SHANE'S EXCELLENT NEW WORDS: Touts, displacements and why our levy matters.

From flood to mud in less than a week.

WDRB's staffer may or may not have chosen the word "tout" on purpose, but I'm happy he or she did.

New Albany touts no displaced residents or water rescues thanks to infrastructure improvements, by Chris Sutter

 ... "No one has been displaced from their home," Mayor Jeff Gahan said. "I can tell you just a few years ago, we couldn't have made that boast."

Officials say that's because the southern Indiana river city started making big changes in how it handles flooding back in 2014.

The first definition of "tout" at vocabulary.com is sufficient.

1

vadvertise in strongly positive terms

“This product was touted as a revolutionary invention”

Type of:

judge, label, pronounce

pronounce judgment on

vshow off

Synonyms:

blow, bluster, boast, brag, gas, gasconade, shoot a line, swash, vaunt

Types:

puff

speak in a blustering or scornful manner

crow, gloat, triumph

dwell on with satisfaction

congratulate, preen

pride or congratulate (oneself) for an achievement

Type of:

amplify, exaggerate, hyperbolise, hyperbolize, magnify, overdraw, overstate

to enlarge beyond bounds or the truth

nsomeone who advertises for customers in an especially brazen way

Synonyms:

touter

Type of:

adman, advertiser, advertizer

someone whose business is advertising

In its zeal to fluff Team Gahan, the Floyd County Democratic Party naturally upped the ante by citing 1997 as the pivotal year in Gahan's equation.

PUTTING PUBLIC DOLLARS TO GOOD USE: The recent flooding was the worst our area has seen since 1997, yet thanks to improvements in the City of New Albany's storm water and flood levy systems, no residents were displaced or required a water rescue.

Kindly note AdamBot's improper use of the word "levy." It's levee, of course. The sewer rate increases we'll now be enjoying on a yearly basis? Those are levies -- and not surpisingly, unmentioned by the party hacks. 

Consequently, it's a fair question to ask how many New Albanians were displaced or required a water rescue in flooding since 1997.

Does anyone know?

It's a fact that in 1997, several dozen folks were living along the river side of the levee, many of them squatters (including the boat club) and others simply homeless.

In New Gahania, only the riverside squatters survive.

Then there's the New Albany Boat Club. It clearly was squatting for decades (see links below), but was given an 11th-hour reprieve when City Hall exercised eminent domain against a property owner who'd only just emerged victorious in a lengthy court fight against the squatters -- who were given back the property, which hadn't been theirs in the first place, by a City Hall that operates by divine decree, and not rule of law.

This no longer is the case, meaning that sewer improvements and pump maintenance, while commendable, cannot be entirely credited for what likely was, in effect, occupants displaced not by water, but by Gahan himself in order to make the Greenway properly gentrified.

Except for the boat club, which evidently has played a "get out of displacement free" card. Maybe it's where the party elders store their rubber duckies.

You see the damnedest sights from the levee on a Friday at lunch.

I went up on the levee around lunchtime today to take some file photos of downtown. It was a gorgeous day for snapping photos, and you never know when you'll need an insert like this -- after all, very soon this view will be changing radically.

The Reisz project begins soon.

Or this.

Dude: that's one big hog of a limo bus.

As it pulled up behind Floyd County Brewing Company, I expected to see either a calisthenics fetishist convention (for the YMCA) or a bachelor party (for the brewery) debark.

Nothing happened. No one got on or off, and later the bus moved around the block to the YMCA's east side.

Hmm. That looks like Xtreme Transportation's XT17 to me. Check out the swanky interior. All things considered, it could cost as much as a couple grand for a day's rental.

A small group of 40-something men eventually boarded. Only one of them looked familiar to me, though all I could make out was a beard. I know I've seen him before.

Maybe they were doctors or lawyers. Who knows? But what struck me is the choice of the YMCA as meeting place. How many times have you seen a limo bus at the Y? How weird is that?

There was something else, too. After ten minutes or so, there was a second group of arrivals boarding the bus.

As I'm sure Lt. Colombo would ask, "Now, if they're the girlfriends or wives with those guys on the bus, why didn't they all get on the bus at the same time, together?"

Surely there are a number of explanations, although when I mentioned it to the Green Mouse, he told me it's a relatively simple matter to hire models for outings, although it's less clear why you'd need them.

I've never been a high roller, and the whole thing baffles me. When I tried googling "full service modeling louisville," New View and Cosmo were at the very top of the search results.

On second thought, I'm sure it was nothing; just another of those inexplicable slices of bizarre in New Gahania.

Never mind. As you were.

But what a lovely day for taking pictures.

Reverse graffiti? Nah, that'd never work here -- not that we'd allow it, or powerwash ANYTHING.

Our mercifully concluded Great Street Piano Bottleneck of 2015 has me thinking about public art.

You Missed a Spot (and Made a Mural): Powerwashing has transformed Poland’s Solina Dam into a work of art, by Linda Poon (City Lab)

Poland’s Solina dam, completed in 1969 and the tallest dam in Poland, has been collecting dirt and grime on its walls for decades. But when it came time for the 269-foot dam to get a good powerwash, the energy company Polska Grupa Energetyczna had an idea.

PGE worked with emerging comic book artist Przemek “Trust” Truściński to design a giant eco-mural honoring the wild and plant life found in the Bieszczady Mountains in southeast Poland, where the dam is located. At almost 300 feet wide and 177 feet tall, the mural is painted with a technique called “reverse graffiti” ... 

New Albany doesn't have a dam, but there's the Firing Squad Wall down by the levee at the foot of Bank Street.

We may be compelled to develop a public art strategy, seeing as there is none at present.

Does the city of New Albany own this wall? I'm thinking not, or else it would have been given over to mayoral re-election signs by now.