New Albany is a state of mind … but whose? Since 2004, we’ve been observing the contemporary scene in this slowly awakening old river town. If it’s true that a pre-digital stopped clock is right twice a day, when will New Albany learn to tell time?
William Blake never lived in Nawbany, but he grasps our degraded civic condition better than most residents.
“The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way … As a man is, so he sees.”
Welcome to a new weekly feature at NA Confidential. Roger remains on sabbatical from heavy polemical lifting, but it takes no time at all to collect a few headlines, eh?
So it was that the Green Mouse was chatting with a neighbor as together they ducked and covered to avoid the sawdust borne of the latest wave of lumbering downtown.
"The neighborhood from spring to Ekin, 15th to Vincennes is under attack by hooded, face-masked asshats," remarked the neighbor as a very large man on a very small children's bicycle oozed past.
"Cops say they can't do anything if the asshats are probing and pulling doors, at least without seeing or catching them in the act, but hell, I have video of drug deals next door -- then Todd says no, can't smell it on the video. WTF? Something's got to change in Nawagony!"
"Nawagony" -- now THAT'S a keeper.
Did you know that in days of old, there was no crime in the Soviet Union? Well, maybe there was a little bit, but when the official propaganda channels kept saying everyone had been successfully converted into New Communist Men and Women, how could they be capable of petty capitalist transgressions?
Same goes here in New Gahania. We just concluded an election campaign during which neighborhood crime scarcely was mentioned by the Gahans, Phippses and Nashes of the town, and acknowledging such issues now would suggest they were being ... um, evasive.
Who are you going to believe, them or your own video?
Amid sighs and lamentations, the Green Mouse yearns for that elusive day when folks spend time and money on grassroots fixes for what genuinely ails us, rather than meaningless appearances. Too much Disney, too little reality. The reason NAC can't support this bridge lighting chimera is that it not only absorbs tight money which might go toward mitigating car-centrism, but also diverts short attention spans away from much needed "small bet" reforms, to be yet again ignored by reason of magical fantasy thinking. The fundamental issue remains moving people in some way other than one-person-per-car.
Meanwhile, NAC's idea of usefulness is getting existing street lights consistently lit BEFORE trying to string them across the Ohio River. There are three burned-out lights on Market between State and Pearl, opposite the side of the street where the city just spent a million bucks on luxury appendages. They've been out for months.
Can we afford a mere three bulbs for the orphaned south side of the street? it would help pedestrians see the trip hazards before they fall -- as the Green Mouse evidently was doing as he snapped the first photo.
Frankly, we're amazed. How did a reputable business slip into Colonial Manor without a single City Hall functionary claiming credit for it -- and WITHOUT the city owning the building, which previously had been stated as an absolute prerequisite?
Is free enterprise even legal?
Will the fire inspector shut them down until the fruit baskets are delivered with requisite bulging envelopes?
Rumor has it the River Heritage Conservancy came away from its recent meeting with Team Gahan utterly convinced it had wandered by mistake into a second grade classroom, as opposed to a municipal brain trust. We're just afraid of insulting second graders.
The conservancy has already purchased about half the land needed for the park. To date, funding support has come from the Paul Ogle Foundation, the Blue Sky Foundation, the Town of Clarksville and other local and national organizations.
Join us again next time as we review the week that was.
The best part of Christmas is when it finally ends.
Welcome to a new weekly feature at NA Confidential. I remain on sabbatical from heavy polemical lifting, but it takes no time at all to collect a few headlines, eh? NAC's reader comment of the week was made in response to this passage in yesterday's ON THE AVENUES columnabout the elusiveness of silence.
Rumor has it that when the River Heritage Conservancy got together with Mayor Jeff Gahan’s political patronage team to describe genuinely exciting plans for a world-class park unit astride the Greenway in Clarksville, the session didn’t go very well. “It was like trying to talk to second-grade students,” one of the presenters is said to have commented afterward.
Reader W wrote, "I bet the River Heritage Conservancy lost Mayor Jeff Gahan’s political patronage team when the team realized the Conservancy was saying "REforestation" instead of "DEforestation".
The results of the past week's logging at Market and 9th seemingly confirm this astute judgment.
In New Albany, men are men and trees ... are still very scared.
The first city council meeting of the year also took place on Monday, and the Butt Plug Preservation Society rejoiced as Tiberius Severus Octavian Elagabalus Septimius Augustus Claudius Hadrian Gluteus Maximus Caesar-- Protector of Fitting and Proper Scribnerian Values, Deliverer of all Downtown Datedness, Master of the Ex-Mercantile, and Guardian of the Gates -- was elected council president, thus ensuring continued Democratic Party dominance of the appointments-fixing process.
Welcome, my son -- welcome to The Machine.
However, the two biggest stories of the week had to do with independent local businesses -- or, those entities supplying the tax revenue to maintain failed politicians like Bob Caesar.
Local eateries rallying around furloughed government employees captured the attention of blog readers.
Thanks for reading NA Confidential, where we enjoy reconnoitering the neglected periphery for uniquely local perspectives on life in New Albany. Someone has to at least try doing it, or we can grow old waiting for the Jeffersonville News and Tribune to rediscover journalism.
Frequent readers will recall an ongoing issue with statistics, dating to October of 2018 and the infamously shoddy Blogger platform's rejigging of something, which caused page view counts previously stable for many years to suddenly change. Numerical ratios oddly stayed the same, as though all views had abruptly decreased by a set percentage. For those monetizing their blogs, this probably is infuriating. Since I'm a loss leader kind of fellow, it's merely an annoyance.
Beginning in January, 2019 I'll be using Facebook statistics. As always, the previous month's most-viewed list begins with ten "honorable mention" posts, before concluding with the Top Ten, escalating to No. 1.
The enduringly fascinating aspect of our bedraggled Democratic council quartet is the beige patina of its blandness. The best historic parallel is those jowly Politburo geriatrics propped atop Lenin’s Mausoleum during Soviet May Day parades of old; colorless and featureless functionaries without the first original thought of their own, committed only to agreeing in lock step with the First Secretary.
By the end of 2019, New Albany’s four remaining Democratic council critters will have 36 years of combined service – and for what ultimate purpose? They’re faded pawns waiting to be pushed around the chess board, and veritable rubber stamps in desperate need of re-inking. They seem far older than they really are, with a collective demeanor suggesting mute charred hulk burnout.
If Deaf Gahan would have paid attention the first time ... thick, ain't he? Our campaign finance aggregator-in-chief will read this sentence and ask, "but isn't pass-through logic why I'm here?"
"We let the idea of high volumes of through traffic become our identity."
In terms of specific circumstances, Lebanon, Ohio is not the same as New Albany, Indiana. But shared universals are another matter entirely. Go to Strong Towns and read the entire essay, excerpted below.
All this and LEO Weekly persists in describing Flat12 not only as a brewery, but as a "local" brewery, when the owner lives in Indianapolis and there has not been a single batch of beer "brewed" on site by Flat12 in the city of Jeffersonville, ever.
So, how does LEO Weekly define "our Louisville breweries"?
Considerable progress has been made during recent years toward the shared objective of adapting the festival to the emergence of business concentration and residency downtown.
I feel better about it now, and that's what communication is all about. There's been far more of it recently from Harvest Homecoming, although the same cannot be said about Jeff Gahan's forever hermetic City Hall.
Change out the mayor and just think of the possibilities. Voting for David White in the Democratic primary is an excellent place to begin the cleansing. It also bears noting that Harvest Homecoming's physical "booth days" footprint lies entirely within the 3rd council district.
Just imagine a council person in the 3rd who actually knows what indie business ownership involves. Indies don't get tenure, you know.
That’s right; the Challenger Deep, in the Mariana Trench.
It’s where Gahan’s and Dickey’s creation, the Good Ship Democratic Lollipop, currently rests, and taken together, these two narcissistic beached whales in a child’s overmatched wading pool are managing against all imaginable odds to make the buffoonish serial liar Donald Trump look precisely like George Washington.
Most folks who value a semblance of basic human decency would like to believe that Caesar's, McLaughlin's and Gahan's glad-handing appearance yesterday at the ribbon cutting for Lorch's law office had something to do with penance for their lingering guilt over the way they humiliated Lorch two years ago.
But that's not it. Rather, an election season is upon us, and Develop New Albany remains eager as ever to (a) claim responsibility for matters touching the arm-of-city-organization not one jot, and (b) to provide as many photo-ops as possible for the big fish inhabiting our small local pond, thus enabling yesterday's ludicrous scene.
On second thought, now I'm the one feeling guilty -- about comparing New Albany to the Balkans. That's plainly an insult to the Balkans, and I apologize profusely.
The really telling part is that, as Gahan and Floyd County Democrats block social media access to more and more people, they never actually deny what those people have said.
They can't.
They just don't want people to know about it. The truth makes them look bad so secrecy and lies begets more secrecy and lies. If incumbent and new Democratic council candidates won't speak up against such misleading tactics now, there's no reason to think they will if elected.
Granted, Phipps is an intelligent and pleasant fellow, and he plausibly can lay claim to suitably progressive public positions on social justice and human rights issues; he’s fought for one or the other of them on scattered occasions, though generally only when given explicit permission by the likes of spider-webmaster Dickey.
It’s just that Phipps has yet to utter the first peep of principled protest when these matters of basic human decency are blithely violated by Gahan, as in the obvious examples of the chaotic public housing takeover, City Hall's abysmal record of threatening and bullying both city employees and civilians, the mayor’s steadfast refusal to concede the existence of issues like homelessness and opioid addiction -- not to mention Gahan's personal addiction to campaign finance receipts.
Moreover, Phipps has yawningly rubber-stamped virtually every extravagant spending proposal ever minted by the mayor’s crack team of TIF juicers, the vast majority of which have been explicitly intended to encourage gentrification by benefiting higher-income segments of the city’s population, as well as fluffing a gigantic pool of pay-to-play special interests who donate profusely to Gahan for the privilege of profitable participation in these projects.
Howzabout every governmental entity shows us the financials pertaining to projects like Hammersmith Park and River Run Family Gahan Dome, without making their release tantamount to raiding the tomb of an Egyptian pharaoh?
Isn't 100% transparency the best for everyone ... even outside the immediate family?
Someone asked if there were other atheists in the group, and the ensuing remarks were surprisingly civil until later in the evening, when an older white male felt compelled to write "get the hell out of my city."
YOUR city? My dear man, it's HIS city -- and you'll never forget it again once the Anchor Chip is implanted into your brain.
My demographic cohort continues to regularly embarrass me with such attitudes, which isn't surprising given how few of them were ever properly toilet trained, but I digress.
It's nice to know that in a community filled to the brim with issues and challenges, 4th district seat-warmer Pat McLaughlin is concerned about what the library is called.
Standing four feet away from Seabrook was Very Incongruous Barksdale, who garnered nowhere near the level of applause given the others.
His presence proved a bit strange. If the GOP intends to cite the Reisz Mahal as a prime example of Jeff Gahan's debt-laden waste -- and this is entirely true -- then why did Barksdale, one of the party's three council incumbents, provide THE critical vote to move the boondoggle forward?
Just remember that when it comes to manipulation and money, the mayor can be trusted to exploit the weak and vulnerable by finding and tapping their jugulars. Gahan simultaneously milked Barksdale for a crucial fifth Reisz Mahal vote and neutered a Republican. The historian blithely handed the charlatan power on a silver platter. Barksdale's abrupt collapse might be sad, except it's all hamartia and hubris to to me: "Hamartia is the (fatal) flaw, hubris is the behavior that does not acknowledge it."
Apart from Barksdale's capitulation to Dear Leader -- can he be redeemed? -- it's a fine and balanced slate, surely the deepest we've seen from the GOP since this blog's inception.
"We gave disposable cameras to homeless people living around downtown Salem and asked them to document their lives. Anthony McGuire shows us what Christmas looks like on the streets."
For local Democrats, Cochran has proven to be irreplaceable. Since 2010, they're run five different candidates against Clere, sans discernible traction. Up, down or sideways, 34 years is nothing to sneeze at, and we'll probably not see the likes of him again, maybe from either party.
Nadia didn't walk into a room, but sashayed, exaggeratedly shaking her butt and announcing her presence -- and the imminent need for a tasty morsel. She was an epic chatterbox with a startling array of sounds and noises that might have led the untutored to believe a duck or squirrel had wandered past. I'm unembarrassed to concede that Nadia and I had daily conversations, during which I'd harangue her and she'd answer, or sometimes vice versa.
I'll miss those. She was a receptive sounding board for my writing ideas, and never once advised me to tone it down.
In an effort to help employees of the Federal Government who are not getting paid through the shutdown, a group of restaurants has banded together to provide meals as a show of support and appreciation for the dedicated men and women who keep our community safe.
Together, we strive to be better and to overcome adversity as one community.
Thanks for reading NA Confidential, where we enjoy reconnoitering the neglected periphery for uniquely local perspectives on life in New Albany.
City Hall's allegations to the contrary, it can be seen quite clearly that hundreds of you are reading, and we believe this fact attests to a keen ongoing interest in grassroots New Albany stories, perhaps because they're being chronically under-served elsewhere.
After all, fawning stenography and inexorably multiplying religion columnists can get one only so far.
The January list begins with ten "honorable mention" posts, before concluding with the Top Ten, escalating to No. 1. These statistics are derived from Google's internal numbers listings.
When the work is finished, it will become Pints&Union, the forthcoming pub being sketched by Joe Phillips and yours truly. Our shared vision takes the traditional Anglo-Irish pub as a starting point. It might be described as "progressively old school," although this phrase lamentably is being used by someone else.
Let's take the News and Tribune's credulous editorial board gently by the hand and lead them as a group to the sweet water of genuine fact, hopeful they'll be able to drink deeply and perhaps as yet make some semblance of a contribution to what we're experiencing in New Albany as Year Seven of Dear Leader's social engineering experiment dawns.
Dear reader, you may or may not agree with the tone of my political pronouncements here at NA Confidential, but you simply cannot say I don’t doggedly pursue my deranged oppositionist beliefs with persistence and passion. Accordingly, while recognizing the many solid actions in community service performed by Republicans, I’m having a hard time understanding why they aren't taking on (and talking) a more conspicuous role.
What sort of use could be spread through all hours of the day and wouldn't require hundreds of people to pass through the doors (and park their cars curbside) while still generating enough value to justify the selling price and remodeling costs?
Well, you'll notice that Chef Space uses 13,000 square feet, which (I believe) doesn't include public event areas, one of which is used by a member caterer (Lucretia's Kitchen) to serve lunches and a Sunday buffet. Members come and go throughout the day, and while there are small parking lots on the property, plenty of area parking is available.
Sara's pub crawl also took her to Jack's, Brooklyn and The Butcher and Hugh E. Bir Cafe. Taken as a whole, her wanderings testify to a rich diversity of drinking options in New Albany, and in spite of my own personal trials and travails, I have to admit I'm proud to have played my role in it -- and look forward to doing so again.
Pertaining to the ongoing saga of Matthew Landan and his Haymarket Whiskey Bar, as currently embroiled in lawsuits and countersuits, reporter Jason Riley of WDRB-41 recently posted two relevant tweets about judicial decision-making. We missed them, but here they are.
There was no turning back for me. The 1989 Mach III trip would be bigger and better than ever. The planning for it began long before I returned home from the 1987 expedition, perhaps in Prague, Budapest or Skopje -- or most likely, every waking moment. In part, this was because I’d gradually been made aware of opportunities on both sides of the Iron Curtain to volunteer my time to help with worthy objectives (clean-ups, archaeological digs, beautification) in exchange for lodging and three squares.
It is said that the sticky bun of enlightenment never sets on New Gahania, and that's just as well, because beaks are waiting to be wetted, but today we have our old friend J to thank for some highly creative coinage.
After the board’s Monday meeting, David Duggins threatened a client by suggesting that a New Albany police officer “shoot” the client, who is a resident of a New Albany Housing Authority (NAHA) property ...
... Only with power comes the “right” to say it was all a joke, and make no mistake: Duggins’ threats to Brown were all about power. So was Gahan's hostile takeover of public housing. People? They're just in the way. Perhaps you remember the entertainer's explanation last fall of why he masturbated in front of women ...
I'm told that the national concussion league's playoffs begin this weekend, moving from wild cards and betting lines toward the inevitable Stupor Bowl, which exists for otherwise intelligent people to indulge their childlike glee while comparing the merits of advertisements designed to relieve them of their money.
Last night's public information spoonfeeding gave Gahan's functionaries the opportunity to taunt the rubes who stand in the way of auto-centric enrichment. You don't know what's best for your neighborhood. Dear Leader does. but remember that paybacks are hell -- and 2019 draws ever closer.
Your LLC owns a building and leases space to a plush cigar lounge of proven merit, the major selling point of which is that it's a comfortable place to ... um ... smoke (and buy, and venerate) cigars, and then when it is decided that the cigar lounge can't cover the massive nut you've incurred from purchasing a building in the hope that a transplanted City Hall across the street will return your investment with compounded gravy, suddenly smoking becomes the root problem.
It's why we're here. Back in 2015, The Bookseller pored over Jeff Gahan's official campaign finance report to the state of Indiana and produced this video. In light of more recent developments, the video takes on whole new relevance. Wait -- did someone just mention Gahan's hostile takeover of public housing in New Albany?
I'll skip the post mortems, because I feel absolutely awful about Match Cigar Bar closing after only seven months in business. The original Match/Riverside location remains open in Jeffersonville, and so all the best to Jeff Mouttet and his team, both now and in the future. I'm a tremendous fan of what he's accomplished in Jeffersonville, and I wish it had turned out differently here in New Albany.
There's a reason why the forever agoraphobic Jeff Gahan's handlers keep him secured in the bunker, and it's because the moment any public scenario strays from the script, he cannot improvise. The more he tries, the worse it gets -- and the angrier he becomes.
Thanks for reading NA Confidential, where we enjoy burrowing beneath the boilerplate headlines to offer unique local perspectives. January continued a recent trend in heightened readership, testifying to a keen interest in local stories, perhaps because they're being chronically under-served elsewhere.
The list begins with five "honorable mention" posts, before concluding with the Top Ten, escalating to No. 1. Stats are derived from Google's internal numbers listings.
Such was their enthusiasm for this idea, at a price tag of as much as $30 million, that New Albany’s Mayor Gahan, his adjutant David Duggins and their council fixer, Pat “His Master’s Voice” McLaughlin, apparently spoke openly with Ladwig. In the aftermath, they were left looking like naïve rubes propped atop an incoming hay wagon when Neace and Louisville City FC’s varied clarifications began flowing the morning following Ladwig’s story.
The Green Mouse subsequently has suggested that the impetus to remove Lorch emanates directly from Gahan and Democratic Party chairman Dickey, with council Democrats expected to rally around an inexorably wilting flag.
In the interim, 3rd District councilman Greg Phipps is directed to smile, grin and cherish Gahan's decision to fete and polish Coffey, who'll happily swing his council vote back to the Disneyites for the ridiculously low price of council attorney Matt Lorch's head on platter.
I believe that drinking milk is an aesthetic and culinary outrage on a par with Bud Light and McDonald's. Moreover, drinking milk is a conspiracy foisted on us by the multinational diary lobby. Apart from all that, I also dislike milk intensely.
But let's not be churlish. This stands to be a good use for the space, and kudos to Padgett for its social consciousness. Perhaps in addition to "God working behind the scenes" (as a predictably trite quote in the article suggests), either He or Padgett finally will get behind the house.
In short, through no fault of the music, my eyelids were heavy. I'm not sure this would had been any different had the main event been Bob Mould and not Brahms.
Father Mulcahy's example was invaluable, not specifically because of his religious bearing, which was taken for granted, but because he was a fundamentally decent man in a fundamentally indecent setting, trying his best to be helpful and generally succeeding, even without medical credentials or a weapon.
In the Dear Leader's shining city on the flood plain, the beat (and the hypocrisy, and the reconstituted prostitution) goes on ... and on ... and on ...
Joshua Pavey noticed what was wrong with the picture, and he produced an excellent short video that solves the mystery of the misplaced Louisville skyline.
It's impossible to judge until we know the answers, and until then, let's just allow the satire to write itself, as with the scene right now at 8:00 p.m., with Team Gahan functionaries armed with flash lights and tape measures, crawling around the perimeter of "the project" on Bono Road.
Already a strong contender for top post of the year.
The January Top Ten is determined by numbers of unique hits, as reported by Blogger. Thanks for reading NA Confidential, where we burrow beneath the headlines to offer unique perspectives.
The list begins with fifteen honorable mention posts, before concluding with the Top Ten, escalating to No. 1.
NA Confidential's mask-free policy on reader comments.
NA Confidential believes in a higher bar than is customary in the blogosphere, and follows a disclosure policy with respect to reader comments.
First, you must be registered with blogger.com according to the procedures specified. This is required not as a means of directing traffic to blogger.com, but to reduce the lamentable instances of flaming and personal attacks on the part of the anonymous.
Second, although pen names are perfectly acceptable, senior editor Roger A. Baylor must be informed of your identity, and according to your preference, it will be kept confidential.
To reiterate, I insist upon this solely to lessen the frequency of malicious anonymity, which unfortunately plagues certain other blogs hereabouts.
You may e-mail Roger at the address given within his profile and explain who you are. Failure to comply means that your comments probably will be deleted -- although the final decision remains ours.
Thanks for reading, and please consider becoming a part of the community here, one that is respectful of the prerequisites of civilized discourse, and that seeks to engage visitors in substantive dialogue.
