Stolen flags, vandalism, white supremacists, but "it’s a mistake to imply that we have the same type of issues other communities may be experiencing."

I hate to see it, make no mistake. The mistake comes in thinking this underachieving burg is in any way superior to its surroundings. We're all on the same plane here in the good 'ol USA, aren't we?

Deaf Gahan assures the community there is no swastika sticker problem, then putters off to attend another ribbon-cutting. In the wake of Gahan's usual hypocrisy, let's take a closer look.

Yesterday was the day after.

HRC says: See a swastika sticker? Don't destroy the evidence -- call the police.

An NA Confidential reader commented.

I hope this is just a step one and not all that they plan on doing.

It's helpful to recall that American Vanguard white supremacist recruitment posters were appearing in New Albany all the way back in February of 2017.

In a disgusting sign of the times, white supremacists have landed in New Albany.

There is no known record of Jeff Gahan commenting publicly about this. Then, as the Courier-Journal notes ...

In August 2018, authorities reported multiple cases of swastika-related vandalism on a New Albany-Floyd County school bus and in front of the Azalea Hills retirement community. Police did not investigate the incidents as a hate crime.

More recently the social media discussion of swastika stickers dates to around late October of 2018.

In a late phone call, Mayor Gahan addresses our swastika sticker problem.

Gahan remained silent throughout. Now it's different, and suddenly Our Shining Eminence needs to be seen as a leader.

That's because it's an election year: "Mayor urges Indiana hate-crimes bill after swastikas, stickers appear." Seems that Gahan has spent the past 24 months building up a full head of steam to boldly and heroically ... contradict the testimony of citizens attending the Human Rights Commission meeting two nights ago?

The New Albany Human Rights Commission addressed the issue Tuesday evening after reportedly "hundreds" of hate speech stickers were seen throughout the city over the last couple of months.

Mayor Jeff Gahan said police have seen much fewer than "hundreds."

"To date, two incidences have been reported to police dealing with approximately 8 stickers and those matters were investigated immediately," Gahan said.

Of course, there's the recent non-history of the Human Rights Commission itself. Gahan beams with a play-actor's pride at his creation, leaving out the important part where he kneecapped it into oblivion several years back rather than allow the first sign of autonomy to challenge the tumescence of his own widening personality cult.

In January of 2017, we reported this: "CM Phipps, we're mystified as to why the New Albany Human Rights Commission is moribund."

During the appointments phase of this evening's city council meeting, President Pat McLaughlin (4th District) asked Greg Phipps (3rd District) about the council appointments status of the Human Rights Commission.

According to the ordinance, council and mayor each appoint members to the HRC, and then the four pick the fifth.

Phipps waved him off, briefly indicating that the HRC seems dead, with no meetings for the past 18 months and no apparent interest. McLaughlin was more than happy to move to the next commission, and that's all we know. It isn't much.

In 2018, with the municipal election season looming and Republicans taking the initiative on the HRC's re-enablement, it was time to start pretending again.

In the final analysis, the overarching point has nothing to do with any of the HRC appointees, save for (Warren) Nash's inexcusable presence, because Gahan's and (Adam) Dickey's objectives with their mismanagement of the HRC has not been to represent the community’s diversity.

It has been to assure their continued control of a “human rights” product in pre-packaged, controllable form.

Welcome to Jeff and Adam's Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test -- hypocrisy-flavored, please.

Progressives, pay heed. The HRC's comeback needn't have occurred, because it shouldn't have neglected, and once it became necessary, your own party's leadership has politicized it again; if Dickey and Gahan don't get what they want from the HRC, they'll smother it a second time.

What you permit, you promote. What you allow, you encourage. What you condone, you own.

Don't let Dickey and Gahan speak for you. They may be "Democratic" in the sense of a two-party duopoly, but they're by no means "democratic" in any meaningful way.

In closing, this observation from a Facebook friend.

NAPD (Chief Bailey) is full of it, because many concerned people in New Albany tried reporting these stickers every time, and they told us to stop calling them! They weren't concerned about it until it made them look bad for not having already acted once the story was finally picked up by the local mainstream media.

Alt media has been talking about this issue for 6+ months. No one cared! The human rights commission didn't even get involved until late 2018, when the stickering had been near-CONSTANT for months at that point. At least they finally did something, but they also got a nice pat on the back for solving BUPKIS.

This isn't over. This hasn't changed. Why did that feel like the last we hear of it? This city's officials can do better. The local media can do better.

The people of this town deserve better than this.

Is this enough for you? I mean... honestly.

Is it?

Let's be realistic. Gahan, Dickey, Bailey, Nash -- they're not going to stop pretending. They're incapable of viewing this issue apart from their own "big fish, little pond" political considerations, and we need to stop pretending they'll even try.

It's top-down control for them -- always has been and will continue to be -- and grassroots activists opposed to these tangible manifestations of white supremacy have little choice; they must push back simultaneously against the swastika bearers and the public officials who seek primarily to neutralize testimony differing with their Disney-fried civic facades.

Tell us YOUR experiences. This space always is available to those wishing to speak about whatever our pillars are reluctant to hear.

HRC says: See a swastika sticker? Don't destroy the evidence -- call the police.

Nürnberg, 1945.

The New Albany Human Rights Commission's Jennifer Ortiz shared the following at her Facebook page following the HRC meeting earlier this evening.

New Albany Residents:

Today, the Human Rights Commission held a public forum to discuss the recent string of Nazi Stickers in our town. Based on discussions at this meeting, the Chief of Police and the HRC ask that anyone who sees Nazi stickers around town please take the following steps:

1. Do not remove the stickers as the Chief stated we need to preserve evidence. These stickers are considered vandalism.

2. Contact NAPD at 812-944-6411 (not 911) and report the incident and location to law enforcement. The police will document the incident and remove the stickers.

3. If you are unable or unwilling to contact police, please take photos and email them to the New Albany Human Rights Commission at humanrights@cityofnewalbany.com. Please note the date of the incident and the location.

4. You may also email Chief Bailey directly at cbailey@napdin.net

Feel free to share this post widely.

I didn't attend and cannot elaborate, but this seems sensible.

New Albany's HRC and the Southern Poverty Law Center on countering the Alt-Right, extremism and white supremacy.

In a late phone call, Mayor Gahan addresses our swastika sticker problem.

Maybe Joe Donnelly is available for a consultation.

BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: Vandals strike Asheville brewery: “No more breweries” and “**** Beer City.”

My initial thought upon reading about "anti-brewery vandalism" in Asheville was something on the order of: "Just their luck the Woman's Christian Temperance Union is still alive and kicking."

Indeed, the prohibitionists remain extant, drastically weakened but forever persistent. However, it's doubtful the WCTU is taking the war to Demon Craft Beer at night, clad in dark attire, masked and with spray paint in hand.

Here's the story.

Asheville’s One World Brewing Responds to Anti-Brewery Vandalism, by Jess Baker (Craft Beer Dot Com)

It’s been a frustrating week for One World Brewing, a small and independent craft brewery in Asheville, North Carolina. The brewery, which originally opened four years ago in downtown Asheville, was busy prepping to open its new location in the West Asheville district when vandals hit the brewery as well as surrounding local businesses.

The vandals scrawled messages in black spray paint on the front of the brewery’s white brick building at 520 Haywood Road: “No more breweries” and “**** Beer City.”

The vandals’ anti-brewery messages are stinging words for the Asheville beer community, a city where independent breweries are considered a major driver for tourism.

“We will not be deterred from doing what’s best for our employees and our community,” One World Brewing wrote on its Facebook and Instagram pages Thursday. “We are a homegrown, local, independently owned brewery that does so much more than just brew beer. We use beer as a platform to support so many other aspects of life that we are passionate about.”

The Asheville brewery, like many local breweries, is invested in supporting its employees as well as the community. The brewery used the incident to flip the script and talk about their strong bond with Asheville ...

Beer writer Bryan Roth, who shared the preceding link at Twitter, commented.

"anti-brewery messages" is a new one to me.

Not for Richard Florida, who mentioned the "g" word (gentrification) in a CityLab piece late last year -- or Athena Hobson, from London, two years ago.

During a shameless binge watch of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, I couldn’t help but notice all the references to gentrification (or in simpler terms – places becoming more trendy and modernised, which drives up the costs of living in that area, meaning poorer residents may be forced to relocate).

Hobson expands on her thought.

Don’t Blame The Brewers: Craft Beer And Gentrification, by Athena Hobson (Cultured Vultures)

First-time business owners are taking advantage of run down areas to set up shop and driving up the cost of living for local residents.

Understandably, it is gentrification that is largely responsible for provoking a deep hatred of the craft beer trend, but to what extent can we actually blame the brewers? Had it not been about beer, it may have been bubble tea cafés or ‘soul cycle’ studios. The aforementioned Cereal Killer Café has been under attack of petty vandalism as well as keyboard warriors since word spread of its opening – but would they be so successful if we weren’t so willing to buy into what they’re selling? After all, what is business but seeing a need and providing the product or service?

When you hand over your money to a company, however much or little that may be, you are funding their objectives ...

Regular blog readers residing in New Albany hardly need this reminder, but it's always better to be explicit, so kindly note that Mayor Jeff Gahan's 2017 seizure of public housing, with a stated objective of reducing the number of units by half, is an exercise in socio-economic cleansing -- and this displacement is not being conducted in a conceptual vacuum.

In fact, Gahan's war against the working poor is the logical consequence of our "success" in resuscitating downtown. It's part and parcel of gentrification, and as a "Democrat," the mayor illustrates that callous measures directed against the most vulnerable cannot always be blamed on right-wingers. 

Thanks in large part to food and drink businesses like my own brewery, with which I'm no longer involved, the historic core of the city has experienced a decade of substantive reinvestment.

The result has been an increase in "upscale" thinking, as opposed to those cross-cultural core retail stores operating downtown long ago prior to suburbanization and white flight.

As a corollary, the local political dialogue continues to narrow; either we explore ways to expand the "upscale" developments already in progress, or we do nothing at all. The ensuing shock waves are hitting those community members least able to cope economically, in part because the powers that be in New Albany view gentrification as a social phenomenon of unqualified and unquestioned good.

Few wish to contemplate the consequences, and most are willing to encourage even more of it with measures that gradually have crept beyond those designed somewhat modestly to encourage investment (as with loosened alcoholic beverage licensing in riverfront development areas), to ones like the public housing putsch that actively push social engineering, or the recent proposal (likely inevitable) to spend $8.5 million on local government wants (a new city hall) rather than affordable housing needs for a growing segment of the populace.

Back to the point. Why would someone vandalize a small brewery?

Probably for the same reason that residents of my city greet the news of another new bar or restaurant ...

The former Comfy Cow location will become a bar, but we have no further details.

Downtown NA restaurant and bar scorecard: one new location, two openings and four coming soon.

... with predictable but perfectly plausible questions like these.

Seriously, another bar?

How many downtown restaurants and bars are enough?

Will we be able to afford to eat at these latest and greatest places?

These questions have short-term answers: yes, it's too early to tell, and it's complicated.

Alcohol licensing exists to regulate drinking for the ostensible purpose of societal good, although maximum tax harvesting comes closer to the truth.

Indiana's riverfront development area mechanism is a legal construct expressly designed to "open" a delineated geographical area to licensing with fewer restrictions.

Riverfront permits have the effect of making a demarcated area slightly more free than before, because it provides a framework for licensing outside the customary allocation. It greatly reduces the overall cost of a permit, and opens the market to more participants.

As long as there is available money, and entrepreneurs are eager to spend it, there'll be contestants entering the game. We'll know when there are too many bars and restaurants when more establishments are closing than opening.

As for the pricing, this is a difficult topic somewhat outside the scope of these thoughts. I'll add only that there are fewer disparities in pricing than might appear to be the case among independent and chain/franchise when their menus are comparable, and while I'd never suggest that operators don't look for ways to squeeze a few cents more from any mark-up, it's hard to base a business model on $3 burgers and $6 beers.

There are other questions and answers, but I have no glib conclusions to offer about any of these potential digressions. I've agonized over them for years, and will continue to do so.

At the same time, there is another complementary Pandora's Box to be broached, this being the junction of morals, wages, costs and benefits pertaining to "craft" breweries as workplaces.

I've referenced work by Dave Infante on a couple of past occasions, and he's at peak provocation here.

Infante's piece raised a tremendous din in the usual beer discussion portals. About all I can do is shrug and say two things: Welcome to capitalism ... and I'm happy not to be tormented by these considerations any longer. The economics at a bar stand to be much simpler than those at a brewery.

Craft Beer’s Moral High Ground Doesn't Apply to Its Workers, by Dave Infante (Splinter News)

Scott Timms is taking a break from brewing beer. At 35, he’s been at it for 13 years, most recently having worked at Falling Sky Brewing, a popular brewpub in Eugene, OR, that regularly appears on “best of” lists in the state.

Brewing beer commercially can be hard, thankless work. “It’s a back-breaking job, lifting a hundred 50-pound bags” of ingredients and carrying them up stairs to be added to the mash, Timms says. And it can be dangerous: “You’re dealing with boiling liquids and pretty harsh chemicals that can definitely injury you…It’s not a safe job by any means.” At small breweries, where OSHA visits are unusual and procedures are unstandardized, the “outlook towards safety” can be “laissez-faire” verging on “lackadaisical,” he says.

For his work as a production manager at Falling Sky overseeing a team of brewers and working up to 65 hours a week, Timms made what came out to a little over $40,000 a year. Frustrated, he quit his brewing job in early 2018, convinced that craft brewers were getting shorted across the U.S. beer industry. “There are people making money here,” he says, “but it’s not us.”

In 2017, Lauren Michele Jackson wrote in Eater about the rise of “craft culture,” a food and beverage market that “fetishizes the authentic, the traditionally produced, and the specific [and] loathes the engineered, the mass-produced, and the originless.” Craft beer—made by brewers like Timms at more than 6,000 small, independent breweries across the country—has been a standard-bearer for this progressively infected, anti-commodity eating and drinking movement for more than two decades. Its staggering economic success has spurred an explosion of products in other food and drink categories marketed to like-minded customers. Walk the aisles of your closest Whole Foods and craft culture surrounds you.

But even as sales of craft-culture products steadily rise, the conditions for workers that make and serve those products vary widely. The labor is often physically demanding. Specialized workers are asked to “wear different hats” to make up for understaffing, and gladly answer calls for extra hours because they genuinely care about the products they’re making. Owners, either unwilling or unable to spend on quality executives, take on management responsibilities for which they have no training. The workforces are often small, giving rise to a much-touted familial intimacy that in turn can bring a distinctly familial dysfunction of favoritism and manipulation. Wages and benefits are inconsistent across industries and even within individual companies.

But craft culture is growing, and it’s bringing in a lot of money ...

The shrinking remnants of Moser Tannery can't take much more of this strange "love" from Team Gahan.

There was a fire over the weekend at, in or near the former Moser Tannery, which the city of New Albany purchased last year as part of its plan to render the Loop Island Wetlands into a proper, campaign-finance-accruing parks unit for the greater glory of Gahanism.

WDRB mentioned the fire, but did not follow-up. Don't even ask about the Collected Works of Tom May, formerly known as the 'Bune, which evidently was busy sponsoring a barbecue coloring book contest somewhere near River Ridge.

The fire was the second in the vicinity of the tannery since early March, when a late-model industrial warehouse adjacent to the remaining brick building went up in flames. 

Is it just me, or has the abuse of the tannery site -- graffiti, vandalism, garbage and fires -- escalated noticeably since City Hall (ahem) took control?

I'm sure Dear Leader's official party line still calls for the reclamation of the main structure into something suitably luxurious to impel the mayor up from the bunker and out for a ribbon-cutting.

But right about now, it looks like the longer the city sits tight doing nothing at the Moser footprint, the greater chance there'll be nothing left to do anything with. 

ASK THE BORED: A few well-placed chicanes on 13th Street should send Tiger Trucking to a more appropriate location for doing its value-extractive business.

If 2017 really is to be the year when the Downtown Grid Modernization Project transitions from the mere rumor of a long overdue, messy compromise of a typically botched Gahanesque half-ass measure to these facets actually appearing in real life, then City Hall's favored minions at HWC Engineering should have long since moved past the stage of ensuring campaign finance rivulets flowing downhill like stormwater from Summit Springs, straight into the mayor's aspirational State Senate coffers, and started the task of rendering splendid Speck into adulterated sausage.

As such, perhaps it isn't too late to reclaim 13th Street for residential quality of life by the simple expedience of chicane installation.

Not chicanery ...

... but chicane, a concept recently explained here.

A chicane is an artificial feature creating extra turns in a road, used in motor racing and on streets to slow traffic for safety. For example, one form of chicane is a short, shallow S-shaped turn, requiring the driver to turn slightly left and then right again to stay on the road, which slows them down.

Yes, we've all been here before.

Last July, NAC explained in great detail (repeated below) that Tiger Trucking's use of 13th Street as an industrial connector, while intended as a petulant middle finger lofted in the general direction of City Hall, actually serves as a daily reminder to people living on this residential street that their quality of life doesn't matter -- and has mattered even less since the city lavished millions on an unnecessary Main Street beautification project, which freed more dysfunctional demons than it rectified.

Isn't it time for the spoiled brat to get a good spanking? Residents of 13th Street deserves better, and a relatively inexpensive chicane or three, backed by a city willing to enforce its own ordinances, might be able to achieve what our 3rd District councilman hasn't bothered recognizing.

Here's the rundown from last July.

Here comes the Tiger Truck Lines rig northbound on 13th Street. The driver has just crossed Market. Behind me is Spring.

Since the advent of the Main Street Beautification Project, Tiger has transformed 13th Street into its own company connector road, regularly using Spring for westbound trucks and Market for eastbound.

Ironically, even though so much of the Main Street project is pure blather, the designers actually did take Tiger's needs into mind when inserting those God-awful medians.

In fact, Tiger never has been somehow excluded from using Main Street, just as it did before.

This is 14th Street, looking south from Dewey. Just over the railroad track is Tiger's scenic headquarters. You can see the K & I Bridge on the horizon.

When a Tiger trucker emerges from its lair on 14th, he or she comes first to Dewey, then Main. Here's the view, looking north toward Main. Prior to the Main Street project, Tiger's employees drove straight and turned onto Main in either direction.

The next three photos show the intersection of Main and 14th. As you can see, the medians are pulled way back to allow for wide turns. It is a huge expanse of asphalt left open for only one reason -- for truckers like Tiger's to use.

And they don't use it.

Rather, ever since the Main Street project came about, Tiger's adolescent management pique has translated into a new access policy. First, let's go back to the intersection of 14th and Dewey, this time looking west, not straight toward Main.

Tiger's truckers now turn left here ...

 ... and then right (north) here, on 13th ...

 ... to come rumbling across Main here (headed to the right, or north), using 13th as the company road to go to Market and Spring.

Obviously, 13th is a residential street, never designed or intended for commercial vehicles of this Tiger's size. Plainly, Tiger's management has undertaken a program of civic vandalism these last two years, operating from a vantage point behind the billows of Padgett's litigious gown.

There's only one logical answer to this problem.

Give 13th Street a two-block-long road diet, with bike paths and 10-foot lanes, and force Tiger's trucks back onto Main, where they belong.

Or, place a weight limit on 13th and enforce it.

The likes of Irv Stumler instinctively side with the vandals in a case like this. Obsessed with flower pots, the Silver Hills resident pays no mind to the appearance of heavy industrial equipment on a residential street. Perhaps these residents are too poor for Irv's taste, or not sufficiently ambitious to get better jobs and move from the trucking ghetto to his neighborhood.

Irv aside (and he needs to be), the city has allowed Tiger to behave like a petulant brat. The city might alter this behavior, and should. The city made changes to Main. It can make changes to 13th.

It should.

But wait, wasn't Irv just robotically touting the spotless civic-mindedness of trucking companies?

A reader writes:

This tractor trailer turned right from Spring up Silver Street. Squashed all of the traffic cones on the way. I especially like the way someone sprayed white paint over the phone number you're supposed to call if you have issues with the driver's behavior!

However, there's a bright side: At least it wasn't a Tiger truck.

Tiger Truck Lines and 13th Street: Isn't it time for the spoiled brat to get a good spanking?

Tiger Trucking's affectionate "fuck you" to the residents of New Albany.

Tiger Truck Lines and 13th Street: Isn't it time for the spoiled brat to get a good spanking?

Here comes the Tiger Truck Lines rig northbound on 13th Street. The driver has just crossed Market. Behind me is Spring.

Since the advent of the Main Street Beautification Project, Tiger has transformed 13th Street into its own company connector road, regularly using Spring for westbound trucks and Market for eastbound.

Ironically, even though so much of the Main Street project is pure blather, the designers actually did take Tiger's needs into mind when inserting those God-awful medians.

In fact, Tiger never has been somehow excluded from using Main Street, just as it did before.

This is 14th Street, looking south from Dewey. Just over the railroad track is Tiger's scenic headquarters. You can see the K & I Bridge on the horizon.

When a Tiger trucker emerges from its lair on 14th, he or she comes first to Dewey, then Main. Here's the view, looking north toward Main. Prior to the Main Street project, Tiger's employees drove straight and turned onto Main in either direction.

The next three photos show the intersection of Main and 14th. As you can see, the medians are pulled way back to allow for wide turns. It is a huge expanse of asphalt left open for only one reason -- for truckers like Tiger's to use.

And they don't use it.

Rather, ever since the Main Street project came about, Tiger's adolescent management pique has translated into a new access policy. First, let's go back to the intersection of 14th and Dewey, this time looking west, not straight toward Main.

Tiger's truckers now turn left here ...

 ... and then right (north) here, on 13th ...

 ... to come rumbling across Main here (headed to the right, or north), using 13th as the company road to go to Market and Spring.

Obviously, 13th is a residential street, never designed or intended for commercial vehicles of this Tiger's size. Plainly, Tiger's management has undertaken a program of civic vandalism these last two years, operating from a vantage point behind the billows of Padgett's litigious gown.

There's only one logical answer to this problem.

Give 13th Street a two-block-long road diet, with bike paths and 10-foot lanes, and force Tiger's trucks back onto Main, where they belong.

Or, place a weight limit on 13th and enforce it.

The likes of Irv Stumler instinctively sides with the vandals in a case like this. Obsessed with flower pots, the Silver Hills resident pays no mind to the appearance of heavy industrial equipment on a residential street. Perhaps these residents are too poor for Irv's taste, or not sufficiently ambitious to get better jobs and move from the trucking ghetto to his neighborhood.

Irv aside (and he needs to be), the city has allowed Tiger to behave like a petulant brat. The city might alter this behavior, and should. The city made changes to Main. It can make changes to 13th. It should.

How paint has become a weapon in Macedonia's "Colorful Revolution."

Bear with me. This story is deeper than it seems at first.

How Paint Became a Weapon in Macedonia's 'Colorful Revolution', by Feargus O'Sullivan (City Lab)

Paint-balling your way to fair elections.

Look at the aftermath of recent protests in the Macedonian capital Skopje, and you might assume a festival had just left town. Archways appear splattered with polka dot blotches of color, statues drip pink and blue streaks, and fountain water runs scarlet. This colorful makeover isn’t the result of some Balkan version of Holi, however. It’s the product of a protest movement whose dazzling tactics—dubbed Sharena Revolutsiya or “the colorful revolution” despite its overwhelmingly peaceful nature—has meant covering city walls and monuments in splashes of brightly colored paint ...

 ... Macedonia’s Colorful Revolution actually kicked off last winter following shocking revelations over the scope of alleged state surveillance in the country.

Macedonia became an independent country following the breakup of Yugoslavia. Since time immemorial, the geographical vicinity of present-day Macedonia (not to mention the Macedonians themselves, many of  whom live in Bulgaria and Greece) has been a regional bone of contention. Now, Macedonia finds itself astride a major refugee route, with geopolitical ramifications.

With the E.U. relying on Macedonia to stem the flow of refugees trying to cross the country from Greece, European governments have largely taken a softly-softly approach, concerning themselves more with brokering stability than pushing for regime change. All that has forced local protesters to get creative. Instead of throwing bricks or Molotov cocktails, they’ve been firing paint balls, scattering Macedonia’s parliament and public buildings with glaring color.

Here's the kicker. Macedonia's political crisis derives in part from ongoing efforts to plasticize and Disney-fy the capital city, Skopje.

That demonstrators are especially concerned with altering the capital’s appearance is not insignificant. In many countries this might come across as a wanton, self-defeating attack on public property that has served many governments, not just the current one. In Macedonia’s capital, however, those very buildings are often new, and represent the forces in the country that protesters loathe.

Skopje has in recent years been undergoing a massive reconstruction project to make it look grander and more imposing (and in Europe, it’s not alone in doing so). The ruling VMRO-DPMNE party has splurged on giving the city a neoclassical makeover that has smothered the city with Brobdingnagian monuments to Alexander the Great, bridges bristling with bronze reliefs, and endless hollow colonnades. At a mushrooming cost of €633 million ($722 million)—meaning that the country is paying out €10,400 ($11,860) every hour—the results are dramatic, oppressive, and hideous. It’s no wonder that these new monuments have been taken as symbols of the government’s grandiose delusions and petty oppression, stone and masonry canvasses on which people are now writing their frustration in day-glo paint. This isn’t just a case of protesters writing their anger on walls. In Skopje, the walls themselves are part of the problem.

Sound familiar?

The only thing worse than a petty vandal ...

 ... is an incompetent petty vandal.

For the third time, our "Two-Way Streets Now" sign disappeared overnight. As with the previous instances, I found it a short distance away in the middle of 10th between Spring and Elm. It was in the company of two neighbors' signs. It's easy to tell which one is ours, as it is torn, frayed, and has been driven over. I returned the other two, and found the metal bracket on the sidewalk.

I've no special attachment to the sign; after all, two-way street grid veracity hardly depends on it. At the same time, I enjoy thwarting morons.

Hmm ... were any city officials cruising around town on a Miller Lite jag last evening?

Main Street project survey: A truck votes with its tires, and we think it means "against."

Seeking to avoid termination, poor ol' Rosenbarger goes full Orwell and claims Main Street potholes as "successes."

"Best of All Possible Worlds": An amazing tale about a public art contest in Evansville, Indiana.

It's quite early in 2014, and yet this piece is an early favorite for most thought-provoking work -- and it's a page turner with one unsurprising ending and another completely unexpected plot twist.

Wow.

BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS: A Public Art Contest in Evansville, Indiana, Becomes a Debate over Class, Race, and Good Taste, by Mark Lane (Believer)

DISCUSSED: Awarding Prizes to Art, Portals and Boundary States, Riverboat Gambling, Questioning the Priorities of Urban Renewal, Order as a Healing Mechanism, Productive Mental Disorders, High Levels of Ambient Gayness, Part-Time Artists as Bellwethers of Economic Growth, Vandalism, Art Acting Like Art, Meeting the Neighbors, The Kardashians, A Lost Picasso

In early 2012, Saul Melman came across an ad for an outdoor sculpture contest in Evansville, Indiana, a city about which he knew nothing. Artists were invited to propose a sculpture for one of twelve four-by-four-foot concrete pads in Evansville’s arts district, to be evaluated in part based on the sculpture’s integration into the neighborhood and its connection to the community.

Why is it that Lineal Contracting didn't clean up its mess?

It may seem like small beer to some, but 7 to 10 days ago, a company called Lineal  Contracting was traveling up and down Spring Street, attaching a cable of some sort to Duke's poles and chopping through the canopy along the way.

I wrote first wrote about it on March 2:

Is Lineal Contracting planning on cleaning up its mess?

Apparently the answer is "no." Lineal's gone, and the mess remains.

I keep my verge clean and relatively litter free. If nature drops branches on my stretch of the verge and the sidewalk, I'll pick them up.

But can someone tell me how Lineal Contracting trashing the area is any different from throwing Rally's bags on the same spot?

Anyone?

Chalk it up to 40+ years of empty (headed), downtown.

The top photo is from 1893. It is New Albany's old Post Office at the corner of Spring and Pearl.

The next photo, undated but from the late 1950's or very early 60's, shows the same building (near the center), with the former courthouse in front. The newer structure now housing La Rosita's can be seen clearly, as well as St. Mark's further east on Spring. Today, the lot where the Courthouse stood is occupied by Main Source Bank.

The last photo, taken by Gary Humphrey (River City Winery), is of recent damage done by feral skateboarders to the neglected stage on the neglected lot at the neglected corner where the Post Office once stood, until it was torn down by a previous generation of New Albany "leadership," for whom show trials remain a preferred option if any of them persist in living.

I don't excuse the destructive behavior of unsupervised adolescents, but I can't help thinking that a physical space like this is the equivalent of a broken window, in the sense that perpetual dilapidation merely encourages further vandalism.

One final thought: Check out the traffic in the middle photo. Cars are moving both ways, aren't they?

Remember when the current administration promised two-way traffic restoration downtown?

You don't see it, do you? In my book, that's a promise not kept.

(The first two photos are from the NA-FC Public Library's Indiana Room, and its marvelous Historical Image Archive)

The Economist: "Clearing up graffiti or littering promptly could help fight the spread of crime."

While others cling to their religion and guns, leaving observers unsure as to which poses the bigger threat to personal health and well-being, I persist in reading the British newspaper that accurately called the recent presidential election, which resulted in Barack Obama’s victory, and made it possible for Tribune guest local columnists to pretend they’re being satirical.

Criminology: Can the can, from the Nov. 20 print edition of The Economist.

The idea that graffiti-spraying and other forms of low-level delinquency promote further bad behaviour has now been tested experimentally.

A place that is covered in graffiti and festooned with rubbish makes people feel uneasy. And with good reason, according to a group of researchers in the Netherlands. Kees Keizer and his colleagues at the University of Groningen deliberately created such settings as a part of a series of experiments designed to discover if signs of vandalism, litter and low-level lawbreaking could change the way people behave. They found that they could, by a lot: doubling the number who are prepared to litter and steal.

The experiments are described in detail, leading to this conclusion:

“The message for policymakers and police officers is that clearing up graffiti or littering promptly could help fight the spread of crime.”

Think about this the next time you drive through one of New Albany's myriad slumlord protection districts, and consider another year's passage without meaningful reform amid the absence of money that might be devoted to police and fire protection, as well as pro-active efforts to enforce ordinances and keep the city's neighborhoods clean.

Photo essay: Two-way streets amid one-way politics?

On one hand, it wouldn't hurt my feelings if political yard signs were outlawed entirely. Generations of local candidates have refrained from substance in favor of playing games with often illegal yard sign placement, and it’s a sadly telling commentary on the apathy and shortsightedness of the electorate that this practice continues unabated.

However, it’s a presidential election year, and the perfect opportunity for me to annoy the passing Luddites and Philistines hereabouts … and, as I learned Saturday night, an equally providential opportunity for them to annoy me, which might explain how our Obama yard sign was uprooted, presumably by the same stumbling, swill-fueled obscenity spewers congregating on Spring circa midnight after the street dance at St. Mary’s concluded.

I can guess that the vandal isn’t a member of the card carrying coterie of the conjoined city councilmen because the 8664 sign remained unscathed, and surely the city’s Coffeyites would be more outraged by the concept of road and street reform symbolized by 8664 than threatened by the eventuality of a black president. After all, as affirmed by centuries of American history, one hardly needs to drive an automobile to be racist.

The overwhelming odds are that our Obama sign was upended by a fellow Democrat, which in the Floyd County tradition of mafioso-tinged conservatism is scarcely distinguishable from a Republican. That’s too bad … for all of us.