Comments on: Our communities, ourselves.

By: MichaelG

MichaelG — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 14:29:17 +0000

Dec 31, 1968, Fort Bragg, North Carolina. I was the duty NCO when some numbnuts tossed a grenade from the barracks 3d story window . “Oh, shit”, I thought, with mountains of paperwork dancing in my head. I was due to get out of the Army in two weeks and didn’t want the bother. It took a moment for it to occur to me that somebody might have gotten hurt. Nobody did. With a spark of genius I called the Sgt of the Guard and reported a loud noise. He hot footed over and it became his problem. I kind of stayed lost as much as possible and played dumb (never difficult for me) and managed to avoid the worst of the paperwork. I never did know who threw it and never cared.

The supermarket singles night reminds me of the Marina Safeway in San Francisco. Stories abound about the place. It has a fabulous view (a supermarket with a view?) and it was probably the best looked after Safeway in the chain since the corporate president and his wife shopped there. Best meat and produce, new carts every few months etc., etc. Everything except parking. It was also located dead center in yuppie singlesville. Wednesday night was pick up night. It was one of those things that just happened. It was never advertised or promoted, it just was. It got written about, but that was after the fact. You can’t artificially create these kinds of things. They have to just occur naturally. The guy in Boston probably read about the store in SF. You can check out the view on local.live.com at the corner of Marina Blvd and Laguna.

By: alex

alex — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 12:20:59 +0000

I think there could be much better planning. I would rather they had policies as in other cities where a business has to exhaust all possibilities for adapting existing structures to their purposes before tearing down and building something new that they’ll be abandoning in a few years anyway. I would love to see more originality in commercial spaces and residential spaces as well, more attention to scale in new buildings to make them harmonious with their surroundings. This town has a long tradition of doing things half-assed and it shows.

Yeah, I kind of jones for the neighborhoods these crunchy cons are talking about, and might share their enthusiasm except that what they envision is a religious police state every bit as much as an architectural utopia. Having come from a diverse urban neighborhood I see how wrongheaded this is. Religion is a personal matter, kind of like dingleberries and candidiasis, and you just don’t harp on it to others.

Speaking of personal matters, I never forced my gay marriages into anyone’s face. I never asked for the state’s seal of approval. I know what I have and I don’t need validation from the likes of my Congressman. But I’ll be damned if I stand by silently while politicians and demagogues and new urbanists like the Good City guys make a political football out of the thing that I hold most sacred.

By: basset

basset — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 04:45:56 +0000

better be careful about mentioning chaps and your ass around ‘em, then.

serious question… how do you think the city should look?

By: alex

alex — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 04:36:53 +0000

All right, it’s not about architects.

What really chaps my ass about Fort Wayne’s crunchy cons is that they want a city that looks and feels like an urban gay neighborhood, only without any gays in it.

By: basset

basset — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 03:43:58 +0000

that photog was a real character and well-known, as you would expect. he’d go off to shoot something and just vanish, couldn’t get him on the two-way and this was before cel phones… then come back five hours later with the bottom of the car covered in mud and grass, that kind of thing. I hung out with him quite a bit off work and met some of his shady friends, very interesting characters but you had to stay careful.

the station was out on the edge of town and after the late news on weekends we would set up bottles and jugs out in the side yard and shoot at them.

the place had a long driveway and you could see anyone coming a long way off. one night we’re out there blasting away and see that same photog turning off the main road on his way back from a late shoot, ball game or something.

so we crouched down behind one of the parked news cars and just as the photog got out of his car one of the guys jumped up, screamed “Die, mother****er!” and let loose several rounds of twelve-gauge right over his head.

the photog managed to get completely under a Chevy Citation faster than you would think possible, wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it. he wasn’t too amused when he realized what was going on, either.

then there was the morning one of the engineers met me at the side door when I came in at dawn, said “Watch ‘is here!,” and mangled a pine tree with a Mac-10 on full auto, you shoulda seen the bark fly.

very different kind of place down there.

By: Julie Robinson

Julie Robinson — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 02:27:10 +0000

Oh wow, no way can my story compare with those. We were wakened one July 5 by our daughter, who stated “there’s something naughty in the living room and I didn’t do it”. The something naughty was a bullet that some reveler had shot into the air, unconcerned about its downward arc, which was of course, our roof. The police said it could have come from anywhere within a one-mile radius. We were just happy it was in an empty room.

By: John C

John C — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 02:11:34 +0000

I agree Basset. Great story. It reminded me of another night in the 80s. I was working at a small daily outside Boston. A local supermarket started a “singles night” and we dutifully sent a reporter and photographer. The reporter was an extremely prissy sort. And when she returned at about 9 p.m. - this was back when we worked late covering night meetings - we eagerly asked her what it was like. She wrinkled her nose and shuddered. “It was awful,” she said. “Just awful.” About a half-hour later the photog strolled in. He was a legendary bachelor in the swinging 70s style - red Camaro, wide collars and gold chains, etc. “How was it?” I asked. “It was AWESOME,” he bellowed, for all the newsroom to hear. “I was there 15 minutes and I got a blowjob in the parking lot!”

By: nancy

nancy — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 01:58:44 +0000

Give Alex a break now. Fort Wayne’s nerves are a little frayed on the subject of uppity architects.

Oh, and by the way: Great story, Basset. I’d have loved to see that.

By: basset

basset — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 01:14:51 +0000

New Year’s Eve in the early 80s in Jackson, Mississippi… I’m weekend anchor on the number-three tv station, nobody’s left in the newsroom after we’re done at ten-thirty so I take a portable scanner home and listen for what might develop.

Right at the stroke of midnight, the police and fire dispatch channels light up - gas-line explosion on the main street down in the hood! I call the on-call photographer, grab a camera myself, and scoot on down there; turns out some drunk rolled out of a bar when the ball dropped, shot a deer rifle straight up in the air, and hit a 17-kilovolt power line which fell onto a no-parking sign. All that current arced down the sign and into the ground, where it found a gas line, split it and set it on fire - so what we have is a gas flame the size of a small car squirting out of a crack in the curb.

We all stand around and watch it awhile. Photographer shows up, sees a hooker he knows, sets the camera and recorder (this was back in the days of 3/4 tape) on the ground next to me and they disappear for awhile. Aside from that, not much happens for the next couple of hours until the gas company finally shows up and shuts the line off, the crowd disperses, we’re done, nothing to see here, everyone go home.

Meanwhile… I’m not an architect but I work with a bunch of ‘em, we are a New Urbanist, sustainability-sensitive organization, and Alex, you can bite me too. Good to see you got your vocabulary words for the week in there, though.

By: John C

John C — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 22:38:48 +0000

I used to be a police reporter in Chicago. One of the things I learned is this: At precisely midnight and for a good while after that on Dec. 31, all cops that can be are in their cars parked under overpasses, or in the precincts and area headquarters, away from the windows. Here in Grosse Pointe, a good friend told me that when they put a new roof on, roofers found many bullet marks. It’s one of those things that makes for teeth gnashing. I don’t own a gun but know many people who do. I’m for reasonable gun control and feel that decent folk who hunt or collect or target-shoot or feel they need protection should more or less be able to own a weapon. But what kind of moron thinks it is in any way acceptable to stand out in the yard in a densely populated area and fire round after round - every one of them with a not insignificant chance of killing someone - into the air. Sheesh!