BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: Self-pour is a self-evidently poor way to sustain the magic of beer.

I weary of retail "innovation" that exists primarily to produce spewing ad copy mumbo-jumbo about serving the needs of customers, but is designed to boost profits and eliminate human beings from situations of interaction.

Even if you drink alone because you prefer to be by yourself, it's sad to imagine you'd be serving yourself.

What the hell are people thinking? Beer is something robots can't drink. "Self-pour" is a bean counter's masturbatory delight, but learning about beer from staffers is the ideal.

And don't get me started about the breathlessness of this writer. People are frustrated at waiting a couple minutes to flag down a busy server?

Are we all infants, begging to be coddled?

BEER YOURSELF: Why the self-pour beer revolution is here to stay, by Samantha Lefave (MIC)
Feb 28, 2018

Forget BYOB. Instead, PYOB — pour your own beer — is the new term in town. And those who have suffered through the frustration of flagging down a busy bartender for a simple draft pour have many reasons to get excited about this brewing trend.

We have roads, but we have no streets. Time for a change.

A street in Brooklyn (from the article).

A street in New Albany.

One by one, day after day, we post these statements of transformative principle, safe in the knowledge that the planet is filled with practical examples of their utility.

One by one, day after day, elected and appointed officials in the city of New Albany fail to grasp the central point, letting precious time slip past as they embarrass themselves through abject ignorance.

Granted, no one wants to get involved with the filth of politics, and yet the only real answer to this conundrum is to fire the incumbents. You'll have two opportunities to do so this year, and in the process, to select individuals who "get" it.

Reimagining Our Streets as Places: From Transit Routes to Community Roots (Project for Public Spaces)

In a city the street must be supreme. It is the first institution of the city. The street is a room by agreement, a community room, the walls of which belong to the donors, dedicated to the city for common use. Its ceiling is the sky. Today, streets are disinterested movements not at all belonging to the houses that front them. So you have no streets. You have roads, but you have no streets.
– Louis Kahn, The Street

Streets are our most fundamental shared public spaces, but they are also one of the most contested and overlooked. Today, and for most of the last century, we have taken for granted the idea that our streets are primarily zones for cars, parking, and the transporting of goods. This has not been the case, however, throughout most of history. Across many cultures and times – since the beginning of civilization, in fact – the street has held vast social, commercial, and political significance as a powerful symbol of the public realm.

The street was “the first institution of the city,” as architect Louis Kahn once wrote, and even if we don’t always recognize it, streets are still a powerful force in shaping our physical and mental landscapes. We name them after our idols and fallen heroes—in remembrance of presidents or literary figures, civil rights leaders or old Hollywood stars. In many of our own lives and experiences, they are sites for both celebration and rebellion: Stages for summer block parties and holiday parades, they are also the place we gather to express public dissent—as with recent demonstrations following the grand jury decisions in St. Louis and New York, where millions took to the street in protest of widespread police brutality and racial injustice. When streets function well on the level of everyday experience, they provide opportunities for people to connect in a way that no other public space can.

ON THE AVENUES REWOUND: Afoot in NA with the 69% solution.

ON THE AVENUES REWOUND: Afoot in NA with the 69% solution.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

It figures. The city finally schedules a meeting to discuss Jeff Speck's downtown street network proposals, and I'm scheduled to be in Indianapolis. So it goes. If you're on the side of the angels (Two Way Streets Now), be at Bank Street Brewhouse by 5:30 p.m. to walk as a group to the library and TESTIFY. Meanwhile, here's a column from January 19, 2012.

---

All our sidewalks might be rebuilt, and even the occasional bike lane striped, but unless New Albany is prepared to classify systemic discrimination against the urban zone’s persecuted walkers and bicyclists as part and parcel of a fully funded enforcement mechanism, under the auspices of a human rights commission, things won’t get any better around here.

Okay, I’m exaggerating, though only slightly.

The older I get, the greater the imperative to redress the ridiculous societal imbalance between man and machine. We might as well commence the social engineering right here in the Open Air Museum, where minuscule comprehension levels guarantee a clean slate.

Of course, we’re all familiar with the array of venom spewed by motorists with respect to their fellow motorists, all of whom might be conveniently grouped into an omnibus category termed Innate Incompetence Compounded by Willful Distraction, or minus the obscenities: “Who taught you to drive, anyway?’

Probably no one, and also everyone.

But if you think it’s bad when both of you are in your armor-clad Hummers cursing, shaking fists and flashing middle fingers, then I recommend attempting a pleasurable stroll or casual bike ride. I’m confident you’ll soon echo my own sentiments, as freely borrowed from Lucy from the Peanuts comic strip and modified, hometown-style:

“I love cars. It’s drivers I hate.”

---

While unlikely, it is conceivable that a handful of local drivers well into their eighties might recall the admonition to look both ways before entering any intersection. However, fifty years of New Albany’s one-way downtown street grid has ensured that drivers generally look only in the direction of oncoming traffic, and seldom the other way, where a pedestrian just might be interested in crossing the street.

There’s also the quaint institution of those crosswalk guides painted on the street, with the obvious intent of connecting one sidewalk to the next, so as to assist pedestrians in navigating in a straight line. In theory, drivers are compelled to heed the stop sign short of these areas, without blocking pedestrian crossways.

I tested this theory yesterday while out walking, and on five separate occasions when I reached the corner at the same time as a car arrived at the stop sign (i.e., where the auto is supposed to stop), each time, without exception, the driver (a) did not look to see if anyone was there, and then (b) straddled the crosswalk line, easing as far out into the street as possible, presumably to save precious seconds in route to the dollar menu at Rally’s, where he or she could enter the drive-thru lane without moving a muscle (if any exist), before devouring the contents of the sack while in the very act of driving to the next fast food joint for dessert, then tossing all the wrappings onto the street, thus ensuring that my judgment of my fellow Americans remains fully enabled.

Fat, dumb and fundamentalist is no way to go through life, and being an obnoxious, crappy driver makes it far, far worse.

---

When I was a boy, Georgetown truly was the countryside. The amenities – store, café, barber shop, school – were there, roughly two miles away, and so naturally we always drove to get to them. By contrast, we generally walked down to the barn and back to feed the cows.

Not everyone in our extended rural neighborhood had an automobile. Roughly a half-mile away, in the direction of Lanesville, was a collection of shacks inhabited by a group of the less well off. They were kinfolk, and yet the word “family” doesn’t quite describe the arrangement. Among them were two or three brothers, their sister, a brother-in-law, and perhaps other women, coming and going at various times.

There were plenty of cars parked on their property, the main problem being that these jalopies tended not to work. It was closer to Georgetown than Lanesville, but in those days the former was bone dry Baptist and about as humorless, while the latter remained wonderfully Catholic, with a handful of taverns for liquid grocery shopping. When it came time, they’d head south on foot.

Wine duly obtained, they would start the homeward trudge, although famously, there were those times when they’d have to turn around and stumble back to Lanesville for more fuel, then try again, before ending the day asleep in one of the intervening cornfields.

If we had cars to drive, we drove everywhere, and yes, that’s the American way and all that, but it’s just that driving never was something I genuinely enjoyed doing. It was a job, not an adventure. As a typically ignorant and parochial American in the sticks, I could not begin to discern any conceivable alternative, at least until I was able to travel, and then finally, after a few years of living and roaming, I began to know myself better.

Given my father’s proclivities for nature and the outdoors, it was perhaps inevitable that I would develop an interest in urban life, and so I did. Traveling to Europe to experience the continent’s cities, revelations were quick in coming: One needn’t drive to the amenities when the amenities were nearby, when walking or bicycling would suffice, and where there were public transport options to provide a reliable and relatively inexpensive mobility solution.

During more than 30 trips to Europe over a period of a quarter century, I’ve rented a car exactly once. To be sure, my posterior has been placed in passenger cars a few times, and there have been taxis aplenty for shorter distances, and yet these account for a very small percentage of the total when it comes to how I’ve gotten around. After all this time, my preference remains walking, cycling, or whichever trains, trams or busses exist in a particular place.

---

Back here in downtown New Albany, we’ve embarked upon a great and surely futile debate about parking spaces. I use the word “futile” because the unquestioned assumption currently being heard from virtually every participant in the discussion is that if typical American customers are forced to walk more than an urban block to reach a destination, they’ll leave in disgust and loathing, never to return.

Well, perhaps New Albany should post way-finding signs to help the clueless locate Veteran’s Parkway, to experience the orgasmic thrill of the cookie-cutter.

While there may be a grain of truth to it as pertains to those lost causes enamored of hopping in their gas guzzlers for a quick cruise to the foot of a driveway to claim their snail mail, it strikes me as yet another example of older folks utterly failing to understand a dawning age, and the beauty of this new way of thinking about mobility is that it’s both old and proven.

The city was built for walking, and even if we’ve spent decades deconstructing the grid, it’s never too late to start all over again. This country boy managed to learn better. You can, too.

ON THE AVENUES: Egg, meet face: How many different ways can we botch the Main Street Deforestation Project?

ON THE AVENUES: Egg, meet face: How many ways can we botch the Main Street Deforestation Project?

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

My usual Thursday column space has been pre-scheduled for the timely "rewinding" of a 2013 essay about the annual advent of Harvest Homecoming.

In our municipality’s case, it isn’t workers’ rights but uncomfortable irony that bedevils the citizenry, second only to bed bugs, and so the dire threat posed by ironic detachment must be recast into simpler truths, like the prevailing fiction that Harvest Homecoming has anything whatever to do with economic development apart from the money necessary to perpetuate the fest itself.

However, there is so much to write about, isn't there?

Concurrently with Harvest Homecoming's arrival, this administration's signature "shining path" public works project is inching toward an abysmal conclusion, and so for those too busy chuckin' punkins to pay attention, let's take a look at what Jeff "Walkable City" Speck has been doing.

Speck is the man hired by the city of New Albany to study our ragtag, dysfunctional streets and recommend changes to enhance walkability, make these streets safer, and in a presumably comprehensive way, bring this persistently dirty river town into modern times.

Yesterday morning, Speck released an article at City Lab: Why 12-Foot Traffic Lanes Are Disastrous for Safety and Must Be Replaced Now. I made it the basis of a posting at NAC; more about that in a moment.

States and counties believe that wider lanes are safer. And in this belief, they are dead wrong.

Speck left absolutely no doubt as to the ultimate importance of the lane width topic. It is a foundation of his platform. Here is what he tweeted about the article:

ATTENTION! This is the most important article I have ever written. Please read, share, and join the fight!

Later in the day, Speck wrote words that may come back to haunt him when he returns to NA to present his street study, and is confronted with our generations-old, institutional imbecility.

Reading comments to my article, I wonder: what makes people who have never travelled so confident that things they haven't seen don't exist?

Someone might say: "Roger, why all the pessimism?"

First, there are those long years of experience listening to illuminating barroom opinions about Europe, spouted by people who've never been any further east than Cincinnati.

More pressingly, there's this: As the streets specialist we've hired to advise us makes it perfectly clear in national forums that 10-ft traffic lanes are the mantra for any street grid's makeover, the city of New Albany prepares to put the triumphant finishing touches on a multi-million dollar Main Street project with lanes that have grown in width like John Rosenbarger's nose, from 10 feet to an "official" 11 feet, with a "two foot offset" rendering them into ... that's right ... 13-foot lanes.

In turn, if a traffic project ostensibly intended to calm traffic fails miserably to implement the one sure mechanism for doing so, chances are that traffic will not be calmed, in which case every bit of the Main Street project's expense and squandered opportunity cost has been devoted to cosmetic fluffing, not altered function.

And about those ritzy sidewalk address engravings? A reader beings this to our attention, asking:

"When you look at the existing city ordinance pertaining to street numbers, do you feel spending 'our money' on horizontal, inset sidewalk plaques makes sense, as they don't meet the City's own ordinance requirements?

§ 99.02  POSTING OF HOUSE NUMBERS.

   (A)   All owners or occupants of commercial or residential buildings located within the city limits should be and are required to conspicuously post their address so as to be easily visible from the street on which the building or home lies.

   (B)   The address shall be in standard arabic numbers no smaller than three inches high and shall be posted either on the improvements or on a sign or mailbox on the street.

   (C)   The numbers shall be of a color in contrast to its background so as to be easily read.

(Ord. G-93-156, passed 8-19-1993)

The city of New Albany has opportunistically spent "free" state monies, as intended to be used for future maintenance, on a showpiece project, the engineering of which contradicts most of what paid consultant Speck is about to advise us to do.

With the remainder of the city increasingly disgusted at the attention lavished on one neighborhood to the exclusion of all others, a few functionaries have fanned out to privately issue promises that given time and someone else's money, they'll botch Spring Street (for example) in precisely the same way as Main, meaning that traffic will not be calmed, walkability will not be enhanced, and bikers will be provided street access by means of sharrows symbols drawn on every uncalmed street.

Victory will be declared, and nothing will have changed. Our own Jeff provides his usual succinct (and damning) summary.

The distance between the parking lanes and median on Main Street is indeed 13 feet. With those wide lanes in place, the median itself will act as a buffer against oncoming traffic, further reducing any sense of car-slowing friction that would normally occur from pushing sufficiently narrow, opposite direction lanes closer together. Bike lanes have proven effective at helping to slow traffic (not to mention providing a transportation alternative), but they're absent as well. In short, there's little reason millions of dollars later to slow down on Main Street.

My biggest concern with the City's potential implementation of Speck's plans for the remaining grid isn't that they won't do anything but rather that they'll do a lot of something, inserting their own stunted reasoning into it instead of just following directions. If Main Street and other recent projects are any indication, there's a strong likelihood that they'll spend an enormous amount of money building something ineffective in a way that will make it much more difficult to correct in the near future. To do Main Street well, for instance, would likely involve removing or at least substantially reducing the median. Who's going to pay for that having just built it?

So far, it's area residents who are eating crow and the City that's serving it.

If you ask me, "stunted reasoning" is a polite way of referring to a steaming cow pie, but for once, perhaps I might profit from some semblance of ironic detachment.

On HJR-3, Tully takes Rhoads to school, and she skips class.

A while back on Facebook, Brad Bell asked State Representative Rhonda Rhoads to comment on her motives for sponsoring HJR-3 (formerly HJR-6), and she did.

I believe that if the definition of marriage is changed from what is current law in the state of Indiana , than it should go before the citizens of Indiana to decide if they want a different definition, not allow one judge to make that determination. This discussion has been going on for some time. Let it rest in the hands of the voters... Not me, not one judge. Amending the constitution is not easy nor was it intended to be easy. Lots of discussion and time are required. I want you and all Hoosiers to participate in the discussion hence my help in authoring this bill. Thank you for participating!

Yesterday, IndyStar columnist Matthew Tully replied; not specifically to Rhoads, which would be tantamount to asking a weather forecaster to look out the window, but to Indiana's enduring strain of theocratic fascism, which has reared its stupid, latent, ugly head repeatedly during the HJR era. Tully's elegant and sensible retort is among the finest I have read, and unlike certain city councilpersons, I read more than one book every five years.

Rhoads, Ron Grooms, Steve Stemler (the latter a Dixiecrat) -- could they ... would they ... are they capable of understanding Tully's position?

Tully: Gay marriage debate’s biggest problem? It’s just plain wrong, by Matthew Tully (IndyStar)

... This amendment is so disturbingly wrong, so morally offensive, so out of step with where our nation is, that it’s hard to believe its advocates continue to persist. The idea that our political leaders are calling for a public referendum to make clear in the constitution that some of our neighbors are second-class citizens — well, it’s stomach-turning ...

... Although I hope that the state I love would reject the amendment, and the spirit behind it, I don’t know what will happen in what will likely be a low turnout mid-term election. Just like I don’t know what would have happened if Hoosiers had been asked not so long ago to vote on an amendment to ban interracial marriages, or to protect segregated schools or other forms of discrimination ...

"One in four Americans think Obama may be the antichrist."

Pshaw; that's nothing.

In New Albany, about three in four office holders believe that the city's street grid is limited to its current configuration by the U.S. Bill of Rights, and that speeding on streets designed for speeding is a law enforcement issue, not a design issue.

But didn't we just have this chat on Twitter?

Has there ever been a nation, rich or poor, prouder to be dumb than this one? I don't think so. Fortunately, I maintain a sizable stock of medicinal antidote, most of it in handy 13.2 gallon drums called "kegs," and while it can't improve THEIR decision making, at least it keeps me nicely sedated amid the lunacy.

Sometimes I think to myself, ya know, if I just stopped drinking I could really help change this place -- then I shrug, say "nah," and remember that it's really not worth it.

Actually, no booze is required to see why we're as dumb as we are: In our thoroughly rigged "free" market, consumerism is king, and consumers need to be kept stupid and indebted so they don't catch on and see the dudes behind the curtains with the levers in their hands.

Rant over. Speaking of circuses, what time do the basketball games start this weekend?

One in four Americans think Obama may be the antichrist, survey says, by Paul Harris (Guardian)

About one in four Americans suspect that President Barack Obama might be the antichrist, more than a third believe that global warming is a hoax and more than half suspect that a secretive global elite is trying to set up a New World Order, according to a poll released on Tuesday.

ON THE AVENUES: Afoot in NA with the 69% solution.

ON THE AVENUES: Afoot in NA with the 69% solution.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

All our sidewalks might be rebuilt, and even the occasional bike lane striped, but unless New Albany is prepared to classify systemic discrimination against the urban zone’s persecuted walkers and bicyclists as part and parcel of a fully funded enforcement mechanism, under the auspices of a human rights commission, things won’t get any better around here.

Okay, I’m exaggerating, though only slightly.

The older I get, the greater the imperative to redress the ridiculous societal imbalance between man and machine. We might as well commence the social engineering right here in the Open Air Museum, where minuscule comprehension levels guarantee a clean slate.

Of course, we’re all familiar with the array of venom spewed by motorists with respect to their fellow motorists, all of whom might be conveniently grouped into an omnibus category termed Innate Incompetence Compounded by Willful Distraction, or minus the obscenities: “Who taught you to drive, anyway?’

Probably no one, and also everyone.

But if you think it’s bad when both of you are in your armor-clad Hummers cursing, shaking fists and flashing middle fingers, then I recommend attempting a pleasurable stroll or casual bike ride. I’m confident you’ll soon echo my own sentiments, as freely borrowed from Lucy from the Peanuts comic strip and modified, hometown-style:

“I love cars. It’s drivers I hate.”

---

While unlikely, it is conceivable that a handful of local drivers well into their eighties might recall the admonition to look both ways before entering any intersection. However, fifty years of New Albany’s one-way downtown street grid has ensured that drivers generally look only in the direction of oncoming traffic, and seldom the other way, where a pedestrian just might be interested in crossing the street.

There’s also the quaint institution of those crosswalk guides painted on the street, with the obvious intent of connecting one sidewalk to the next, so as to assist pedestrians in navigating in a straight line. In theory, drivers are compelled to heed the stop sign short of these areas, without blocking pedestrian crossways.

I tested this theory yesterday while out walking, and on five separate occasions when I reached the corner at the same time as a car arrived at the stop sign (i.e., where the auto is supposed to stop), each time, without exception, the driver (a) did not look to see if anyone was there, and then (b) straddled the crosswalk line, easing as far out into the street as possible, presumably to save precious seconds in route to the dollar menu at Rally’s, where he or she could enter the drive-thru lane without moving a muscle (if any exist), before devouring the contents of the sack while in the very act of driving to the next fast food joint for dessert, then tossing all the wrappings onto the street, thus ensuring that my judgment of my fellow Americans remains fully enabled.\

Fat, dumb and fundamentalist is no way to go through life, and being an obnoxious, crappy driver makes it far, far worse.

---

When I was a boy, Georgetown truly was the countryside. The amenities – store, café, barber shop, school – were there, roughly two miles away, and so naturally we always drove to get to them. By contrast, we generally walked down to the barn and back to feed the cows.

Not everyone in our extended rural neighborhood had an automobile. Roughly a half-mile away, in the direction of Lanesville, was a collection of shacks inhabited by a group of the less well off. They were kinfolk, and yet the word “family” doesn’t quite describe the arrangement. Among them were two or three brothers, their sister, a brother-in-law, and perhaps other women, coming and going at various times.

There were plenty of cars parked on their property, the main problem being that these jalopies tended not to work. It was closer to Georgetown than Lanesville, but in those days the former was bone dry Baptist and about as humorless, while the latter remained wonderfully Catholic, with a handful of taverns for liquid grocery shopping. When it came time, they’d head south on foot.

Wine duly obtained, they would start the homeward trudge, although famously, there were those times when they’d have to turn around and stumble back to Lanesville for more fuel, then try again, before ending the day asleep in one of the intervening cornfields.

If we had cars to drive, we drove everywhere, and yes, that’s the American way and all that, but it’s just that driving never was something I genuinely enjoyed doing. It was a job, not an adventure. As a typically ignorant and parochial American in the sticks, I could not begin to discern any conceivable alternative, at least until I was able to travel, and then finally, after a few years of living and roaming, I began to know myself better.

Given my father’s proclivities for nature and the outdoors, it was perhaps inevitable that I would develop an interest in urban life, and so I did. Traveling to Europe to experience the continent’s cities, revelations were quick in coming: One needn’t drive to the amenities when the amenities were nearby, when walking or bicycling would suffice, and where there were public transport options to provide a reliable and relatively inexpensive mobility solution.

During more than 30 trips to Europe over a period of a quarter century, I’ve rented a car exactly once. To be sure, my posterior has been placed in passenger cars quite a few times, and there have been taxis aplenty for shorter distances, and yet these account for a very small percentage of the total when it comes to how I’ve gotten around. After all this time, my preference remains walking, cycling, or whichever trains, trams or busses exist in a particular place.

---

Back here in downtown New Albany, we’ve embarked upon a great and surely futile debate about parking spaces. I use the word “futile” because the unquestioned assumption currently being heard from virtually every participant in the discussion is that if typical American customers are forced to walk more than an urban block to reach a destination, they’ll leave in disgust and loathing, never to return.

Well, perhaps New Albany should post way-finding signs to help the clueless locate Veteran’s Parkway, to experience the orgasmic thrill of the cookie-cutter.

While there may be a grain of truth to it as pertains to those lost causes enamored of hopping in their gas guzzlers for a quick cruise to the foot of a driveway to claim their snail mail, it strikes me as yet another example of older folks utterly failing to understand a dawning age, and the beauty of this new way of thinking about mobility is that it’s both old and proven.

The city was built for walking, and even if we’ve spent decades deconstructing the grid, it’s never too late to start all over again. This country boy managed to learn better. You can, too.

Distracted drivers.

My nephew recently graduated from Jeffersonville High School. The school is so large that commencement attendees were asked to park in a nearby big box retailer's lot and be shuttled in. My mother was excited. Having grown up in inner-city New Albany, it was the first time she'd ever ridden a school bus.

Things have changed.

New Albany-Floyd County CONSOLIDATED School Corporation buses travel roughly 1,000,000 miles per year. Fuel costs are so high adminstrators say it's worth spending additional money to install GPS tracking systems on the buses to try to determine more efficient routes.

And today they're closing the sale of one of the only walkable schools left in the corporation's inventory for a reported $415,000, helping to ensure that the driving inanity above will be much more difficult to correct in future.

I hope the homophobes enjoy it.

Max-Neef: "We act systematically against the evidences we have."

Chilean economist and Right Livelihood Award winner Manfred Max-Neef appeared on Democracy Now with Amy Goodman last week and had a lot to say in 20 minutes, including laying out the guidelines and value statement below.




1. The economy is to serve the people, not the people to serve the economy.
2. Development is about people, and not about objects.
3. Growth is not the same as development, and development does not necessarily require growth.
4. No economy is possible in the absence of ecosystem services.
5. The economy is a subsystem of a larger finite system — the biosphere, hence permanent growth is impossible.

“No economic interest, under any circumstances, can be more important than LIFE in all its manifestations.”

Oh, and I'm bringing a ski mask to the parade party on Saturday if I can find one. Join me if you like.