ON THE AVENUES: The sorrow of Nawbany.

ON THE AVENUES: The sorrow of Nawbany.

By ROGER BAYLOR
Local Columnist

It’s unusual to be a morning person when simultaneously engaged in the beer and food business, which remains a nighttime game. Even during periods now mercifully passed, when I tended bar in the evening and closed at midnight or later, I’d usually be awake again at dawn.

Long ago, it became clear that my prime creative time is sandwiched between an early breakfast and late lunch, and whenever possible, the daily work schedule is juggled accordingly.

Nowadays, some vague combination of incessant stress, body chemistry and the aging process often awakens me even earlier than usual. Old timers further along than me say it’s a common occurrence. On such days, after a bathroom break between 4:00 and 4:30 a.m., there’ll be no blissful return to unconsciousness, only eyes wide open. About the only reasonable thing to do is to get up and start the day.

And it’s wonderful. Right after the first espresso, the birds start singing. There aren’t many cars on the street until six or six-thirty, and it’s the ideal quiet time to cherish pickled herring on toast, load the disc changer with Shostakovich string quartets, or perhaps some medieval liturgical fare, and reflect on life.

These thoughts are many and varied, although most of them eventually fall into a category which might be summarized as philosophical: “What the hell am I doing here?”

It’s less in the existential sense than the geographical. Why must New Albania so resemble Old Albania?

---

New Albany's chief of police, Todd Bailey, was among those gathered in NABC’s Prost room on Monday night for the Gahan for Mayor fundraising fete. Comparisons to the Star Wars cantina scene are purely non-coincidental.

I resumed a conversation with Todd about bicyclists habitually traveling eastbound (i.e., the wrong way) on Spring Street. I might have added comments about adult cyclists riding amok on sidewalks, or King Larry weed-eating shirtless, but please, one daunting challenge at a time, okay?

With bike lanes drawn on both sides of a one-way street, numerous untutored cyclists seem drawn to the bike lane on the south side of the street. Even though the pictograms are crystal clear, the cyclists ride against traffic. It's illegal and unenforced (where exactly are the State Police in such cases?), and probably only a matter of time until a motorist crossing Spring Street neglects to look, and hits a misplaced rider.

Mayor Doug England was standing nearby. Eventually I observed to the mayor that, of course, the best way to end the wrong-way cycling problem is to make Spring Street a two-way street, as pledged during his campaign in 2007.

His reply was that he aimed to do it, but the city council would not let him.

There were no roars or thunderbolts, just meek acceptance. Isn’t it way past time we borrowed the question of a younger generation, and asked: “WTF?”

---

It is not out of spite and negativity, but from sheer befuddlement and a good measure of plain sadness and disappointment, that I must ask how it has come to be that in a city where, by acclamation, everyone agrees that the mayor has considerably more power than the city council, this central campaign pledge (two way street conversions) of candidate England’s, as made to residents of the city’s neighborhoods and its downtown business cadres, has yet to occur?

Depressingly, it can only be because there was never a serious intention to follow through. Now, with the end near, it is unavoidably clear that the current administration was outgoing even as it was incoming. From start to finish, it has been unwilling to expend a solitary farthing in political capital. Term Three has been lame duck from day one, which makes it even harder to determine the need for such thrift.

After all, what redemption value does political capital have once the office is relinquished?

Can it be somehow spent on trinkets, like Green Stamps of old?

Insofar as posterity cares at all about New Albany, circa 2007-2011, it will express abject puzzlement at the slump-shouldered passivity always following so closely on the heels of City Hall’s expressions of progressive intent. What ever happened to the whirling dervish mayor of previous years?

Mellowing is one thing, and perhaps it is understandable, and yet how many times have we first heard words of heroic principle, yielding so quickly to: “Pass it or kill it – whatever the council likes.”

One, maybe two of these polite withdrawals possibly might be explained as tactical retreat. Two dozen surely constitute fevered head scratching. What makes all this so very lamentable is that in the end, the payback for our support turned out to be another wallop of cynicism.

---

The reward for patience was not the completion of the deal, but the announcement of The Deal: Irv Stumler, a Republican, anointed by Mayor England, a Democrat, to inherit his mantle and run for mayor on a platform of … of … beats me. I still can’t figure it out, but it was the final straw, and the ultimate indignity. I wish it had not happened. Regrettably, it cannot be forgiven.

Win or lose in the fall, Jeff Gahan already has performed a community service that will not be soon forgotten. He dismantled the rotten back room political deal, one no less odiferous with the passage of a few months’ time. Hints of job insecurity in the offing are a delicious reminder that in a town noted for sewer follies and potty/potted police, it’s not ironic at all to suggest the time has come for some serious, sustained flushing.