 40-foot median, new turning lanes and stoplights. Temporary relief until some unnamed trafficologist's law appertains, and this road, like all roads, once again reaches its maximum volume.
Now--uh-oh--the DOT's cash poor. Due to multiplying demands and rising fuel and material costs, road projects around the state are being tabled. For its six year project list, the DOT currently stands $7.7 billion short, which is up a staggering $2.5 billion over last year's estimate. The agency currently faces the option of addressing the region's concerns in a manner that's both overly broad and barely adequate, like butter you can't taste because it's spread too thin, or a manner that's entirely sufficient but spotty.
After three hours on I-85, outer reality finally catches up to us; we notice Atlanta is a bit of an abomination; and the need for mass transit, once again, becomes obvious. It may be time for a special sales tax to fund major transportation improvements. In the meanwhile, the short-term solution's at hand: DOT projects are paid for by a gasoline tax, which has been static for 27 years. An increase in the gasoline tax would not only fill the DOT's coffers but also, theoretically, discourage drivers from setting tire to pavement. Perhaps even force us to consider alternative modes of transportation. After all, we're overdue eliminating epic commutes and interminable traffic jams, and whatever the individual financial costs, seeing livability in the health of the economy.
Now--uh-oh--the DOT's cash poor. Due to multiplying demands and rising fuel and material costs, road projects around the state are being tabled. For its six year project list, the DOT currently stands $7.7 billion short, which is up a staggering $2.5 billion over last year's estimate. The agency currently faces the option of addressing the region's concerns in a manner that's both overly broad and barely adequate, like butter you can't taste because it's spread too thin, or a manner that's entirely sufficient but spotty.
After three hours on I-85, outer reality finally catches up to us; we notice Atlanta is a bit of an abomination; and the need for mass transit, once again, becomes obvious. It may be time for a special sales tax to fund major transportation improvements. In the meanwhile, the short-term solution's at hand: DOT projects are paid for by a gasoline tax, which has been static for 27 years. An increase in the gasoline tax would not only fill the DOT's coffers but also, theoretically, discourage drivers from setting tire to pavement. Perhaps even force us to consider alternative modes of transportation. After all, we're overdue eliminating epic commutes and interminable traffic jams, and whatever the individual financial costs, seeing livability in the health of the economy.
Thursday, December 28, 2006
Tuesday, December 26, 2006
Monday, December 18, 2006
Podunk ICE
My birthplace, the first gateway to Georgia's mountains and self-proclaimed poultry capital of the world, had better be on its toes. There seems to be a nationwide crackdown on the employment of illegals. ICE officials broke down the doors of Crider Poultry's processing plant in Stillmore, Georgia a few months ago, taking away an estimated 700 undocumented Mexican employees. Reports trickled up here of fantastic panic and chaos in the Mexican neighborhoods in Stillmore, even of familes leaving their children behind. Now homeless men and violent criminals from a probation center are being trucked in from Macon and other environs to staff the plant. PETA has already complained about the potential for the convicts to "act out" on the chickens. The convicts, however, will be out as soon as ICE agents stop paying such close attention and another cycle of Mexicans comes through. In Colorado and other western states, Homeland Security nabbed hundreds of illegals in an effort to shut down a massive counterfeiting ring. Forge a few documents fine, but when a dozen or so people with the same social security number show up to work, the Feds are going to catch on. Now Swift & Co. is scambling for employees and expects its marketshare to plummet behind the leaders of the meatpacking industry, Tyson and Cargill. Industries executives feel they're in a Catch-22. They can't request documentation from their employees because it would be a violation of their civil rights and bring the ACLU breathing down the companies' necks. Essentially they're forced to hire illegal immigrants. After all, normal Americans don't want to be in their line of work.
I'm no expert, but the excuse that requiring documentation would be a violation of civil rights seems nonsensical and bogus. I'm tired of hearing normal Americans "won't do these jobs." It's the worst, most unsupported cliche of big business. Show me, once and for all, why not and exactly what normal Americans are doing instead. Isn't the truth something of the inverse: companies would rather not hire normal Americans because then they would have to provide amenities and abide by some moderate standards for wages and firing practices? It seems to be the fact that Mexicans are "underbidding" natives for the jobs, at the cost of having nothing guaranteed.
The same industry chiefs are calling for swifter resolutions of permanent resident cases and a guest worker program in operation as soon as possible. Their loudness, in light of the crippling effect of the current raids, should remind us that the illegal immigration issue is one of economic, not human, interests. If war is the extension of politics by another means, then politics is first the extension of the competitive commercial market. Proposals floating out of Washington--or particularly from the White House--that emphasize expedience with regard to accomodating illegal immigrants should be regarded with a circumspect eye. Their roots probably run back to places like Greeley, Colorado, Springdale, Arkansas, Stillmore, Georgia, and Gainesville, Georgia, where boardrooms are sifting through quarter reports for margins to increase profit. Meanwhile, poor families of all creed and color are getting lost in the numbers.
I'm no expert, but the excuse that requiring documentation would be a violation of civil rights seems nonsensical and bogus. I'm tired of hearing normal Americans "won't do these jobs." It's the worst, most unsupported cliche of big business. Show me, once and for all, why not and exactly what normal Americans are doing instead. Isn't the truth something of the inverse: companies would rather not hire normal Americans because then they would have to provide amenities and abide by some moderate standards for wages and firing practices? It seems to be the fact that Mexicans are "underbidding" natives for the jobs, at the cost of having nothing guaranteed.
The same industry chiefs are calling for swifter resolutions of permanent resident cases and a guest worker program in operation as soon as possible. Their loudness, in light of the crippling effect of the current raids, should remind us that the illegal immigration issue is one of economic, not human, interests. If war is the extension of politics by another means, then politics is first the extension of the competitive commercial market. Proposals floating out of Washington--or particularly from the White House--that emphasize expedience with regard to accomodating illegal immigrants should be regarded with a circumspect eye. Their roots probably run back to places like Greeley, Colorado, Springdale, Arkansas, Stillmore, Georgia, and Gainesville, Georgia, where boardrooms are sifting through quarter reports for margins to increase profit. Meanwhile, poor families of all creed and color are getting lost in the numbers.
Sunday, December 17, 2006
The Market Comes to the Earth's Rescue
It's a good thing for the planet that OPEC loves money. This week the crude-oil cartel announced it would follow its October cut of 1.2 million barrels a day with another half million cut starting in February 2007, in order to set the floor of benchmark crude firmly at a pricey $60 per barrel. Member countries are worried about a volatile and slipping situation over the next year. A warmer winter is expected, which would push down the demand on heating oil. The value of the dollar, the standard unit of global oil purchases, is on the decline. Supply cuts are also intended to counteract slower economic growth and a non-OPEC supply surge--from Russia, for one--as well as increased oil inventories in large consuming nations.
It's a good thing for the planet that Americans love money too. Faced wth a dollar drain at the pump, they can look in earnest at vehicles with higher fuel efficiency and alternative sources of energy. The government can prod public interest toward greener choices by decreasing the approximately $25 billion handed out in yearly subsidies to fossil fuel industries and supporting instead cleaner energies like wind and solar. Although cellulosic ethanol might be the least efficient biofuel, it seems to the most ready for the market (thanks to the corn-industrial complex, for unsavory details see Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals). As it attempts to find its legs, ethanol would benefit immeasurably from a "sliding credit"--a financial mechanism Charles Schumer has proposed to equilibrate possible spikes in corn commodities and falling gas prices. In Washington Post writer Michael Grunwald's summary, "government policies can encourage more or less of those activities," which involve the daily, mindless consumption of valuable energy, "in more or less greenhouse-friendly ways."
The number crunching goes beyond just the source of energy to the efficiency of every part of our lives. We need "more biking, walking, carpooling, telecommuting and mass transit; smarter growth patterns; less energy intensive agriculture; more recycling; less waste." Habitats of a human scale would reduce our waistlines and cholesterol levels as well as our carbon emissions. Elaborating on a national environmental conscious, Grunwald suggests a move toward high-density neighborhoods, smaller homes, organic farms, local produce, subsidies for planting carbon-absorbing trees, and curbs on the campaign contributions of fossil-fuel industries.
Always cognizant of profit margins, Wal-Mart has already implemented a green initiative to eliminate costly waste. Direct deposit payments, minimal office printing, no more idling by its fleet, trucks with auxiliary power units so that operators can shut off the main engines at night, etc. The company understands that reduced packaging equals more units per truck, less shipments required, less fuel purchased. Wise execs were ahead of the curve in realizing they had spent years shipping trailers packed with air. Although Wal-Mart's folksy mantra to put the customer first has always been about profit over populism, the company hopefully sees that the next step, beyond everyday business practices, is to promote change in the very substance of the national energy policy. Customers need affordable means to reach their stores and extra cash to spend there. And, because carbon emissions and a stressed, overweight behind-the-wheel population are matters of public health, it would help if they were fit enough to wander through the aisles for a while.
Somewhere William F. Buckley, Jr. is tittering with glee at the likely vindication of conservatism (tittering in Connecticut I'll wager). Market forces--not conscience--just might push Americans toward "an institutional acceptance of the national objective" to preserve our environment and concomitantly improve every aspect of our lifestyles, with hardly an authoritarian nudge from D.C. (284). High oil prices, it seems, are finally a non-zero sum game: the second and third world producers receive needed revenue, and America tackles the inconvenient and expensive truth.
(William F. Buckley, Jr. "Conservatism and Ecology." Inveighing We Will Go. Putnam: New York, 1972. 282-284.)
It's a good thing for the planet that Americans love money too. Faced wth a dollar drain at the pump, they can look in earnest at vehicles with higher fuel efficiency and alternative sources of energy. The government can prod public interest toward greener choices by decreasing the approximately $25 billion handed out in yearly subsidies to fossil fuel industries and supporting instead cleaner energies like wind and solar. Although cellulosic ethanol might be the least efficient biofuel, it seems to the most ready for the market (thanks to the corn-industrial complex, for unsavory details see Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals). As it attempts to find its legs, ethanol would benefit immeasurably from a "sliding credit"--a financial mechanism Charles Schumer has proposed to equilibrate possible spikes in corn commodities and falling gas prices. In Washington Post writer Michael Grunwald's summary, "government policies can encourage more or less of those activities," which involve the daily, mindless consumption of valuable energy, "in more or less greenhouse-friendly ways."
The number crunching goes beyond just the source of energy to the efficiency of every part of our lives. We need "more biking, walking, carpooling, telecommuting and mass transit; smarter growth patterns; less energy intensive agriculture; more recycling; less waste." Habitats of a human scale would reduce our waistlines and cholesterol levels as well as our carbon emissions. Elaborating on a national environmental conscious, Grunwald suggests a move toward high-density neighborhoods, smaller homes, organic farms, local produce, subsidies for planting carbon-absorbing trees, and curbs on the campaign contributions of fossil-fuel industries.
Always cognizant of profit margins, Wal-Mart has already implemented a green initiative to eliminate costly waste. Direct deposit payments, minimal office printing, no more idling by its fleet, trucks with auxiliary power units so that operators can shut off the main engines at night, etc. The company understands that reduced packaging equals more units per truck, less shipments required, less fuel purchased. Wise execs were ahead of the curve in realizing they had spent years shipping trailers packed with air. Although Wal-Mart's folksy mantra to put the customer first has always been about profit over populism, the company hopefully sees that the next step, beyond everyday business practices, is to promote change in the very substance of the national energy policy. Customers need affordable means to reach their stores and extra cash to spend there. And, because carbon emissions and a stressed, overweight behind-the-wheel population are matters of public health, it would help if they were fit enough to wander through the aisles for a while.
Somewhere William F. Buckley, Jr. is tittering with glee at the likely vindication of conservatism (tittering in Connecticut I'll wager). Market forces--not conscience--just might push Americans toward "an institutional acceptance of the national objective" to preserve our environment and concomitantly improve every aspect of our lifestyles, with hardly an authoritarian nudge from D.C. (284). High oil prices, it seems, are finally a non-zero sum game: the second and third world producers receive needed revenue, and America tackles the inconvenient and expensive truth.
(William F. Buckley, Jr. "Conservatism and Ecology." Inveighing We Will Go. Putnam: New York, 1972. 282-284.)
Saturday, December 16, 2006
Thursday, December 14, 2006
The Cents in Migration
James Howard Kunstler's got it right. Our development and ecological problems boil down to one thing: the automobile. Without its convenience to reach and navigate through the city swiftly (at least theoretically), suburbia and exurbia would be impossible, sprawl a conceit half-amusing for its absurdity. But sprawl, obviously, is a reality, and its existence poses a mortal danger to the agricultural lands outlying the city proper.
Farmers are a tough and quick-minded group. They can adapt to the prohibitive zoning codes and environmental laws enacted to protect, from fecal contamination by livestock, the local watershed and the tap water, among other things, of the new post-urban homesteaders. Small drinking ponds are built on the property for cattle and goats, against which have been passed minimum distance restraints with regard to stream beds. Animal waste is recycled and processed for its methane. Farmers cannot, however, withstand the allure of money, the sudden emancipation from a hardscrabble life burdened by debt and the whim of commodity markets and fortunate weather. For some it's a matter of the land finally yielding its return on many lifetimes of blood and sweat. For others it's a mutated continuation: Just as the land has provided for generations in the past, it will do so for future generations through its liquidity.
Developers target crop fields and pastures for their residential and commercial sites first. They abide by the cardinal rule of business: Keep your costs down. In the green meadows of a farm, there are no trees to contend with, to absorb time and money knocking down. The result usually means an assembly of modern oversized plastic houses erupted suddenly out of the earth like a fever blister. And there's nary a tree to tie the homes together in aesthetic cohesion or cool and shadow the sidewalks and streets, inviting the homeowners in communion outside. As Kunstler says, "[i]n today’s subdivisions the streets have no other official function except to funnel the cars to and fro" (The Geography of Nowhere, 49).
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It's not just the longtime residents outside our Southern cities that are being priced out of their properties. The same event is occurring more precipitously on the coasts, where well-heeled baby boomers are beginning to congregate like too much seaweed discarded on the beach. On Tybee Island, Georgia, airy mansions on stilts and sleek pastel condominiums--for powerbrokers from the Northeast, Southern urban businessmen, and Sandra Bullock--are being erected on the waterfront. Assessed property values have risen as much as 500% and more already this century. The quirky middle-class, descendants from the same beach-bum ape, can no longer afford the yearly property taxes, even with a $200,000 homestead exemption. They're moving off the island westward and resettling with cash in hand on cheaper plots on the mainland. Meanwhile, the greed and savvy of real estate prospectors threatens to turn the U.S. coastline decidedly anti-democratic: beaches monopolized by wealthy individuals and exclusive resorts or monstrously tacky condos and hotels hugging a slimy line from Destin to Atlantic City.
Farmers are a tough and quick-minded group. They can adapt to the prohibitive zoning codes and environmental laws enacted to protect, from fecal contamination by livestock, the local watershed and the tap water, among other things, of the new post-urban homesteaders. Small drinking ponds are built on the property for cattle and goats, against which have been passed minimum distance restraints with regard to stream beds. Animal waste is recycled and processed for its methane. Farmers cannot, however, withstand the allure of money, the sudden emancipation from a hardscrabble life burdened by debt and the whim of commodity markets and fortunate weather. For some it's a matter of the land finally yielding its return on many lifetimes of blood and sweat. For others it's a mutated continuation: Just as the land has provided for generations in the past, it will do so for future generations through its liquidity.
Developers target crop fields and pastures for their residential and commercial sites first. They abide by the cardinal rule of business: Keep your costs down. In the green meadows of a farm, there are no trees to contend with, to absorb time and money knocking down. The result usually means an assembly of modern oversized plastic houses erupted suddenly out of the earth like a fever blister. And there's nary a tree to tie the homes together in aesthetic cohesion or cool and shadow the sidewalks and streets, inviting the homeowners in communion outside. As Kunstler says, "[i]n today’s subdivisions the streets have no other official function except to funnel the cars to and fro" (The Geography of Nowhere, 49).
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It's not just the longtime residents outside our Southern cities that are being priced out of their properties. The same event is occurring more precipitously on the coasts, where well-heeled baby boomers are beginning to congregate like too much seaweed discarded on the beach. On Tybee Island, Georgia, airy mansions on stilts and sleek pastel condominiums--for powerbrokers from the Northeast, Southern urban businessmen, and Sandra Bullock--are being erected on the waterfront. Assessed property values have risen as much as 500% and more already this century. The quirky middle-class, descendants from the same beach-bum ape, can no longer afford the yearly property taxes, even with a $200,000 homestead exemption. They're moving off the island westward and resettling with cash in hand on cheaper plots on the mainland. Meanwhile, the greed and savvy of real estate prospectors threatens to turn the U.S. coastline decidedly anti-democratic: beaches monopolized by wealthy individuals and exclusive resorts or monstrously tacky condos and hotels hugging a slimy line from Destin to Atlantic City.
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
The Farm Goes Abstract
Pick and click on your Fraser fir. In a week's time it arrives shaken, baled, and sealed in a cardboard box lined with wax paper. Open the end of the box, cut the trunk, set the tree upright, and strip away the rest of the cardboard. Voila, you're ready for Christmas.
About 500,000 (of 33 million) trees sold last year were of the online variety. But experts expect this number to grow, as a shipped tree is often fresher and cheaper, even with the added $20-$50 in postage, than one at the local lot. It seems only natural that the e-tree business would expand: Americans are becoming accustomed to the increased expedience of technology in every segment of their lives. Whether or not this new-found ease comes at the expense of experience, and whether on a larger scale instant information has replaced the careful development of knowledge, doesn't seem to matter.
Realchristmastrees.org lists the retailers of e-trees throughout the country. Hopefully, this phenomenon can open up new markets for some of the more impoverished and isolated family growers living between the burgs of hoity-toity Floridians summering in the mountains of North Carolina.
Source: "The Perfect Tree Awaits in the Field, or in the Computer," Elizabeth Olson, New York Times, 12/10/06).
About 500,000 (of 33 million) trees sold last year were of the online variety. But experts expect this number to grow, as a shipped tree is often fresher and cheaper, even with the added $20-$50 in postage, than one at the local lot. It seems only natural that the e-tree business would expand: Americans are becoming accustomed to the increased expedience of technology in every segment of their lives. Whether or not this new-found ease comes at the expense of experience, and whether on a larger scale instant information has replaced the careful development of knowledge, doesn't seem to matter.
Realchristmastrees.org lists the retailers of e-trees throughout the country. Hopefully, this phenomenon can open up new markets for some of the more impoverished and isolated family growers living between the burgs of hoity-toity Floridians summering in the mountains of North Carolina.
Source: "The Perfect Tree Awaits in the Field, or in the Computer," Elizabeth Olson, New York Times, 12/10/06).
Atlanta Regional Commission
The greater Atlanta area's infrastructure troubles might as well have hit critical mass with the onset of suburbanization and white flight. Now its residents travel sixty miles per day commuting through the rim-and-spokes road system. Traffic and pollution are rife. The rural counties once far outside the perimeter continue to be carved up in tentacles of subdivisions yet lack the commercial development and industry to provide tax revenue to fund utilities and other basic services. Moreover, unlike the rich aquifers located in South Georgia, there's hardly any water: Atlanta relies on the Lake Lanier reservoir, and it's being siphoned out regularly due to blunders by the Corps of Engineers, the economic wants of cities near the Chattahoochie River like Columbus and Dothan, and necessary conditions for the reproduction of endangered aquatic species in the Florida panhandle (true but also a cover for more familiar monetary interests).
I'm getting ahead of myself; Atlanta's limited water supply has more to do with its sheer numerical population than with the manner in which it has been populated. With over 100,000 folks coming to the area every year and a total of 6 million plus expected by 2030, and approximately as many cars, Atlanta faces the grim prospect of an atmosphere like a carbon-filled crockpot and complete logistical lockdown. Atlanta's Chamber of Commerce will surely love the new marketing tagline: "Atlanta--like Caracas only better." And, of course, I can pass over in silence the abomination of creating one of the most disorganized and utterly deficient settlements in human history.
Enter ARC (Atlanta Regional Commission) to the rescue: recognizing the immediate need for broader public transportation and determined to overcome a traditionally Southern recalcitrance with regard to funding public works (Atlanta spends the least on public transit in the South). Good planning and practice in the life of the city keep workers happy and improve productivity. The business managers who belong to ARC and similar organizations know this and honor their peers for innovation in relieving the rush hour gridlock, both in the short and long-term. The former includes "installing showers and lockers in the buildings for bicycle commuters, offer[ing] to pay employees' transit tickets," and supporting teleworking and flex time. The only long-term solution currently seems to be a miniscule sales tax to pay for the kind of smart and comprehenseive light rail Atlanta requires. To pony up finally for our social obligation, we'll have to beat back our entrenched cultural conservatism, shuffle off the Jeffersonian type fraudently commodified as part of the American Dream, and give up the embedded affronts of past federal intrusions, like infected thorns in our collective tissue. To wit, these last are the "War of Northern Aggression" and its political aftermath, the concerted removal of agriculture as a body of knowledge from farmers to FDR's technocratic alphabet agencies, and forced social upheaval through the Civil Rights Act and desegregation.
Projects of Merit Recently Recognized by ARC:
I'm getting ahead of myself; Atlanta's limited water supply has more to do with its sheer numerical population than with the manner in which it has been populated. With over 100,000 folks coming to the area every year and a total of 6 million plus expected by 2030, and approximately as many cars, Atlanta faces the grim prospect of an atmosphere like a carbon-filled crockpot and complete logistical lockdown. Atlanta's Chamber of Commerce will surely love the new marketing tagline: "Atlanta--like Caracas only better." And, of course, I can pass over in silence the abomination of creating one of the most disorganized and utterly deficient settlements in human history.
Enter ARC (Atlanta Regional Commission) to the rescue: recognizing the immediate need for broader public transportation and determined to overcome a traditionally Southern recalcitrance with regard to funding public works (Atlanta spends the least on public transit in the South). Good planning and practice in the life of the city keep workers happy and improve productivity. The business managers who belong to ARC and similar organizations know this and honor their peers for innovation in relieving the rush hour gridlock, both in the short and long-term. The former includes "installing showers and lockers in the buildings for bicycle commuters, offer[ing] to pay employees' transit tickets," and supporting teleworking and flex time. The only long-term solution currently seems to be a miniscule sales tax to pay for the kind of smart and comprehenseive light rail Atlanta requires. To pony up finally for our social obligation, we'll have to beat back our entrenched cultural conservatism, shuffle off the Jeffersonian type fraudently commodified as part of the American Dream, and give up the embedded affronts of past federal intrusions, like infected thorns in our collective tissue. To wit, these last are the "War of Northern Aggression" and its political aftermath, the concerted removal of agriculture as a body of knowledge from farmers to FDR's technocratic alphabet agencies, and forced social upheaval through the Civil Rights Act and desegregation.
Projects of Merit Recently Recognized by ARC:
- Woodstock Downtown by Hedgewood Properties and the city of Woodstock.
- Inman Park Village by Wood Partners and Surber Barber Choate & Hertlein Architects.
- The Glenn Hotel by Legacy Property Group.
- Sky Lofts by Russel New Urban Development.
- Perimeter Place by the Sembler Co., the Perimeter Community Improvement District, and DeKalb County.
Monday, December 11, 2006
Homecoming
The Varsity's coming home--sort of. No, Georgia's brand name for cheap collegiate cuisine is not migrating its way back down Broad Street. The Varsity's staying put on Milledge, which is good news for "tradition-minded" tailgaters who enjoy the current site's easy access and ample parking (not to mention an unholy gameday menu of chilidogs, bourbon, and kaopectate). Instead, the institution's former downtown home on the corner of College and Broad (1933-1978) will enjoy a complete overhaul, returning the deteriorating edifice to its glory days before the bane of late twentieth century suburbanization swept through the city and various measly shops squatted on its lowest floor. (The Varsity, according to its website, decided it no longer wanted to be "a vital part of the Athens scene"; however, we must thank those centrifugal market patterns that drove The Varsity and others of its ilk outward, as they freed so much downtown square footage for forty acres of first-rate restaurants and bars). The remodeling plan is to take "the storefront's look back to the 1970s," to "remove the canvas awning, replace deteriorated stucco columns with tile and new stucco, replace the plate-glass windows and add large horizontal signs along both sides of the building" (Athens Banner-Herald, 11/26/06).
All of the overdue attention for one of Athens' most visible spots is being funded by Raising Cane's, a Louisiana chicken joint with another Athens location on Baxter. Here, here to the owners for buying Cheng's (seedy) Downtown. Let's hope they succeed and spur other firms to make the connections between architectural space, ambiance, and a rising bottom line.
By the way, the revamped building will not match the charm of the early century hotels that formerly occupied the corner. A quick glance through any pictorial history of our towns (Vanishing Georgia, for one, published by UGA Press in 1982) demonstrates the sense of real loveliness that our urban landscapes once possessed. For the most part, College Avenue has surrendered its Second Empire structures and Victorian embellishments of metal roof crestings and iron spires. Monolithic concrete has replaced the soothing, intricate designs of brickwork for its ultimate, if ghastly inhuman, efficiency as a building medium. And we are now only beginning to register our loss of an appreciation for art and adornment, of civic pride, and of attachment to place for its very specialness. Or in terms of a personal economy, where physical objects are pure equations of time and craftsmanship, our loss of that tautological and adoring energy to make it special.
Sunday, December 10, 2006
A Good Cause for the Holidays.
Bay Area rap-group The Coup, purveyors of politically attuned hip-hop, lost most of their property in a fiery bus accident. They've set up a Paypal account for donations to help them through Christmas and regain their means of income--their musical instruments--lost in the crash.
Boots's account is here linked through the incomparable Soul Sides site.
Boots's account is here linked through the incomparable Soul Sides site.
Saturday, December 09, 2006
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
Sunday, December 03, 2006
Saturday, December 02, 2006
Friday, December 01, 2006
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