REWIND: Good points aplenty ... "The big urban mistake: Building for tourism vs. livability."

Social media at Strong Towns reposted this link today. It appeared previously in this space in May 26, 2017. It has long been my viewpoint that grassroots "economic development" officials (municipal officials, non-profit organizations, business owners and other stakeholders) should use points like these as the basis for their discussions. Do they? Beats me, but I think we can all see how much Greg Fischer's "Bourbonism" has been worth in the year 2020. 

THE BIG URBAN MISTAKE: BUILDING FOR TOURISM VS. LIVABILITY, by Arian Horbovetz (The Urban Phoenix)

... I’m painting with a bit of a broad brush, but essentially what so many cities are currently experiencing is the dilemma of whether to invest in large urban draws that will bring outside money in, or invest in a growing and changing downtown residential population that yearns for investments in keeping them there. To put it simply, do cities invest in big projects that create an entertaining space that grows tourism, or do they invest in the people that have already taken a risk by moving back into their long-dormant downtowns?

LEAP

City leaders, this one’s for you. You can either cater to your new residents by going into the downtown apartment buildings and listening to real people, or you can hop on the big ticket project train en route to a revolving door downtown. You can either build for livability or build for fleeting, often overrated promises of tourism revenue. You can facilitate local small business and community development, or you can create a short-lived wow-factor by opening the floodgates to developers and business interests who take money out of our communities. You can empower and invest in your new downtown residents and let THEM be the ambassadors for our growing urban paradises, or you can ignore them and build casinos and other flashy complexes that cater to the outsider and likely line the pockets of someone beyond the boundaries of the community.

The choice, as always, is yours to make. Choose to invest in your residents and local business owners… the people that invested first… tourism, development and financial success will likely follow. Empower your people, honor the risk they took by taking one yourself, and like happy employees of a strong company, they will take care of everything else.

The enduring fascination of Chernobyl and Pripyat -- now with package tours.

Disaster Tourism: Holidays in Chernobyl is a Deutsche Welle documentary about an unlikely form of tourism.

The business in post-radioactive tourism is booming. The accident at the Chernobyl power plant in 1986 was the worst nuclear disaster in history. So what’s it like there today? Is it deadly silent? On the contrary. Thousands of tourists flock to the scene of the catastrophe every year.

Tour operators in Chernobyl are expecting more than 100,000 visitors in 2019. Tourists from all over the world come to take a tour of the ghost towns and learn more about the consequences of a nuclear accident. The organizers insist the area has been extensively cleaned up in the last few decades, so a brief stay shouldn’t pose any risk, but some areas are still heavily contaminated. Chemistry graduate Serhij Myrnyj was responsible for radiation monitoring after the accident. Today he is the biggest provider of tours to Chernobyl, trying to improve the region's reputation and boost the economy through tourism. He now wants Chernobyl to receive UNESCO World Heritage Site status and so open up new prospects for the region. For the tourists, the trip to the restricted area is a unique experience, but for others it’s a tough existence. Former resident who returned home illegally after the evacuation live on the contaminated land here like recluses.

The updated sarcophagus containing the stricken reactor's lethal core is built to last 100 years, but the radioactivity itself will be with us for 100,000 years.

The City the Chernobyl Disaster Left Behind, Then and Now, by Darmon Richter (Atlas Obscura)

Archival images of Pripyat before the accident offer a stunning contrast to what visitors will find today.

Built to house the workers of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, by 1986 Pripyat was a thriving atomgrad. Schools and kindergartens, a cinema, palace of culture, swimming pools, river port, and a respectable selection of shops and cafés—all these amenities served the city’s young populace, by then numbering nearly 50,000 residents. New administrative districts were under construction in anticipation of further growth. Pripyat offered a standard of life above and beyond that of many contemporary Soviet cities, so much so that, “to men and women born in the sour hinterlands of the USSR’s factory cities… the new atomgrad was a true workers’ paradise,” as Adam Higginbotham explains in his recent history of the disaster, Midnight in Chernobyl.

The city of Pripyat stood in the front line of that disaster—just a couple of miles from the ill-fated plant—and now, in the 33 years since the last human resident left, nature has reclaimed it ...

What is Take Life on the Road?

Taking life on the road means "road trip," and Take Life on the Road does the driving.

Take Life on the Road® is the tour division of Destinations Booksellers and we market ourselves under the name Take Life on the Road® (DTI -Destinations Tours Indiana). You can phone or text us at (812) 944-5116 or email us at takelifeontheroad@gmail.com. We’re on Twitter as @DTIRoadLife, on Facebook as TakeLifeontheRoad.

Watch for our Instagram feed and coming soon, our YouTube channel.

More in depth: Our Story.

"Disneyland on Alcohol: a Sober Journey Into the Hospitality-Industrial Complex."

Don't let City Hall see this, or they'll
be taking a junket to Sonoma for TIF opps.

This is a thoughtful article about the intersection of agriculture, tourism, law enforcement and gentrification. Meanwhile, "Disneyism" as a way of life has not ever made sense to me, even when completely smashed. As with religion, there's not enough alcohol on the planet to dupe me into believing the palpably untrue.

Disneyland on Alcohol: a Sober Journey Into the Hospitality-Industrial Complex, by Jonah Raskin (CounterPunch)

Lila Weinberger, the cofounder and co-owner of Readers’ Books, noted not long ago that, “If you offer wine and cheese at an event in Sonoma, people will be sure to come.” Indeed, it doesn’t take much. There was no cheese, but there was a bottle of Cabernet and another of Sauvignon Blanc at a recent launch at Readers’. By the end of the evening, the bottles were empty, the books sold and autographed by the author, Jeff Falconer, who told the audience, “Meditation is an internal energy massage.”

In Sonoma, wine is not only at Readers’, but also in bars, bistros, and supermarkets. It’s at bachelor, bachelorette and birthday parties, and at weddings that are often held at winery “event centers.” One can’t drive a mile in any direction from the plaza and not encounter Chardonnay and Pinot Noir vines squeezed closely together and cultivated to maximize the weight of the crush and the alcohol level.

From all over the world, tourists come for a taste of what’s called “Wine Country Living” that has been created by the “hospitality-industrial-complex” which includes spas, restaurants, vacation rental and tasting rooms.

Some observers call the complex, “The Juggernaut.” All-too-often, politicians are beholden to it, while public relations employees sing its praises. Sly as a fox and slippery as an eel, the Juggernaut employs thousands of people who work in fields, warehouses, hotels, kitchens, dining rooms and on assembly lines that turn out millions of bottles of red, white, rosé and sparkling wines that bear the name Sonoma and that are exported around the world. Sometimes the wine in the bottles is made from grapes grown in the Central Valley and South America, and sometimes executives in France and China call the shots.

Still, if the valley is known for one thing, it’s wine, and, while some rejoice at the renown, others complain about what they call “Disneyland on Alcohol.” On the whole, the industry fails to live up to the standards it promotes in advertising and publicity ...

Airbnb in Nawbany: To tax or not to tax?

My Main Street neighbor Josh Pavey and councilman Al Knable provide talking points in the video, which you can view by following the link.

If the deity is to be thanked for small favors, here's one: Bob Caesar does not appear.

Since no one asked me, I'll offer this hint to those in favor of regulating and taxing Airbnb properties: You do not want Bob Caesar as your spokesman.

You're welcome and can buy me a beer some day.

New Albany officials weighing pros and cons of Airbnb regulations, by Chris Sutter (WDRB 41)

NEW ALBANY, Ind. (WDRB)-- Josh Pavey's grandmother just got done with a big facelift to her classic home on New Albany's mansion row.

"She just recently repainted the entire outside of her house, redid the facade, the woodwork," he said.

She's been able to do it because of the extra money she's bringing in after opening her doors to visitors. Her home is an Airbnb.

"It's been a huge asset to her," Pavey said about his grandmother.

She's part of a growing trend in New Albany. A new spot in the southern Indiana city seems to pop up on Airbnb.com daily. The winds of change don't go unnoticed by lawmakers. Talk is beginning about how to properly regulate the new businesses.

"I'd like for there to be discussion from the public, public input, about what they want their neighborhoods to look like," said City Councilman Al Knable.

He's decided to get the conversation started.

ON THE AVENUES: Back in the USSR, with my old friend Barr.

ON THE AVENUES: Back in the USSR, with my old friend Barr.

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

Today's column is one in a linked series of narratives describing my 1987 summer in Europe. Previously, Good morning, Moscow. Next: A taste of Moscow, with occasional beers for sustenance.


28 June 1987

Just shy of midnight, my childhood pal Barrie “Barr” Ottersbach stepped off the elevator into the corridor running past the block of rooms reserved at the Hotel Molodjezhny for the use of Scandinavian Travel Service Tour’s SSTS S819, conducted in conjunction with Sputnik, the Soviet youth and student agency.

Three decades of campfire stories were about to break out.

I’d debuted earlier the same day, miraculously allowed to occupy a room without waiting for the group’s late evening arrival. As the Americans, Canadians and Australians who would be my travel companions for the next two weeks came trickling down the corridor, I grilled them.

“Did Barrie make it?”

“Barrie? Is he the crazy guy with the mustache? Don’t worry. He’s coming.”

As I was grinding out the endless miles from Budapest to Moscow to the rhythm of choo-choo wheels and the providential lubrication of Bull’s Blood wine, Barrie had flown from Louisville to Copenhagen, Denmark and spent a hotel night there prior to meeting the group at the pre-arranged location.

On the 28th, the tour group flew from Copenhagen to Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), then switched planes for the late flight to Moscow, arriving at 22.30.

Barrie and I long had been keen on visiting the USSR as a team, and my brief weekend experience in Leningrad in 1985 inspired me to plot a return in 1987. He decided to go, too, and when the Soviet tour was over, we’d be continuing our journey into Western Europe. In the end, we spent more than six weeks carousing, with a great deal of learning as an added bonus.

Visiting the USSR meant finding a good tour package. During the Cold War, independent or otherwise unsupervised travel in the Soviet Union was problematic. It could be done, just not easily. Once on the ground with a group, there’d be nothing binding us to the daily schedule, and we could explore on our own, provided we remained within city limits and kept our tour leader informed.

Barrie and I discussed it at length, and took the recommendation of Let’s Go: Europe by opting for SSTS. I’ve never once regretted the decision. SSTS’s itinerary was designed for impoverished youth, and was as affordable as it got. While decidedly non-luxurious, it covered the high points and got us inside, through the gate.

More importantly, the tour led to an enduring friendship with Kim Wiesener, the Danish group leader for SSTS, and by extension, with his friends Allan Gamborg and Kim Andersen.

Kim was our age, but he was an old Soviet hand, with a Russian branch on his family tree. He had attended Moscow State University and spoke Russian. His gig for SSTS was part-time, and offered a working holiday every now and then.

The poor guy. He had no idea.

---

Legend has it that Kim fell under Barrie’s spell (or was it the other way around?) during the apparently bumpy Aeroflot flights. It’s no surprise. Barrie was, and remains, a people person writ large. If you’re not his comrade, it’s only because you haven’t yet met him – as numerous Marxist-Leninists were about to learn.

By midnight we were drinking every beer we could scrounge from a relatively helpful restaurant employee downstairs, and catching up on things. Subconsciously, I began adjusting to the likelihood of vastly reduced sleep for the foreseeable future.

Next morning, the first of many boozy evenings behind us, tour participants met in the lobby for a breakfast the likes of which I can’t remember at all. As befits a budget tour of a Communist country, the food we’d paid to be fed was a bit of a letdown, rather institutional, and sufficient for sustenance but little else.

All the more reason to seek calories in alcohol.

As the group dined, Kim counted heads. On the very first morning of the tour, there already was one conspicuous absence, which was left for me to explain.

No worries, I told Kim.

Barrie’s with Bill.

Bill? What Russian is named “Bill”?

Yes, well … Bill. You know – from the Ukraine, not Russia.

Rather than the regularly scheduled orientation bus ride through Moscow, Barrie had opted to join the friendly neighborhood black market sales representative for an informative glimpse into the Soviet Union’s alternative underground “second” economy.

Bill was hesitant to be photographed. 

As Kim gulped and reached for the Danish version of Rolaids, I apologized. I’d been the one who had met Bill on the street the previous day, discretely changed money with him, and been treated to ice cream and a hot dog.

In fact, I was ready to pay Bill a high compliment; for a Communist all of 18 years old, he was a highly polished entrepreneur. Kim shook his head, perhaps glimpsing the sheer magnitude of the chaperone’s task ahead.

Red Square, SE view toward St. Basil's;
Kremlin and Lenin's Mausoleum to the right.

Changing of the guard at Lenin's Mausoleum.

Red Square, looking NW.

The morning bus orientation concluded, we returned to the hotel for lunch and found Barr waiting, bright and chipper following his appointment … and not coincidentally, brandishing a softball-sized wad of colorful Soviet rubles.

In effect, he’d laundered rubles into dollars so that Bill LLC could buy audio equipment at a Beriozka, or hard currency store where quality foreign items were sold for real money, not rubles.

---

The Soviet Union may have appeared monolithic, though the country’s economy was anything but.

The second economy in the Soviet Union was the informal sector in the economy of the Soviet Union. The term was suggested by Gregory Grossman in his seminal article, "The Second Economy of the USSR" (1977). Economist Gerard Roland noted that as Grossman anticipated, "the logic of the second economy tended over time to undermine the logic of the command system and to lead to expanding black markets" … to a varying degree, second economy influenced all Eastern Bloc economies.

Grossman defines the concept of second economy with a two-prong test: it is the set of economic activities which satisfy at least one of the two conditions: "(a) being directly for private gain (b) being in some significant respect in knowing contravention of existing law."

The black market feature of this “second economy” existed to suit demand that the official economy couldn’t (or wouldn’t) fill.

As the joke went, Soviet citizens pretended to work, and the government pretended to pay them. In theory, the basics of life – food, shelter, medical care – were provided at little or no charge, meaning that there’d be ample leftover rubles for discretionary spending.

Except there wasn’t very much to buy.

Command economies in the Soviet Bloc were geared to produce heavy industrial articles -- steel, cement, tractors -- and not consumer goods. Consequently, everyday items westerners took for granted were generally scarce.

The common man’s solution was to stick the excess rubles into savings accounts or stuff them under the mattress, then dive headfirst into the “blat” economy of barter and favors in order to keep the household wheels turning.

Almost inevitably, this meant circumventing the law. The object of blat was to accumulate swappable chits, either tangible or intangible. As can be readily imagined, petty thievery and outright corruption quickly ensued.

If scarce shoes arrived at a shop, the employees would divvy them up before they were stocked in view of the public, because their value was higher in the informal bartering market than as a cash transaction – and if you couldn’t get a physical object in return for a pair of pilfered shoes, the favor you were owed could be saved and redeemed when necessary.

Perhaps the dentist given the shoes would fix your teeth off the clock ... "borrowing" workplace materials, of course.

Bill’s entrepreneurial career was little more than a logical progression from Blat 101. He recognized that the Soviet government was complicit in the black market, or else it wouldn’t have established Beriozka shops in the first place, filled with goods unobtainable without dollars, Deutschmarks or pounds sterling.

That’s because the ruble was not attached to the planetary capitalist economic system. Rubles had no value outside the Soviet Union, so the government needed hard currency just as much as Bill wanted audio equipment.

In turn, Barrie now found himself with several hundred rubles in a place where subway tickets were mere kopecks (or shrapnel, as Barrie referred to them) and a lavish restaurant meal with vodka, champagne and caviar might cost 10 – 15 rubles per person, or maybe $22 at the “official” exchange rate, but Barr’s black market rate was closer to seven rubles to the dollar, perhaps even more.

A fur hat of ordinary quality could be found on the shelf in a department store, for just a few of Barrie’s rubles. The better quality fur hats? They were in the Beriozka, and unavailable for purchase with rubles at any price.

So, how would Barrie's ruble windfall be depleted? Rubles couldn't be exchanged back into dollars without a bank receipt, and it was illegal to take them out of the USSR. Even if smuggled out, rubles were worth almost nothing.

But Barrie always has been an observant student of human nature, and he’d already considered the angles before joining Bill for a June morning’s foraging. He’d gleefully spend as many rubles as possible on meals, beers and commonplace (but atmospheric) souvenir trinkets to pack home.

As his chief accomplice, I’d be allowed to run a tab.

Barrie also would take a page out of Bill’s guidebook and accept a temporary position as financial consultant on the Anglophone fringe of the black market, profitably reselling rubles back into hard currency at a reasonable “favored customer” discount for those members of our tour group who were too cautious to trade for them on the street.

In the end, it all worked out just fine. In the coming days, I’ll do my best to describe these memorable times abroad.

Some of the stories might even be true.

---

Recent columns:

June 22: ON THE AVENUES: Train Whistle Reds, or my journey from Budapest to Moscow by rail in June, 1987.

June 15: ON THE AVENUES: Hi there, NAHA wastrels. My name is Peter Principle, and these are my friends Deaf and Dugout.

June 8: ON THE AVENUES: Since 2004, "Two way, better way."

June 1: ON THE AVENUES: Take this cult of personality and shove it.

Unlock your inner tapophile with "tomb tourism."

New Albany's Fairview Cemetery never disappoints.

While I appreciate the tone of this commentary, it remains that cemeteries are invaluable for a history buff. They reveal so much about local culture. Perhaps that's why I've been to so many during the course of my travels.

And yes, I made three purposeful trips just to commune with Jim Morrison at Père Lachaise. Photos may follow someday as my old slides are digitalized. Until then, note only that "tapophile" implies something very different to me.

Tomb tourism is an old hobby in brighter clothes, by Barbara Ellen (The Guardian)

Hanging out in cemeteries has always appealed to those with a taste for the macabre

It seems that there is a rise in tombstone tourism. This is where people visit places with the express intention of looking around graveyards. Dubbed tapophiles, they are sometimes interested in a particular site because famous people are buried there, such as Karl Marx in Highgate cemetery or Oscar Wilde in the Père Lachaise in Paris.

At other times, the tapophiles just wish to wander among the tombstones, enjoying the sombre atmosphere. There are even special tours to ensure you don’t miss out on a particularly rocking cemetery ...

Good points aplenty: "The big urban mistake: Building for tourism vs. livability."

Team Gahan and Develop New Albany should be locked into a room together.

That'd be enough in itself, but they shouldn't be allowed to come out.

Okay, at least not until each one of them has read this article and are compelled to comment publicly.

As we know, they're unlikely to read this or any other essay, so sound off, fellow dissidents. How is Dear Leader doing according to the criteria herein? I'm sure the upper echelons at Flaherty and Collins have a point of view.

Public housing residents likely do, too. Thanks for the link, MW.

THE BIG URBAN MISTAKE: BUILDING FOR TOURISM VS. LIVABILITY, by Arian Horbovetz (The Urban Phoenix)

... I’m painting with a bit of a broad brush, but essentially what so many cities are currently experiencing is the dilemma of whether to invest in large urban draws that will bring outside money in, or invest in a growing and changing downtown residential population that yearns for investments in keeping them there. To put it simply, do cities invest in big projects that create an entertaining space that grows tourism, or do they invest in the people that have already taken a risk by moving back into their long-dormant downtowns?

LEAP

City leaders, this one’s for you. You can either cater to your new residents by going into the downtown apartment buildings and listening to real people, or you can hop on the big ticket project train en route to a revolving door downtown. You can either build for livability or build for fleeting, often overrated promises of tourism revenue. You can facilitate local small business and community development, or you can create a short-lived wow-factor by opening the floodgates to developers and business interests who take money out of our communities. You can empower and invest in your new downtown residents and let THEM be the ambassadors for our growing urban paradises, or you can ignore them and build casinos and other flashy complexes that cater to the outsider and likely line the pockets of someone beyond the boundaries of the community.

The choice, as always, is yours to make. Choose to invest in your residents and local business owners… the people that invested first… tourism, development and financial success will likely follow. Empower your people, honor the risk they took by taking one yourself, and like happy employees of a strong company, they will take care of everything else.

For the record: The return of The NewAlbanist, with good advice about hours of operation.

The Bookseller is back with an idea about independent small businesses staying open for business. In short, how can a city be a tourist destination if its "destination businesses" greet visitors with locked doors?

Good Golly: Mouth Shut Almost a Year

For almost a full year, gentle reader, you’ve heard nothing from me here. Anything I had to say, Ann alone had to hear it. Poor woman.

Let’s see. I tossed my hat into the ring for election to a vacant school board seat and lost – badly. I sought to return to my career in journalism and was all but ignored by what passes as our “local” paper. And then, glutton that I am, I offered myself for yet another school board seat that came open – and was roughly treated.

In business, I’ve been the living embodiment of the aphorism that pioneers get slaughtered while settlers prosper. I’ve been at it long enough and seen enough peers disappear that I qualify for the former category. But the scars I’ve earned entitle me to advise the latter.

Sunday rumination: Independent local merchants can't shy away from the big picture.

On Tuesday, there was a "merchant meeting" (formerly referred to as the "Merchant Mixer"). These informal morning gatherings have taken place somewhat regularly since 2007.

Recently several NAC postings have been devoted to items of possible interest to local independent small business owners, though it might be conceded that I have few illusions as to their reach, and even more about their acceptance.

From 2011 and 2015: Regaining consciousness in a city “coming” to? Or, the infamous Come to City marketing fiasco of 2011.

ON THE AVENUES: DNA, National Main Street, the Four Points, and how it might yet be possible to get this thing right for once.

In NA, too? "Traffic Safety Advocates Taking Action Into Their Own Hands."

ON THE AVENUES: There has never been a better time for an Independent Business Alliance in New Albany.

Did you hear the one about New Albany's tolling preparedness plan?

BID/EID: " Maybe the merchants of New Albany should consider helping themselves through this device."

Bigger pictures are painfully elusive, for whatever reason, and to be perfectly honest, I think it's a mistake for merchants to ignore contemporary urban themes pertaining to streets, walkability, the built environment, placemaking and parking, among others.

There's a reason why I constantly advocate two-way street reversions. If the available (and steadily expanding) evidence is correct, and two-way streets favorably enhance prospects for independent local businesses, then this enhancement occurs and compounds daily. If it added 7.5% to sales on weekdays year round, what would this total during the course of a year?

If two-way reversions were accompanied by other mutually-reinforcing initiatives in nearby neighborhoods (walkability, rental property regulation, etc,), then the result might well be an uptick in locals patronizing locals -- again, throughout the year. Downtown probably won't be the place we go to buy toilet paper, but at least it might become feasible for there to be a shop selling TP and other daily items.

However ... if merchants focus on special events as a spur to patronage by non-residents, there is a collective skewing effect, because if one has concluded that downtown New Albany is best deployed as a destination, as served by periodic special events and as a place tourists from elsewhere visit, there's a tendency to become overly conservative with regard to necessary street grid changes.

Or, the decades-old Bob Caesar error writ large: People will only come downtown from somewhere else if it's easy for their autos, and so downtown must be as suburban as possible in its organization and access.

Not only does this attitude embody an implicit civic inferiority complex (we're not good enough and must trade real content for perceived convenience), but it disenfranchises the existing population by removing their interests from the equation.

The property values of residents on a one-way arterial streets must be kept artificially low so Bob Caesar can sell a diamond, because no one would consider coming to buy a diamond from Bob Caesar unless they might do so very quickly -- and leave just as speedily.

It is my belief that by ignoring integrated factors like these, which require big picture thinking, merchants are missing the very factors weighing in favor of their long-term interests.

We welcome visitors, but we don't need to be Franklin, Tennessee. We need to be New Albany, Indiana, considering downtown economic development strategies based on who and where we are, as embracing 37,000 residents already living here. We're better off doing this ourselves, not begging for scraps from this or any other City Hall with its own political imperatives in mind.

Thus, the instructive example of tourism troubles in Brussels.

Terrorism is a huge factor in diminished downtown crowds, and yet it isn't the only one. Read on.

Tourism Troubles in Brussels, by Feargus O'Sullivan (City Lab)

Terror attacks have led to a drop-off in the Belgian capital’s visitor numbers. But that isn’t the only issue.

... According to the latest figures, Brussels hotel occupancy is at just 62 percent, a drop of 18 percent for the month of July compared to last year. Bar and restaurant takings are down between 25 and 30 percent. Even visits to the city’s most popular attraction, the iron crystal Atomium built for the 1958 World’s Fair, has seen visits fall by 40 percent.

The main reason for the fall is clear enough: people are afraid of terrorism. After the men behind the Paris attacks of last November were traced back to the Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek, a huge manhunt ensued that left the city under lockdown for four days. Long-standing fears of an imminent attack were then confirmed in March, when bomb attacks at the city’s airport and the Maalbeek Metro Station killed 35, including three perpetrators.

Maybe ...

Still, there may be yet other factors contributing to the tourism downturn in Brussels. The city’s hospitality industry is overwhelmingly centered on the knot of streets around the Grand Place, to the extent that tourists have largely taken over this part of town, and locals tend to stay away. The result is that Brussels residents are by and large not interested in spending time around the square to make up the current shortfall. According to local media reports, the area is lately dead during the mornings and after nightfall. As one local waitress told the newspaper La Libre:

"The Grand Place represents Belgium, but the [people of the] city have abandoned the UNESCO perimeter – it's a stampede! There are bums, people sit in the middle of the square drinking alcohol while listening to music. And from 9 pm onwards, there's nobody around.”

And the answer?

Elsewhere in and around Brussels, visitor attractions are fighting back with a basic but sensible plan of price cuts and promotions aimed primarily not at international visitors but Belgians.

In the meantime, the current state of the Grand Place and its environs is beginning to look like a cautionary tale to any city with areas where catering to tourists overrules the needs of locals. When tourism is allowed to dominate and then suddenly disappears, you run the risk of ending up with a gorgeous but relatively empty shell.

This glimpse of rural Spain will make you hungry and thirsty.

I'm doing just enough to keep my tomato plants alive. It's easy to over-glamorize a lifestyle that few of us would choose. It's also good to know that someone remembers how to raise sheep in the hills.

A long way from Benidorm: rural regeneration in south-east Spain, by Kevin Rushby (The Guardian)

Evaristo is teaching me to make paella. You might, like I did, think you know already, but Evaristo lives and breathes the stuff – he has made it every day for over 30 years. We’re doing it in his barn, which adds challenges.

“Can you wash the tomatoes?” he asks and I wander off looking for a tap. There are sacks of walnuts, buckets of olives soaking in brine, a newly laid egg lying discreetly in a nest of hay under a workbench, but no tap.

I’m in deepest rural Spain, in the Vall de Gallinera, Alicante, the kind of Spain where you expect to bump into Laurie Lee’s ghost on every footpath. There are the ruins of an old convent on the next hill, and a ruined Arab fort beyond that. It’s a tranquil land weathered by mystery and tragedy, but only a day’s walk from Benidorm, with its 200 nightclubs and 1,000 bars. It does not seem possible.

(The trip was provided by Village Ways, villageways.com)

Did Ben Carson curse these pyramid ruins?

Photo credit: Roadside America

If you're a supporter of Indiana-brewed beer, you already know Needmore as the home of the utterly unique Salt Creek Brewery.

Less well known is the town's Golden Fleece Award-winning pyramid ruins.

Cursed Pyramid Ruins at Roadside America

In the late 1970s the town of Bedford -- "The Limestone Capital of the World" -- tried to build a 95-foot-tall (one-fifth scale) limestone replica of the Great Pyramid of Giza, and a 650-foot-long (some say 800-foot-long) limestone version of the Great Wall of China. The idea was to open them as a combined tourist attraction named "Limestone Tourist Park."

Franklin, Tennessee.

There was a "merchant mixer" meeting this morning at Brownie's The Shed, and Jason Brown ensured the lifetime gratitude of the crowd by preparing bacon, eggs, sausage, biscuits and gravy.

Power move, sir. You'll now be the permanent host.

Making a long story short, there was a discussion about Franklin, Tennessee, which brands itself as "America's Favorite Main Street."

In fact, according to Trip Advisor, "The historic downtown district is nationally recognized as a Great American Main Street."

For a very long time, I've known Franklin as the site of a Civil War battle, which was a decisive loss for the Confederacy,but back to the point of Franklin's downtown area.

Watch the aerial view panning along Franklin's downtown streets. There's a one-way traffic circle, and a partial one-way street section ... take a look on Google Maps ...

Yep. Almost entirely a two-way street grid.

Just sayin'.

Good local travel piece: "A river beckons in Southern Indiana."

It's a solid article with local shout-outs.

I suggest that State Senator Ron Grooms focus on the preface, in which it is explained that his adored RFRA makes it necessary for the rest of us to wage constant damage control.

Thanks again, Ron. By the way, can you please see fit to do nothing, if doing something has ramifications like these?

A river beckons in Southern Indiana, by Joseph S. Pete (The Times of Northwest Indiana)

The Religious Freedom Restoration Act ignited a firestorm and incited many, including prominent Star Trek actor George Takei, to call for boycotts of Indiana. The furor has died down, but the bad press could have biased many against trips to Indiana in unconscious ways for years to come. The Hoosier state, however, offers plenty to see and do. The bimonthly Travel Indiana series highlights what's worth exploring around the state.

Louisville's a pretty cool city to visit.

The city boasts the "Keep Louisville Weird" campaign to keep unique merchants flourishing, chic dining options, a lively indie rock scene that's produced My Morning Jacket and Will Oldham, the Forecastle Music Festival, the Humana Festival of New American Plays, the Louisville Slugger Museum, all the bourbon you could ever handle, the bohemian Highlands neighborhood that's like a college village on steroids, and of course the "decadent and depraved" Kentucky Derby.

Like Chicago and Cincinnati, the Louisville metro spills over into Indiana. And the Indiana suburbs north of the Ohio River are also worth visiting in their own right.

The area is known as Southern Indiana, which is marketed as the Sunny Side of Louisville and symbolized by the iconic Colgate Clock. Because of the Ohio River, it was the first area in Indiana to be settled, and New Albany was actually Indiana's most populous city in 1850. It can feel like the South and is an area rife with natural beauty that’s not as flat and uniform as much of the rest of the state. Here's a look at some potential stops ...

Greg Fischer announces major brewery deal for Louisville and is praised as visionary by Jeff Gahan.

Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer has announced a multi-billion dollar agreement with AB-InBev to build its new Goose Island brewery in downtown Louisville.

The marquee project, to be financed with TIF bonds other than those already exhausted by the Yum Center's perpetual drain, includes luxury apartments, state of the art wi-fi, dorm fridges and a rooftop bocce ball complex.

"What's good for the Goose is good for the gander," crowed Fischer. "The ripple effect of this deal puts Louisville on the international brewing map by partnering with the acknowledged world leader in brewing portfolio diversification."

Fischer's thirst-quenching plan provides AB-InBev with brand exclusivity within a one-mile radius of the building site, which must be cleared of all superfluous historic structures before the zoning review is completed.

Existing independent Louisville breweries within this mile radius will be compelled to sell their  equipment, labels and assets to Goose Island, which as Fischer noted in the press conference, "Just makes it easier for those wonderful  guys, so they can they can get up and running and putting some of that wonderful world-class beer into barrels, because that's so Kentuckian of them."

"You can really start to feel the enormous transformation that's a going on in our downtown and how it's so good for entertainment and business in the state in so many different areas," Fischer said. as he cradled an ice-cold Shock Top.

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Yes, the preceding is satire. Just be aware that if the same standards Fischer applies to "economic development" matters like the Omni Hotel were to guide his decisions on local beer, then you would not be reading this story by Sara Havens in Insider Louisville.

Mayor introduces Lou’s Brew, boasts about the city’s bicycle initiative and plans a party

Amazingly, on RFRA, the farcical pharmacist Ron Grooms has voted against Indiana's best business and economic interests.

When old white guys live in cultural bubbles, this is what happens.

Hoosier business boosters battle boycott from 'religious freedom' bill ahead of Final Four, by Maureen Hayden (CHNI)

... (Chris) Gahl, along with a small army of Indianapolis boosters, is now scrambling to mitigate the public relations damage done by the controversy with this message: “No matter what a signed piece of paper says, it doesn’t kill Hoosier Hospitality.”

"All the streets seem to be one way around the hotel making it awkward to get in and out."

In his New Albany Downtown Street Network Proposal, Jeff Speck writes:

The current one-way configuration provides the advantage of allowing drivers to ride a wave of green lights through downtown and to take left turns unimpeded by oncoming traffic. It provides the disadvantages of increasing danger to pedestrians and cyclists, undermining retail viability, lengthening trips, and confusing visitors. 

The latter ("confusing visitors") is not first on the list of reasons to ditch our counter-productive one-way streets. However, as these comments on ratings aggregators illustrate, visitors feel the pain, too. Thanks to B for these quotes.

First, at Yelp.

This hotel met all the needs my husband and I had on a long weekend to Louisville. Very close to highway, a little confusing area because of all the one way streets but we managed -- Holiday Inn Express (now Best Western Plus) review

Then at Trip Advisor.

BTW watch out for all of the one way streets in this little town. All the streets seem to be one way around the hotel making it awkward to get in and out. This is just something to know about the area. We ended up going the wrong way while trying to get back into the back parking lot and when we came out the next day, waited while someone else tried to get off of one way going the wrong way onto another one way still going the wrong way. I think the signs are not very prominent and the on off ramps are also awkward -- BEST WESTERN PLUS West I-64 review 

A little known New Albany tourist attraction.

 It's the Triumphal Arch at the Heroic Banker's Monument.

Let's build a monument to atheism in New Albany.

Insofar as there is any such thing as atheist humor, I suppose the best known "joke" is that of the deceased atheist in his coffin, "all dressed up and no place to go."

Yesterday on Facebook, a friend from the other side of the socio-political aisle was up to her usual shimmering form, baiting the rabid mouth breathers with red meat on the topic of an atheist monument somewhere in Florida.

These threads always entertain me, as they attract droves of unbalanced Christians advocating Jesus, love, and the ritualistic tossing of unbelievers into the lion's den (shall we say that they lack the irony gene?), but it gave me an idea.

We definitely need an atheism monument here in New Albany.

But where?

Any ideas?

Who even knew North Dakota has nightlife?

"Sickening" seems a bit harsh, doesn't it? Perhaps the numbers don't match, but if you ask me, there's a reason why people go out at night, and if a city or state has the amenities to please them ... well, isn't that what it's all about? Unless, of course, the idea is to be a religious gulag, and for some, it is.

North Dakota tourism director: Ad wasn't meant to be racy, by Dale Wetzel (Associated Press)