The magic number is 2,228 ... days since Bob Caesar vowed to protect Pearl Street against the damned pergessives.

Don't hold your breath, but I'm about to prove Mayor Jeff Gahan wrong by doing something "positive" for the city of New Albany.

That's because it's positively hilarious to recall July 26, 2011, when Bob Caesar rose from bed, fondly recalled his pivotal role in protesting the anti-establishment hippies at Woodstock, and vowed to resist any attempt to inflict modernity on his street.

On August 30, when Pearl Street is restored to two-way traffic, it will have been 2,228 days since ranking city council "Democrat" and future mayoral hopeful Tiberius Severus Octavian Elagabalus Septimius Augustus Claudius Hadrian Caesar-- Protector of Fitting and Proper Scribnerian Values, Deliverer of all Downtown Datedness, Master of the Ex-Mercantile, and Guardian of the Gates -- uttered these immortal words:

"I am for change. Change every street to two way (but) not Pearl Street. Pearl Street will NOT be two way. It's more convenient for people to park without having to drive around the block."

Alas, Endris Jewelers closed on Valentine's day, 2015, but in the years since, Caesar has resisted all requests to divulge Bicentennial Commission records, enthusiastically endorsed aesthetic and environmental atrocities like Summit Springs, carried Gahan's jockstrap with all the aplomb of the sycophantic bootlickers on our sardine-packed housing authority board, and in general, opposed any and all progressive proposals at every turn.

As a Democrat.

Happy 2,228 days, Bobby. Can you please leave now?

Here is a lightly edited reprint of the historical record. Don't expect to see it in the News and Tribune.

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July 26, 2011: Merchant Mixer notes (2): Empty storefronts, Harvest Homecoming and Bob Caesar's all-way street confusion.

Here's the second part of my notes on this morning's Merchant Mixer meeting.

Previously: Merchant Mixer notes (1): New businesses, landscaping, parking, signage and dog poop.

(snip)

Two-way streets: John Rosenbarger explained that the city has procured a Federal street conversion grant subject to various Federal restrictions, which must have a 20% match from the city: $1.6 million from the Feds, and $400,000 from the city. Mayor England volunteered that while it’s “no slam against the council,” it would be the council’s job to find the money, which might come from EDIT.

Councilman, jewelry dealer and part-time Roman centurion Bob Caesar responded by defending the council, and added (italics mine): 

“One-way is the way to move traffic through a city; it is proven by numerous studies all across the country.”

The discussion continued, with the owners of Preston Art Supply joining Caesar in defending the inviolable sanctity of Pearl Street’s one-way flow, and this led to Caesar stating bluntly, unprompted and aloud:

“Pearl Street will NOT be two-way.”

I asked him how he could say this; he looked away and did not respond, but after the meeting, he walked past me and we had one of the most useless discussions in recent memory. If I were to have stated that 2 + 2 = 4, I'm certain he would disagree.

In short, after I asked him why he invariably opposes change and new ways of thinking about downtown areas, Caesar denied it, and explicitly permitted me to divulge this exact quote:

"I am for change. Change every street to two way (but) not Pearl Street. Pearl Street will NOT be two way. It's more convenient for people to park without having to drive around the block."

Don Preston added that all police departments support one-way street grids. Previously, Kathy Brennan had warned that if streets are two way, big trucks will park in traffic lanes to unload ... and what then? Throughout, listening to it, you'd think that cities are scary places, indeed, and meant for dashing into and away from as quickly as possible, in a car ... always in a car.

I realized (yet again) how so many of the older generation of merchants sincerely believes that whatever works out yonder in the soulless exurb should be implemented downtown, whereas the way I see it is that whatever can be done to create the polar opposite atmosphere downtown – including people-friendly, slower-moving traffic to accommodate humanity, and alternative modes of transportation apart from the automobile – should be the desired goal.

NAC has extensively and exhaustively made the case for two-way streets: Two-way traffic: A city permitted to function as designed is good for business.

All Bob Caesar and a handful of downtown reactionaries can offer in response are “numerous” studies, which he has so far failed to produce, and the admittedly honest (and I believe amazingly self-serving) stance that because he personally regards a one-way street as critical to his business (as though people cruising past a jewelry store are slamming on the brakes when they decide, spur-of-the-moment, to park next to the Endris front door and buy some bracelets), he will damn the torpedoes and impede potential two-way solutions in the same manner as he denounced the aborted proposal to divert the Harvest Homecoming Parade down Pearl Street ... 

#GahanSafe: All the push-button "walk" signals for crossing Spring at Pearl are defective, and have been for five months to a year.

Way back in March, I pointed out that one "beg button" (push-button crossing signal) on each post at each corner of the intersection of Spring and Pearl was not functional.

Why does Team Gahan always pee on pedestrians?

In New Albany, push button crosswalk signals are not placebos. Walkers actually must push the "beg button" to receive a safe (often a facetious term) signal to cross. If the button malfunctions, there'll be no signal -- ever.

Even in March, it had been this way for a while, with at least two of them broken as far back as September, 2015. Now we've gone through almost an entire summer-season Bicentennial Park concert series cycle with nothing done to correct the problem.

We cannot know if the push-button crosswalk buttons work when so many of them are broken.

It is almost always the cities with push-button crossings that need the most help ... push-buttons almost always mean that the automobile dominates, as they are typically installed in conjunction with a new signal timing in which crossing times are shorter and less frequent.

Specifically, the push-buttons for crossing Spring both north and south on both sides of Pearl Street do not work. This morning I took the time to test each one and to watch. It is physically impossible for a pedestrian to get a "walk" signal crossing Spring Street at this intersection. It has been impossible for at least five months, and probably far longer.

Pictured are the push-buttons that are defective.

To repeat what I wrote in March:

If Jeff Gahan isn't going to do anything substantive to make New Albany a walkable city, can't he just say so aloud, for attribution, and free us from the pain of watching him prevaricate?

Any suggestion he makes to the contrary is being disproved every single day on real city streets, where nothing is being done to indicate any serious intent to improve walkability, and plenty is being done to discourage it. There's only one honest way to conclude these thoughts:

Mr. Mayor, as it pertains to walkability, just shit or get off the pot.

You're embarrassing the city by making private promises constantly contradicted by public indifference -- by your bizarre insistence that you're making omelettes without breaking eggs. Even your own people know it's a shell game.

Join me for an actual walk some day, and I'll show you exactly how urban walking works in real life, as opposed to the fantasyland bunker you prefer inhabiting. The same offer goes for your minions.

Do any of you walk downtown, ever?

Why does Team Gahan always pee on pedestrians?

It began in September, 2015, with this observation: We cannot know if the push-button crosswalk buttons work when so many of them are broken.

Jeff Speck, who once authored a walkability study for New Albany -- a document now being depleted, one precious page at a time, as toilet paper in Jeff Gahan's executive washroom -- is quoted here on the topic of push-button crosswalk signals: How Push-to-Walk reduces the quality of walkable neighborhoods.

It is almost always the cities with push-button crossings that need the most help ... push-buttons almost always mean that the automobile dominates, as they are typically installed in conjunction with a new signal timing in which crossing times are shorter and less frequent. Far from empowering walkers, the push button turns them into second-class citizens; pedestrians should never have to ask for a light.

And boy, does the auto dominate in New Albany.

In New Albany, push button crosswalk signals are not placebos. Walkers actually must push the "beg button" to receive a safe (often a facetious term) signal to cross. If the button malfunctions, there'll be no signal -- ever.

Not only do push buttons turn pedestrians into second-class citizens; broken push buttons surely deter the notion of a pleasant walk just as effectively as sidewalk parking, and other defaults wherein the sidewalk always is blocked first, not a parking space or a street lane.

"I've devoted my life as a social worker to people with developmental disabilities, and can't even walk with them in NA if they are in a wheelchair or have gait issues."

Below are photos taken on Monday morning, March 28, at the intersection of one-way Pearl Street and one-way Spring Street. It's the epicenter of downtown, quite close to where Bob Caesar never imagined a person walking from the Elks Club to his jewelry store to buy a diamond.

There are a total of eight push button signals, two on each corner. The ones pictured below are broken. In fact, one is broken on each corner. At least two of these have been broken for months. They're not the only ones downtown which are disabled, but at no other corner equipped with push buttons is traffic so constantly hazardous owing to drivers increasing speed to run beat red lights.

Note that the issue of malfunctioning push buttons doesn't address the situation at intersections like W 1st and Main, or Bank and Main, where nothing -- zero, zilch, nada -- is in place to slow traffic such that walkers can cross the street safely.

You'll note that throughout the period since the release of the Speck walkability study, Team Gahan has been careful to couch its public pronouncements about the future of street grid reform, of which there have been almost none, as being entirely devoted to making traffic safer.

Reams of evidence from across America and the world point to the flaws of this mode of "thinking," and provide abundant proof that had walkability been pursued first, before the other expensive projects pursued by the current administration, it would have been like a dose of steroids, enhancing investment and not devaluing it.

As it stands, there's a toxic stew under preparation.

• An auto-centric street grid
• Rebirth of downtown small business
• Poor lighting
• Inconsistent sidewalk maintenance
• Refusal to enforce ordinances (should there be sidewalk parking, ever?)
• Antediluvian municipal gatekeepers

Quite literally, multiple accidents are waiting to happen, as we prioritize one bright shiny object after another.

If Jeff Gahan isn't going to do anything substantive to make New Albany a walkable city, can't he just say so aloud, for attribution, and free us from the pain of watching him prevaricate?

Any suggestion he makes to the contrary is being disproved every single day on real city streets, where nothing is being done to indicate any serious intent to improve walkability, and plenty is being done to discourage it. There's only one honest way to conclude these thoughts:

Mr. Mayor, as it pertains to walkability, just shit or get off the pot. 

You're embarrassing the city by making private promises constantly contradicted by public indifference -- by your bizarre insistence that you're making omelettes without breaking eggs. Even your own people know it's a shell game.

Join me for an actual walk some day, and I'll show you exactly how urban walking works in real life, as opposed to the fantasyland bunker you prefer inhabiting. The same offer goes for your minions.

Do any of you walk downtown, ever?

Team Gahan's walkability gap (4 of many): "We’re all apparently okay with dead pedestrians as collateral damage for ensuring cars can travel quickly."

Team Gahan's walkability gap (3 of 3): "A Playbook on the Politics of Better Streets." WE NEED IT.

Team Gahan's walkability gap (2 of 3): "Is your city pedestrian unfriendly"? YEP.

Team Gahan's walkability gap (1 of 3): "If you want to make a walkable city, you need to do the little things well." WE DON'T.

I just want to walk to the cigar shop, not compete in the Hunger Games.

Check out today's gas company carnage. They might as well have closed all of Pearl Street and staged a Jackhammer Fest.

Ever notice that Vectren's demolition contractors have a fairly low opinion of sidewalks and walkers? It seems to go beyond what they must do to complete their work, into the realm of open contempt, as here:

Autocentrism vs. ADA 101: Vectren's first thought is to block the sidewalk.

It reminds me of something I was told recently by a downtown shopkeeper. Seems the utility monopoly dug up both street and sidewalk in front of his building, explaining that part of the reason for doing so was to ensure no future inconvenience for cars, because if they ever had to do it again, only the sidewalks would be blocked, and not the traffic or parking lanes.

The new Habana Blues is getting closer.

It's getting closer. Leo Lopez says he has parties booked for Derby festival time, so expect the new location to be up and running in early April.

What we really need is for Bob Caesar keep his jewelry business and retire from his council seat.

I'm reading between the lines and guessing that if it makes more sense to close and liquidate than to sell, it's because the value of Bob Caesar's building on Pearl Street has become higher thanks to the efforts of those investors in downtown revitalization whom he has consistently sought to thwart during his city council terms.

And he'll never, ever grasp the irony.

Granted, Endris Jewelers wasn't ever going to be the sort of business I'd patronize on a regular basis. The articles of jewelry I own number zero. I have a $15 plastic sports watch and a simple, late model wedding band. Jewelry just isn't my kind of thing.

Conversely, as it pertains to Caesar and our many disagreements -- he is the ultimate example of the sort of person who looks at the urban core with a suburban pair of eyes, and consequently, might as well be blind -- I've always directed potential jewelry buyers to Endris when asked. It's about supporting independent local business, even when I'm on the other side of an political, theoretical or intellectual gulf.

Bobby needs to rethink one aspect of this scenario. If he's getting out of business to attain the admirable goal of more family time, can he please retire as council person, too?

As a business person, Caesar's record is long and exemplary, but as a political and street engineering theoretician, it is purely execrable.

LOSING A DOWNTOWN JEWEL: Launched in 1880, Endris Jewelers to close after sale of merchandise, by Daniel Suddeath (N and T)

NEW ALBANY — One of the oldest businesses in New Albany will close its doors after 134 years ...

... (Bob Caesar) emphasized he has no major health issues, and will remain active in New Albany civic opportunities and likely will seek another term on the council next year.

Caesar said he wanted to close the store in 2008, but realized it would be a big blow to the community because of the history of Endris Jewelers.

My two-way dream: Not AgitProp, but PrestonProp.

It's the perfect place to educate, seeing as ...

... those in most desperate need of learning are so very close.

Here's the one v. two way comparison chart again.

CM Caesar issues call: Save our Pearl Street from the free-love, two-way drunken pergressives ... arm yourselves with white bread ... don't be scared to use it!

Emperor Caesar in 2011: "Change every street to two way (but) not Pearl Street. Pearl Street will NOT be two way."

In times like these, it's worth remembering that on July 26, 2011, councilman Bob Caesar actually gave his qualified approval for a two-way street conversion in New Albany. Not only did he say these words aloud, but he gave me explicit permission to record and publish them.

"I am for change. Change every street to two way (but) not Pearl Street. Pearl Street will NOT be two way. It's more convenient for people to park without having to drive around the block."

It happened at the infamous merchant mixer meeting, and the context comes in this excerpt. We join the meeting at the point when Caesar quotes numerous studies that he has yet to produce in more than two subsequent years, and just before he explodes into his most quoted tirade ever.

---

Merchant Mixer notes (2): Empty storefronts, Harvest Homecoming and Bob Caesar's all-way street confusion.

Two-way streets: John Rosenbarger explained that the city has procured a Federal street conversion grant subject to various Federal restrictions, which must have a 20% match from the city: $1.6 million from the Feds, and $400,000 from the city. Mayor England volunteered that while it’s “no slam against the council,” it would be the council’s job to find the money, which might come from EDIT.

Councilman, jewelry dealer and part-time Roman centurion Bob Caesar responded by defending the council, and added (italics mine): “One-way is the way to move traffic through a city; it is proven by numerous studies all across the country.”

The discussion continued, with the owners of Preston Art Supply joining Caesar in defending the inviolable sanctity of Pearl Street’s one-way flow, and this led to Caesar stating bluntly, unprompted and aloud:

“Pearl Street will NOT be two-way.”

I asked him how he could say this; he looked away and did not respond, but after the meeting, he walked past me and we had one of the most useless discussions in recent memory. If I were to have stated that 2 + 2 = 4, I'm certain he would disagree.

In short, after I asked him why he invariably opposes change and new ways of thinking about downtown areas, Caesar denied it, and explicitly permitted me to divulge this exact quote:

"I am for change. Change every street to two way (but) not Pearl Street. Pearl Street will NOT be two way. It's more convenient for people to park without having to drive around the block."

Don Preston added that all police departments support one-way street grids. Previously, Kathy Brennan had warned that if streets are two way, big trucks will park in traffic lanes to unload ... and what then? Throughout, listening to it, you'd think that cities are scary places, indeed, and meant for dashing into and away from as quickly as possible, in a car ... always in a car.

I realized (yet again) how so many of the older generation of merchants sincerely believes that whatever works out yonder in the soulless exurb should be implemented downtown, whereas the way I see it is that whatever can be done to create the polar opposite atmosphere downtown – including people-friendly, slower-moving traffic to accommodate humanity, and alternative modes of transportation apart from the automobile – should be the desired goal.

NAC has extensively and exhaustively made the case for two-way streets: Two-way traffic: A city permitted to function as designed is good for business.

All Bob Caesar and a handful of downtown reactionaries can offer in response are “numerous” studies, which he has so far failed to produce, and the admittedly honest (and I believe amazingly self-serving) stance that because he personally regards a one-way street as critical to his business (as though people cruising past a jewelry store are slamming on the brakes when they decide, spur-of-the-moment, to park next to the Endris front door and buy some bracelets), he will damn the torpedoes and impede potential two-way solutions in the same manner as he denounced the aborted proposal to divert the Harvest Homecoming Parade down Pearl Street.

Sometimes, as in the case of the usefulness of two-way streets, the future indeed is the past. A few questions occur to me:

Exactly when was Bob Caesar awarded veto power over the 21st century?

Is it true that Caesar, the most nominal of Democrats, is supporting Jameson Bledsoe, a Republican, in the 3rd district council race?

Am I the only one who cannot wait to see how Develop New Albany manages to avoid takng a position on two-way streets?

And: Why is rationality such a precious commodity 'round here?