Paris, Cafe Life, Placemaking, 8664, Bridges and Food

You know, I should just ignore you all. I'm sure you'll just dismiss me as some liberal whiner. Fine. I'm 63 years old. My name is Ken Wilson. If you want to come beat up an old man to prove your dick is bigger than your brain, fine. But, you know, I just don't think joking about death and injury to bikers is appropriate in the forum. I know... you're good ole boys just jokin'... but, well, people like you endanger pedestrians and bikers and other cars all the time. I know your type.


Go away, scum.

Sorry, Robin. Take off this discussion if you want to.

Dude...Don't let me ruin your day. It ain't worth it...life is too short.

As for my "dick being bigger than my brain"...Well I guess it sucks to be me huh ?

Mine's shorter than yours, Dude. I'm sure you have plenty of time to grow up.


As for the Live and Let Live argument I keep hearing, I have to say I just don't get it. The topic is the community and the decisions it is making about transportation, roads, recreation, landscape, place, space, food, housing, livelihoods. I would like to hear what people think about the choices we have to make, that we can make, about visions of the future. That means we have to talk about the way people live, might live, could live, how life might be changed by roads and landscape and architecture. I started from an honest statement of how I feel. Now it's others' moves. That's what a discussion is. We're not taking people to court, shunning, passing laws. Has no one ever done this before?

http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/michael ... burbia-rip

We've had some lengthy and interesting debates over the years here about Richard Florida's work. I think he tackled a huge issue in this blog post and can't possibly do it justice with 200 words. I noticed that they study he cited said "unwanted" homes/lots, not "unsellable" homes. The market will clear the inventory at some price, but the lenders (we the taxpayers, in many cases) will be hammered in the process (assuming that the home "owner" takes a long walk and doesn't come back at some point).

Florida didn't write this article, but there is a long Florida article linked here that is from the Atlantic ("How the Crash Will Reshape America").

Do you think the downturn and sell-offs and devaluing of large suburban homes will simply level off, and that they will remain viable places, albeit cheaper to buy? (I hope everyone understands we're not talking about old first-ring suburbs, but what, especially for Metro Louisville, are best called 'exurbs') Do you see any merit in the idea that there will be large-scale failure that will impel a movement back towards denser (and I argue, more lively) cities?

My interest in these things began with reading Florida, Bill Bishop's The Big Sort, Mark Kingwell's Concrete Reveries, as well as following the blog Cooltown Studios and our local Broken Sidewalk. I grew up in Louisville, first in the South End (till age 12), then in the Highlands. I graduated from U of L, spent two years in the Peace Corps in Chandigarh, India (a city planned by LeCorbusier, which also informs my attitudes). My wife and I then moved to Rochester NY, where I taught high school English for 35 years.

We returned to Louisville 4 years ago, after I retired. Rochester always felt a soulless town, devoid of the sense of place and potential that Louisville has. Rochester is the center of Monroe County - about the size of Jefferson. But the county outside Rochester is made up of 18 municipalities, each with its own school system (some no bigger than the one inner-city high school in which I taught). Most had their own police and fire depts. And none felt any connection to or ownership of the city proper. The suburbs are white. The city schools are predominantly minority and poor. I was radicalized, I supposed, by this divide and the injustices my students suffered. Rochester is a classic Doughnut, with Rochester itself the hole.

Many things here in Louisville excited me when I first moved here - and they still do. But I'm seeing some regressive, stubbornly stupid things here, too. I honestly think the mayor and others are lost in a passe 20th century vision: the Bridges Project, as well as the cozying up to Cordish, demonstrate that many think that more Name, National chains in retail, restaurants, and entertainment, along with quick and easy access out to the burbs, will make us a Big, Real City (meaning, Just Like Every Other City).

All this is by way of explaining my fear of suburbs, and my desire to do what is necessary to keep and extend the better side of Louisville's soul: its desire for a funky, creative, diverse, soulful, sustainable city with a real sense of place and space and architecture and people.

http://brokensidewalk.com/

http://www.cooltownstudios.com/

Sorry about misreading the Florida reference at the end of the article -

I don't think Louisville will suffer nearly as much as the "sand" states - suppose that's pretty obvious. There may well be burbs (third, fourth, fifth ring) that do end up been dozered if there is a higher use for the land some day. I sure as heck will be interesting, and painful, to watch as this delevering and unwinding of credit of monumental proportions continues.

I like the Broken Sidewalk folks, as well.

I read the long Florida article and found it supporting some of my views, and also depressing the hell out of me. The Bridges Project, 'placemaking', sanity and scale in downtown development, the increase of density in Louisville Metro... all melt into mini-issues when compared with the national issue of population movement, job location, the geography of wealth, the critical masses of Creatives. Louisville and, even more so, Kentucky seem a doomed ship, and the concerns that I was trying to address when I started this topic seem like rearranging furniture on the Titanic.

But another part of me wants to look at these things in another way. I have always, since high school, had a strong feeling against what I have called The New York Culture Conspiracy: the idea that only NY can validate one's art, one's lifestyle, one's existence, and that in order to be successful, especially as writer, artist, musician, one must move to NY - and therefore become a New Yorker and be like any other writer, artist, musician. Florida's theories are rather insidious support for that vision (so it is sad, really, that I am with him in so many respects) as he pimps for the megalopolises to get bigger and suck all talent out of what he dismisses as losing areas (Uh, most of the Midwest and South, and parts of the Rust Belt).

Now, I love New York, love the city, love being in the City, love New Yorkers - when they're at home. Away from home their regional bigotry becomes often unbearable, especially when they visit the South. What New Yorkism does is relegate the nuances of place and region, the peculiar and thin-soiled genius and talent of other parts of the country, the beauty of the local, to the shadows. What I would like to see is a non-parochial regionalism that ignores New York... not in a stupid, bigoted, know-nothing chauvinism, but in an enlightened, creative, open-minded flowering.

I use as my model indie rock (if that's outside your knowledge or interest, I think I can still get my point across). Indie and alternative rock is decentralized. There have been flourishes of light coming, over the past 30 years, from Athens GA, Seattle, Minneapolis, Austin, Louisville (it's true), and currently Brooklyn. Brooklyn is important here. Yes, it's basically NY, but what is key is that it is just one of many and will fade as a center.

And indie rock is varied, surprising, innovative, real.


Art, on the other hand, is centralized. Artists move to NY, or they aren't important. What results is an insular, masturbatory, self-important, circle-jerk world that freeze-dries talent, inflates egos, and keeps art as economics rather than as expression or cultural mover.

If we take indie music as our paradigm, then Louisville's minor issues become important again, and the question becomes, "How do we make this place come alive and produce interesting, sustainable, real lives?"
Jiminy, I wonder if I'm just talking to myself... talk about masturbatory!

I read the long Florida article and found it supporting some of my views, and also depressing the hell out of me. The Bridges Project, 'placemaking', sanity and scale in downtown development, the increase of density in Louisville Metro... all melt into mini-issues when compared with the national issue of population movement, job location, the geography of wealth, the critical masses of Creatives. Louisville and, even more so, Kentucky seem a doomed ship, and the concerns that I was trying to address when I started this topic seem like rearranging furniture on the Titanic.

But another part of me wants to look at these things in another way. I have always, since high school, had a strong feeling against what I have called The New York Culture Conspiracy: the idea that only NY can validate one's art, one's lifestyle, one's existence, and that in order to be successful, especially as writer, artist, musician, one must move to NY - and therefore become a New Yorker and be like any other writer, artist, musician. Florida's theories are rather insidious support for that vision (so it is sad, really, that I am with him in so many respects) as he pimps for the megalopolises to get bigger and suck all talent out of what he dismisses as losing areas (Uh, most of the Midwest and South, and parts of the Rust Belt).

Now, I love New York, love the city, love being in the City, love New Yorkers - when they're at home. Away from home their regional bigotry becomes often unbearable, especially when they visit the South. What New Yorkism does is relegate the nuances of place and region, the peculiar and thin-soiled genius and talent of other parts of the country, the beauty of the local, to the shadows. What I would like to see is a non-parochial regionalism that ignores New York... not in a stupid, bigoted, know-nothing chauvinism, but in an enlightened, creative, open-minded flowering.

I use as my model indie rock (if that's outside your knowledge or interest, I think I can still get my point across). Indie and alternative rock is decentralized. There have been flourishes of light coming, over the past 30 years, from Athens GA, Seattle, Minneapolis, Austin, Louisville (it's true), and currently Brooklyn. Brooklyn is important here. Yes, it's basically NY, but what is key is that it is just one of many and will fade as a center.

And indie rock is varied, surprising, innovative, real.


Art, on the other hand, is centralized. Artists move to NY, or they aren't important. What results is an insular, masturbatory, self-important, circle-jerk world that freeze-dries talent, inflates egos, and keeps art as economics rather than as expression or cultural mover.

If we take indie music as our paradigm, then Louisville's minor issues become important again, and the question becomes, "How do we make this place come alive and produce interesting, sustainable, real lives?"
Jiminy, I wonder if I'm just talking to myself... talk about masturbatory!

Ken meet Phil...Phil meet Ken.

You know, I should just ignore you all. I'm sure you'll just dismiss me as some liberal whiner. Fine. I'm 63 years old. My name is Ken Wilson. If you want to come beat up an old man to prove your dick is bigger than your brain, fine. But, you know, I just don't think joking about death and injury to bikers is appropriate in the forum. I know... you're good ole boys just jokin'... but, well, people like you endanger pedestrians and bikers and other cars all the time. I know your type.


Go away, scum.

Sorry, Robin. Take off this discussion if you want to.

Dude...Don't let me ruin your day. It ain't worth it...life is too short.

As for my "dick being bigger than my brain"...Well I guess it sucks to be me huh ?

Hilarious!

i probably would have liked sitting next to you in class........lol.....

jeez......after that posted and i read it....i think it might come across the wrong way....

what i meant was....that i would have liked sitting next to you in class because you are funny and have hilarious comebacks....NOT because certain parts of your anatomy are bigger that other certain parts of your anatomy.....jeez....i feel like an idiot......

jeez......after that posted and i read it....i think it might come across the wrong way....

what i meant was....that i would have liked sitting next to you in class because you are funny and have hilarious comebacks....NOT because certain parts of your anatomy are bigger that other certain parts of your anatomy.....jeez....i feel like an idiot......

Nahhhhhh...you wouldn't have wanted to sit by me...I was the kinda guy who woulda looked down your dress <Doooh>.

oh....steve, steve, steve,....i was the kinda girl that would have let you......

Please go away.