Showing posts with label Celebrate the New Albany Street Piano (community). Show all posts
Showing posts with label Celebrate the New Albany Street Piano (community). Show all posts

Sunday, August 04, 2019

Yet again gripped with nostalgia, we remember Gahan's hilarious Great Street Piano Meltdown of 2015.


You'll recall the Board of Public Works and Safety as an entity twisted these past eight years to primarily administer Jeff Gahan's political patronage network. Today is the fourth anniversary of the bored's idiotically delayed decision to allow the existence of a street piano downtown.



The belated dedication ceremony for the street piano that produced so much labored consternation in the Down Low Bunker took place on September 5, 2015.


Shouldn't Street Piano Day be a civic holiday? Just swipe your card to help the veneer king serve as mayor for life and YOU can play, too.


The following was originally published in 2016. Spoiler alert: In the three years since, Gahan's megalomania has only gotten worse.

---

An omen is an event regarded as a portent of good or evil, and sometimes both.

This morning it dawned on me that I have failed to receive the weekly e-mail agenda of the Board of Public Works and Safety's Tuesday meeting.

No doubt this is a providential omen, freeing me from the crushing burden of observing the bureaucracy of local infrastructure, and suggesting that I make better different use of my time this morning.

Keep the questions coming. Meanwhile, let's take a fond look back to last year, and the Bored's bumbling performance in the legendary case of the New Albany Street Piano.


The following three posts include most of the other links to this most enduring and hilarious of stories.

As a refresher, here is Bluegill's summary.

First, there was a request to place a piano on a public sidewalk in New Albany; a fun, harmless, and completely normal happening around the world. Then there were months of city officials sidestepping and ignoring that request. Then there were additional weeks and multiple meetings of artificially constructed and wholly irrelevant hurdles put in place. Then there was media attention and, by New Albany standards, an expression of public support for the piano and exasperation with the City sizable enough to embarrass the officials involved. And then there was finally approval, with an almost equally embarrassing rearguard attempt to claim officials had supported it all along. I wish any of that was out of the ordinary but it's a near perfect example of what ordinary is here, even and especially when the stakes are much higher. Playing a new tune couldn't be any more welcome.

And the links ...

Bored of Works no more: Today at 4:00 p.m., the New Albany Street Piano becomes a reality.


Fundamentally delayed: The New Albany Street Piano "Grand Opening" is Saturday, September 5.


Celebrate the New Albany Street Piano, while remembering Team Gahan's dismal reaction to it.


Tuesday, September 05, 2017

ASK THE BORED: Gripped with nostalgia, we remember the Great Street Piano Meltdown of 2015.


Came the reminder: two years ago today was the belated (to put it mildly) dedication ceremony for the street piano that produced so much labored consternation in the Down Low Bunker.


This post from July 26, 2016 explains what happened.

Shouldn't Street Piano Day be a civic holiday?

---

An omen is an event regarded as a portent of good or evil, and sometimes both.

This morning it dawned on me that I have failed to receive the weekly e-mail agenda of the Board of Public Works and Safety's Tuesday meeting.

No doubt this is a providential omen, freeing me from the crushing burden of observing the bureaucracy of local infrastructure, and suggesting that I make better different use of my time this morning.

Keep the questions coming. Meanwhile, let's take a fond look back to last year, and the Bored's bumbling performance in the legendary case of the New Albany Street Piano.


The following three posts include most of the other links to this most enduring and hilarious of stories.

As a refresher, here is Bluegill's summary.

First, there was a request to place a piano on a public sidewalk in New Albany; a fun, harmless, and completely normal happening around the world. Then there were months of city officials sidestepping and ignoring that request. Then there were additional weeks and multiple meetings of artificially constructed and wholly irrelevant hurdles put in place. Then there was media attention and, by New Albany standards, an expression of public support for the piano and exasperation with the City sizable enough to embarrass the officials involved. And then there was finally approval, with an almost equally embarrassing rearguard attempt to claim officials had supported it all along. I wish any of that was out of the ordinary but it's a near perfect example of what ordinary is here, even and especially when the stakes are much higher. Playing a new tune couldn't be any more welcome.

And the links ...

Bored of Works no more: Today at 4:00 p.m., the New Albany Street Piano becomes a reality.


Fundamentally delayed: The New Albany Street Piano "Grand Opening" is Saturday, September 5.


Celebrate the New Albany Street Piano, while remembering Team Gahan's dismal reaction to it.


Saturday, September 05, 2015

Bored of Works no more: Today at 4:00 p.m., the New Albany Street Piano becomes a reality.


We've been waiting for a piano like this (among other things), and so let's celebrate the advent of the New Albany Street Piano with music.



Everyone knows that the entire process was far more excruciating and bureaucracy-laden than it should have been, and so I've been taking notes for The Resistance.


But there'll be no coaxing and imploring, at least not from this quarter. Some folks just have to dope it out on their own.


Read more here: Fundamentally delayed: The New Albany Street Piano "Grand Opening" is Saturday, September 5.

I'll be downtown for the installation. If you'd like a Baylor for Mayor yard sign, I'll even bring the car so we have access to the trunk.

Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Fundamentally delayed: The New Albany Street Piano "Grand Opening" is Saturday, September 5.


The New Albany Street Piano "Grand Opening" will take place at 4:00 p.m. on Saturday, September 5, and it is likely to be the politician-watching event of the millennium.

That's because:

Make no mistake: Jeff Gahan is the "driving force" behind the Bored of Works' inability to fathom street pianos, public art and modernity itself.

The street piano was quarantined for months by the mayor's insatiable need for down-low control, and when this fact became painfully obvious to the entire community (except Jimmy, of course), Team Gahan got hot and bothered.

GAHANS STRIKE BACK: Street piano approved but the social media fur begins to fly.

Now that something so very simple finally has been blessed by the self-appointed pillars, how many of them will turn out to claim credit for a phenomenon they neither understood nor assisted?

Celebrate the New Albany Street Piano, while remembering Team Gahan's dismal reaction to it.

I'll be there with a clipboard, checking off the hypocrisy.

Saturday, September 5
4:00 p.m.
Jimmy's Music Center, 123 E. Market St., New Albany


Mark your calendars! After all of the hullabaloo of the last few months, it is finally time to enjoy the New Albany Street Piano for its original purpose: making music and spreading joy to downtown New Albany. We hope to have a good crowd assembled for the unveiling, so please share this invite and bring a friend of two. We invite you all to stop by Jimmy's to see the piano and play/sing/listen for a bit, then head to enjoy an evening at one of the many fine establishments the downtown has to offer. Hope to see you there!

Thursday, August 13, 2015

Celebrate the New Albany Street Piano, while remembering Team Gahan's dismal reaction to it.


It is fitting and proper for Hannegan to say what she does in the commentary linked below, in which she applauds the playing of a new tune.

Consider also this summary, posted last week by NAC's Jeff Gillenwater.

First, there was a request to place a piano on a public sidewalk in New Albany; a fun, harmless, and completely normal happening around the world. Then there were months of city officials sidestepping and ignoring that request. Then there were additional weeks and multiple meetings of artificially constructed and wholly irrelevant hurdles put in place. Then there was media attention and, by New Albany standards, an expression of public support for the piano and exasperation with the City sizable enough to embarrass the officials involved. And then there was finally approval, with an almost equally embarrassing rearguard attempt to claim officials had supported it all along. I wish any of that was out of the ordinary but it's a near perfect example of what ordinary is here, even and especially when the stakes are much higher. Playing a new tune couldn't be any more welcome.

As any teacher knows, there's always an important lesson to be learned, and in this instance it must be remembered that in the aftermath of a board of works meeting last week in which the street piano finally was set free, Hannegan Roseberry absorbed a fair share of intemperate social media abuse from Team Gahan.

This is very unfair, and someone needs to say it aloud. It might as well be me.

Hannegan didn’t know about the "free the piano" Facebook page, because I did it on my own without asking her, secure in the knowledge that my sub-par “photoshopping” skills immediately would identify it as mine – to my anonymous Twitter parodist (why is a masked Rogar acceptable if my signed satire is not?), if to no one else.

Furthermore, Hannegan also didn’t know about Michael Wimmer’s protest piano project. In fact, I believe they only met for the first time as she walked past on her way to the meeting.

So, in short: If any of you wish to “bully” someone, my advice is to leave her out of it and come straight to the source of your displeasure: Me.

Why?

Because I’m the thorn in your paw.

I’m the one exposing your chicanery and detailing your errors.

I’m the one creating serious doubts in the minds of the voters ... one at a time, little by little.

I’m the occupant of your anxiety closet, instigating your existential crisis, and keeping those Tums shareholders happy.

I’m the one throwing my head back and laughing, because I'm old enough to remember Democrats like Hubert Humphrey, "The Happy Warrior."

Let's be blunt: Your wounds are self-inflicted. It didn't need to be this way. You did it to yourselves, and in the end, it's all good, because there'll be an election in November.

Team Gahan will seek to buy it by flashing photos of a pool on TIF plastic, payable by our grandchildren, as the self-interested cadres pretend to be democratic, (lower case) and masquerade as Democrats (upper case).

The Republican will counter by saying, "I'm not Gahan," offering as an alternative our county government's chronic austerity and disinvestment.

The remainder of us will get to work building something tangible, absent the Kool-Aid spiked with Walt Disney.

Kudos to Hannegan for her perseverance. Let's just not forget who put her through this ridicuously unnecessary wringer: Team Gahan.

Newly dubbed: Celebrate the New Albany Street Piano.

ROSEBERRY: Time to play a new tune: Let's shift the narrative on the New Albany street piano, by Hannegan Roseberry (News and Tribune)

More than three months ago, I approached the New Albany Board of Works with the idea of installing a street piano. Little did I know, Pandora’s Box of political jockeying was about to be opened.

The goal of this project was to spread music and joy, not to ignite a firestorm surrounding City Hall. Over the past four months, I have inadvertently served as whipping post/pied piper/musical Robin Hood for quirky arts in New Albany. I’ve made some people unhappy with me by chronicling my experience, and I’ve made others very excited that this fun project is coming to fruition.