Sunday, August 28, 2005

mixing cocktails with a plastic-tipped cigar

I will thoroughly enjoy this day off. I got irritated with some of my co-workers yesterday, and my two days off are coming just in time.
If all goes according to plan, we'll have Whiffle Ball in the Park, version 2.0. If it indeed goes down, I'll get some photos for you to enjoy.

Last night was insane. The city was promoting this "get downtown" theme, trying to get the college kids to come to the downtown area and hang out. They had a couple of bands playing right in the street between my current place of work and my former place of work. Lining the streets were all sorts of crap. T-shirts, hotdog stands, information kiosks about area businesses, beer stands, and the like. It was a damn madhouse. I didn't think it would be as successful as it was. There were still several hundred people roaming the streets at midnight. Frame of reference -- normally on a Saturday night at midnight, I might see a dozen pedestrians. The only thing is, it won't be like that next weekend or the weekend after. Unless there's a big production like that, there just isn't that much to do. There's 3 restaurants on our corner, then there's a boom-boom club a couple of blocks down, but that's about it. No music venues, no sports bar (yet), no movie theatre, a very weak "arts district" and the baseball team only has a few home games left. If the kids come back downtown next weekend expecting another fun-fest, they'll be sorely disappointed. Everyone takes the re-active "if they come, you will build it" approach, rather than the pro-active "if you build it, they will come" approach.

I'll get some pictures tonight of our rock and roll good time.

now playing:
Björk -- Vespertine
Björk Vespertine

1 comment:

Reid said...

That is so true about the re-active approach. The neighborhood has to come before the people, and usually the only way you make the neighborhood is to somehow make it affordable and safe, and then it usually turns into a nice part of town. Then the rich people move in and it becomes un-fun again.