Jeff Gahan and local Democrats tout purely Orwellian "preservation by demolition" theories filched from Greg Fischer.

Unretouched Floyd County Democratic Party blurb. 

Greg Fischer echoes neighborhood activist Phipps: "Tear it down."

Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

Not Surprising: Greg Fischer’s Professed Transparency Is A Myth & He’s Learned Exactly Zero Preservation Lessons at The 'Ville Voice.

In which Jake Payne levels Greg Fischer for non-transparency, a scenario strikingly familiar to New Albanians who looked on in abject disgust, powerless, as Jeff Gahan took down 922 Culbertson last year and designated Dan Coffey to ride shotgun on his official "bash historic preservation" stagecoach ... all in the shadows and darkness of back alleys and Hauss Square corridors.

And who do Floyd County Democrats look to as a shining metro light?

That'd be Fischer, of course, who'll attend the party's Jefferson-Jackson Dinner on April 23, presumably arriving aboard a CCE dump truck, wearing a hard hat (note that the image above is NOT photoshopped).

This one's tackier than Mr. Disney's cellar-scraping norm. From TVV:

If Steve Poe can save the façade at the Aloft site, those buildings’ historic façades could have been saved.

So I asked one of the individuals responsible for saving and paying for Whiskey Row (I’m making the decision to withhold publication of their name because you know how Greg Fischer treats whistleblowers) a couple questions.

They told me that the façades could have 100% been saved, quickly and easily. They also believe key parts of the buildings themselves could have been saved.

When asked what kind of message they think it sends the city’s residents when Metro Government takes abrupt action like this without communicating and without allowing anyone to respond? Here’s their response: “DISTURBING.”

48% ($139 million, including tax rebates and $17 million for a parking garage) of the Omni project will be taxpayer funded, so preservationists and all people with half a brain are adamant that there should have been more public input and way more listening on the part of Fischer and his staff.

Forget the historic buildings and their façades. Ignore the reality that Fischer’s employees routinely fine people for unkempt lawns and graffiti but can’t be bothered to protect properties on the National Register of Historic Places.

Louisville ought to be outraged because Mr. Transparency is once again trying to pull the wool over its eyes.

It's all okay. In New Albany, our mutts have sweaters.

Bill Lamb on bicyclists: Tax 'em, kill 'em -- whatever.

It isn't as though WDRB's Bill Lamb hasn't shamelessly trolled about bicycling in the past. He has. Case in point: The 'Ville Voice: "Bill the Bike Bully."

With the topic being "my car as shriveled phallus extension," The 'Ville Voice's Rick Redding comes in right on cue following yesterday's venomous NAC exchange on bicycling, automotive traffic, and which one makes us more American in the eyes of our patriotic countrymen.

That's right; five long years ago, when Redding still manned the controls at The 'Ville Voice. Now Lamb is back, stoking the road rage brigade, presumably empowered by the knowledge that that there is no known record hereabouts of drivers being prosecuted for killing cyclists under any circumstances.

Now, I hear the Metro Council is considering an ordinance that would tax cyclists through a licensing fee. This is a good idea. First, there is a cost of painting all these new bike lane.

In New Albany, we can't even "afford" striping for automotive lanes, much less bikes, but I digress This time around it's Jake Payne applying the rhetorical mascara to Lamb's wizened visage.

Just when you thought Bill Lamb couldn’t get more disconnected from reality… Taxing cyclists because he’s not man enough to control himself or his emotional reactions. What’ll get his manties in a twist next? This city should be paying cyclists because it gets cars off our already crumbling streets. The environmental benefit is just an added bonus. [WDRB]

'Ville Voice v.v. Dyche: "Not Just A Homophobe But Also A Race-Baiter?"

The C-J canned John David Dyche, and then WDRB picked him up. So far, so yawnable. But after a vigorous pot-stirring, following is an uncommonly enjoyable takedown of Dyche by Jake at TVV.

Not Just A Homophobe But Also A Race-Baiter? (The "Ville Voice)

The latest from John David Dyche further illustrates why it was a good decision to cut him from the Courier-Journal. It’s as if he believes the entire city is the Pendennis Club and no non-WASPs are allowed.

(insert frothing Dyche excerpts here, then lift off)

Jesus.

Black people = basketball? Check. Jive lingo? Check. Community activist (aka people like Barack Obama)? Check. Scandinavian (white people)? Check. “Urban” (black) terrorism? Check.

This city’s privileged white folks have been wringing their hands something fierce this week. It’s been surreal to watch.

Brownsboro Road diet: Greg Fischer gets one right.

Two accounts of a positive resolution to the mildly controversial Brownsboro Road "diet", as noted by The Ville Voice and Louisville Courant. The latter's piece a few days back was mentioned here: Road diets: Abhorred from Indian Hills to Karolus Magnus. Is anyone in New Albany city government following this issue? We need major road diets right here, and right now.

The White Flighters Lost On Brownsboro Road

June 1st, 2012 by jake · 2 Comments

Just like that, the white flighters lost their battle to drive 900MPH on Brownsboro Road:

JUNE 1, 2012

Mayor Greg Fischer does right thing, gives Brownsboro Road Diet green light!

Compliments of CART

ZOMG. SOMETHING GOOD HAPPENED! 

"A Bridges Reality Check," by Steve Wiser at The 'Ville Voice."

Big thanks to Jake at The 'Ville Voice for publishing this timely essay by Steve Wiser. Visit Wiser's website for more.

A Bridges Reality Check: Jobs, Safety, Traffic

“Jobs – Safety – Traffic” are the three primary reasons featured in a television commercial promoting construction of the $4.1 billion dollar Ohio River Bridges Project (ORBP). As with any ad campaign, the information presented is favorably presented toward building a new downtown bridge, rebuilt Spaghetti Junction, and a new East End Bridge. What this ad doesn’t tell you is that tolls are proposed on all the bridges (new and existing), as well as possibly Spaghetti Junction, to pay for all of this. And, this ad only tells you one side of this debate.

Before tolls culturally divide this community in half, and serve as obstacles to its future success, let’s look at the ORBP’s two-bridge rationale as presented in their ad campaign.

Tribune shout out in The Ville Voice.

With its April 25 editorial, our own Tribune placed itself in front of the bridges issue, lapping the moribund and fatally compromised Courier-Journal. That's right. We're leading Louisville in something. Cool.

Tribune editorial: Build the East End bridge, re-evaluate the Downtown bridge, and annoy the hell out of 1SI by disagreeing.

The 'Ville Voice blog noticed, and congratulates Coach K and the gang for evading the foremost Louisville pressure group. I wonder if One Southern Indiana even privately rebuked the newspaper for having the temerity to enunciate the anti-Stemler, non-party line?

Since our big city newspaper doesn’t have a clue what journalism is these days – and ignorantly thinks people will buy the paper to read sports stories – you should probably just start reading the News and Tribune, the paper actually covering yesterday’s bridges and tolling meeting without fearing the wrath of River Fields. [Click the Clicky]

The 'Ville Voice: "Bill the Bike Bully."

I'm glad I don't waste valuable drinking time watching local news broadcasts.

With the topic being "my car as shriveled phallus extension," The 'Ville Voice's Rick Redding comes in right on cue following yesterday's venomous NAC exchange on bicycling, automotive traffic, and which one makes us more American in the eyes of our patriotic countrymen.

Pleasingly, I rode 50 km through the Knobs yesterday. The only problem I had with automotive traffic was on Scottsvile Road, where two Got Junk trucks traveling about 55 m.p.h. in tandem were in a hurry to make their next pickup. They were going too fast for me to catch their "how's my driving" numbers, so I'll say it here: Reckless, but probably just as good as Viagra for what ails ya.

Bill the Bike Bully, by Rick Redding (The Ville Voice blog)

Bill Lamb is always asking for feedback on his on-air editorials. So here’s some.

The other day Lamb was advocating that police start ticketing bicyclists, all because he happens to see some going the wrong way on one-way streets or blowing through stop signs or darting into traffic off sidewalks.

Now, this thinking goes against the general idea of making Louisville a bike-friendly city, but Lamb must have had a near-miss or something that kind of ticked him off about bikers. He claims only to want to do something about the bad bikers, that all of us law-abiding riders would have nothing to worry about. (Just kidding, I’m a dart-into-traffic champ).

Still, Lamb’s anti-biking rant doesn’t sit well with us. But what it really did was give viewers a reason to pop off with some vitriolic anti-bike hatred that shows they’re misinformed, unaware of the law and generally intolerant.

With this kind of mentality, it’s no wonder more people haven’t been killed by cars. The station aired six responses, all exhibiting a deep-seated hatred for bikes in traffic.

Here’s my favorite — “Roads were not designed for bicyclists, they should stay off.”

Then there’s — “Bikes should stay on the sidewalk where they belong (and where it’s illegal to ride)”

Another called wants to require special bike insurance for riders, and one was advocating a required license plate.

Lamb’s little rant elicited the kind of reaction that shows that city leaders — with all their talk about education about bike safety for motorists — have their work cut out for them with the big new safety campaign.

By the way, the Mayor’s Hike & Bike event, which is growing every year, is set for Labor Day morning. This time, we’re off from downtown to Iroquois Park.

Down with Cordish chain welfare - up with locally owned business!

As a prelude to the following, know that I heartily dislike the Cordish corporate-only vibe.

A decade or more ago, when I first visited Baltimore, the Cordish strategy seemed like something positive. Give them huge sums of cash, and they ensure tenants for ready-made entertainment districts.

Trouble is, the tenants are cookie-cutter chains, and there's nothing unique or local about any of it.

At some point I realized that locally owned businesses could achieve precisely the same desired end if they were awarded a like sum of money, with none of the money flowing through a pipeline to corporate headquarters elsewhere. Given the conceptual sterility of the typical Cordish project (Fourth Street Live springs to mind in this context), keeping the money local makes sense from aesthetic as well as fiscal rationales.

Thus, I'm delighted to read Rick at The 'Ville Voice blog tear into Mayor Jer with respect to Cordish's latest outrage. And congrats to the C-J for sticking to the story.

Jerry Needs to Get Away

... But the bigger blow came Saturday, when the C-J led with news that Cordish has kind of told city officials that, well, no, they’re not going to explain what they did with all that taxpayer money they took to re-design a bowling alley on Fourth Street.

Pressured by the newspaper to explain how it spent the extra $950,000 that Abramson championed giving them to remodel the failed Lucky Strike, Cordish said it had given all the detail it was required to do, and then the Mayor said the explanation was good enough for him.

Now we can confirm what we’ve known all along. Cordish might have, maybe, possibly, spent half that money on remodeling the space, but most of it went in the Cordish profit center. They sure aren’t producing any drywall receipts, and no one’s willing to admit what the facility paid to get Paris Hilton to show up for a few minutes Derby Eve.

Everyone’s outraged, and Abramson’s growing list of detractors has a bunch of new ammunition. The Mayor’s race is looking a lot more do-able for potential candidates like Jim King, David Tandy and Greg Fischer. And there’s bound to be a Republican out there ready to step up.

Abramson has promised a decision on his future soon. But right now he’s just hit one in the lake and is scrambling to make par.

Additional Reading: C.D. Kaplan recounts some of the Mayor’s history of love for Cordish. And Eric Crawford explains why Cordish’s track record in places like St. Louis spells more trouble for us.

I'd have expected this in NA, but perhaps New Bethel will franchise the idea.

As reported at The 'Ville Voice blog: Bring Your Sidearm to Church Day.

Lots about urban bicycling at Broken Sidewalk.

It's a very good piece, and required reading if you take you bike on the street.

Bikes Follow The Laws, Laws Follow The Bikes, from the Broken Sidewalk blog.

More from The Ville Voice's Rick Redding about the accident prompting the preceding: Irony in Bike Accident.

Louisville's Metro Council, the Courier-Journal and littering.

Relevance from The Ville Voice blog. I keep seeing 13th Street in New Albany.

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Anti-Littering Ordinance Targets C-J, by Rick Redding (on Metro Council).

Councilman Brent Ackerson is introducing an ordinance tonight, along with eight co-sponsors, that is likely to fly through the Public Safety Committee and come up for a full vote next month. It’s an anti-littering ordinance, but it really targets the Courier-Journal.

“My staff has gotten more calls on this issue that for any other subject, including storm debris, since I took office,” said Ackerson, whose District 26 encompasses St. Matthews.

Here’s what it’s all about. The newspaper produces a weekly advertising circular that is delivered only to non-subscribers. It requires its carriers to deliver these flyers to each address that doesn’t receive a newspaper. You can call and request to be taken off the list, but most people don’t, sort of like the no-call telemarketers’ list.

The C-J, of course, promises advertisers distribution throughout the county. It’s no doubt part of the reason Arnold Garson keeps bragging about the paper reaching 85 percent of local residents. Maybe not. But the point is that the carriers typically toss the flyers on driveways, in yards or on sidewalks. And it really falls under the definition of littering. When residents don’t fetch them, they end up piling up.

Most newspaper carriers make their deliveries by car, and with so many customers dropping the service, there are longer stretches of neighborhoods with no subscribers.

And a lot of the flyers end up in dumpsters, undelivered. Or storm drains or ditches. This is something the C-J doesn’t tell its advertisers.

The new ordinance doesn’t outlaw the flyers. It does require that they be delivered to front porches, and not tossed out the windows of delivery vehicles.
Other sponsors include Council members Jon Ackerson, King, Henderson, Butler, Welch, Blackwell, Peden and Flood.

If it passes, the C-J will have to make some serious changes in its system of delivery.

The 'Ville Voice on the C-J's 8664 hatchet work.

Good stuff in Rick Redding's blog, The 'Ville Voice, reprinted in its entirety:

C-J Follows Pattern, Critiques 8664

It’s almost comical. Every time the 8664.org people make news, as they did this week with the launch of radio ads critiquing the creation of a tolling authority, the C-J editorial board lets loose with a stern editorial. You’ve got to at least admire the consistency.

And the argument the Courier always seems to make is that a bunch of politicians and their favorite civil servant, Jerry Abramson, are behind it. So the Ohio River Bridges Project, which is pushing for the tolling authority which could ultimately push for $5 tolls, must be the way to go.

It’s a good exercise for the editorial board to come up new ways to be critical of the opposition, painting 8664 as the bad guy attempting to thwart this fine two-bridges plan that everybody they think is important has agreed on.

From today’s piece:

“…the 8664 crowd has decided to run irresponsibly alarmist radio commercials, raising the possibility of $5 tolls.”

The C-J touts the technology of modern tolling, claiming that regular commuters won’t pay so much. But if you talk with Tyler Allen, the man behind 8664, he’ll tell you the math doesn’t add up, and 20 minutes later he’ll still be talking. Allen is continuing a tour de force of local organizations, telling his story to anyone who will listen. The C-J won’t, so radio ads might be a good way to go.

Louisville opts for more of the same ol' Cordish chain-think.

You work hard for years to cultivate a unique local presence as a bar, restaurant, entertainment venue and retail establishment, then watch as your elected officials reward your efforts by handing millions of dollars to an outside developer to install cookie-cutter chains and corporate lookalikes at the very center of your city.

Or, as the Cordish Company describes it, Center City, coming soon to downtown Louisville, whose metro council belatedly approved the project last week.

As noted among Monday morning's table setters at The 'Ville Voice blog, the Courier-Journal's editorial board, no doubt looking foward to multinational advertising dollars from the likes of Fourth Street Live's current occupants, is bought and paid. Velocity's gonna love it.

Least Surprising Editorial: The C-J Editorial Board really likes the Cordish Center City project, and is handing out free criticism to Republicans for opposing it. The copy reads like it was lifted from a Jerry Abramson speech.

[editorial link at C-J]

The 'Ville Voice also provides this helpful link to video describing the viewpoint of truly local business people.

At WHAS-TV:

The debate went on for months, but now the Cordish Company, the company that built Fourth Street Live, has the green light to start developing the area known as the water company block. That fact has local business owners like Nancy Shepherd, owner of Cafe Metro, concerned.

For the flip side, consider this comment from the discussion board at Robin Garr's Louisville Restaurants Forum:

I think there is a painful reality to deal with here: locally operated and owned small business can't rehabilitate an entire area of downtown, including making Louisville Gardens an up-to-date location, pushing a large tenant into the Starks Building, etc. While I'd prefer that locally owned business take on larger and more important downtown projects, the capital required to do a major task can be huge, and a company like Cordish has the ability to bite off big chunks of downtown development. There are very few companies that do what Cordish does, and we are fortunate to have them as partners in this venture. It doesn't mean that I won't prefer - and frequent - locally owned business, but we also have to be realistic about how, as a community, we can get capital invested into our downtown.

Me? I hate chains. My Philly beer writing buddy Lew Bryson says it best here: Death to Chain Restaurants, and he quotes Arnold Toynbee, to boot:

Civilizations in decline are consistently characterized by a tendency towards standardization and uniformity.

That's why I don't listen to a.m. radio.

It Wasn’t Just Elliott; Hate is on the Way, at The Ville Voice.

Louisville is about to be treated to the ugly conservative rants of one Michael Savage, described this way at Wikipedia:

"He is a critic of illegal immigation, a supporter of the English-only movement, and claims that liberalism and same-sex marriage are degrading American culture. His radio commentaries are characterized by colorful language and a confrontational style. The frequent use of refrains such as “liberalism is a mental disorder” have earned Savage the criticism of many progressive groups and even some Republicans."

So really, other than Doug Hawkins, who is celebrating in Louisville today?

I'm not sure about Louisville, but if Dan Coffey listens to the radio, he's probably doing a jig. Isn't Cappuccino the Hawkins of New Albany -- or is it the other way around?

Read more about The 'Ville Voice here.