So an update to this post. It turns out the Amili “South Shore” as it is called will not have a parking garage facing the water. They’ve actually built another building in front of the parking garage, putting them a couple hundred feet closer to the water front. So just imagine the old pictures, but with a building even closer to the water that goes up to the very top of the parking garage and is covered in a mixture of stucco and brick. It’s basically like all the rest of the apartment complexes currently on the lake. This is the sort of thing I wish Save Town Lake was fighting. It’s a massive eyesore from across the lake.

But instead I found out today they’re fighting a development at 801 Barton Springs. I actually probably agree with their reasons that this project doesn’t need to be a PUD. But apparently it’s part of the waterfront overlay. I’m baffled by this. How far does the waterfront overlay go? For those not in the know this is the old “Filling Station” restaurant location that has been a beautiful location of urban blight with views of the Palmer Parking Garage and host to a snow cone trailer. You could not feel farther from the lake at this location.

I’m not a fan of a lot of development going on on the lake. I ran the trail again just today, and the girls and I walked it Sunday. I really love the trail and lake. But I really don’t understand this fighting development that’s so far from the lake. I feel like energy needs to be saved for the stuff that’s really endangering the waterfront like the Amili South Shore.

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Comments

Alex

2010-01-28T05:16:03.000Z

It’s this exact sort of nonsense which makes it clear to me that Save Town Lake is really fighting for something other than saving Town Lake.

troy madres

2010-01-28T08:21:38.000Z

Not unless you live in Bouldin. I think Bouldinites are worried about buildings taller than what is currently next door. The neighborhood will be upset if it is any taller than those. Personally, I don’t really care, but I can understand that my neighbors don’t want to lose another view of downtown.

Tim (http://www.loadedguntheory.com)

2010-01-28T08:29:41.000Z

And I completely understand that. But that’s not an issue for “Save Town Lake”, anymore than building a Walmart at Northcross would be. I realize there are stakeholders here, I just don’t think Save Town Lake is one. I do think ultimately Bouldin is probably going to lose having density along their main transit corridors. There are too many derilect properties (I’m looking at you 1001 dirt lot car shops and rim stores) and too much money on the table. It would be wise to go to the table to try to get the best projects they can. Try to get nice sidewalks, stores, and parks out of the deal. It’s interesting to me that the neighborhood hasn’t gotten a plan for Lamar and Barton Springs like the one that exists for the East Riverside corridor.

Currently I have to feed Punky the cat a pill every night to keep her alive. This pill must be handled with a latex glove. The irony of that is not lost on me.

Last night I realized that latex gloves are awesome for making sound effects. Specifically the amplified sound of a cockroach. Put one on, and tap a quick tattoo on your fingers. You’ll have the ladies running.

Just wrote a response on a Crossland Blog post about school gerrymandering. Dunno if it will get approved. What prompted it was this comment:

…we faced a similar middle school situation last year. We can see the middle school from our back yard – living close enough to it that RRISD says our neighborhood is walking distance. But they wanted to switch our neighborhood to a lower performing school. … As a result, we considered selling our home – the market range for our home was about $10k less than we paid for it back in 2002. We are not independently wealthy – we could not afford to send our kids to private school… So, would we flush $10k of equity down the toilet in order to get our kids into the best school track we could afford? HECK YES! And I would peel out in the moving truck with the window down, flipping the bird to my former neighbors while doing it!…

My Response:

Yeah, but your neighbors will have the last laugh when your kid can’t get into a state school because of the top 10% rule. The abandonment of our schools in pursuit of some mythical “excellent education” for our children only, would shock our grandparents and is anti-ethical to the American ideal. We’re paying for it in any case. Every kid that drops out of school and becomes an unproductive member of society is a hit to our paycheck. Ever think there might be a correlation between Texas’ #49th in Education ranking and #3 in property taxes ranking?

For me this attitude is like saying sure there are kids starving, but I’m going to do whatever it takes to make sure my kid gets 42 bags of potato chips. It’s glutinous and it’s disgusting.

But hey, It’s your kids “superior” education or spending a large portion of your paycheck on welfare, prisons, and the military. Your choice.

I’ve got to be honest. I like the idea of light rail. It’s cool. It’s different. But the more I look at non-light rail projects like Capital Metro’s Red Line and light rail projects like Dallas and Houston’s. I don’t know if they justify the cost. When I look at transportation there is one massive problem, and it exists whether we’re talking about rail or buses. Transferring sucks. In Austin the best case transfer takes 25 minutes. For the bus that goes closest to my house that could go up to over an hour. So no matter how awesome some potential rail line is, I still have to plan to get my transfers as close as possible. And if I miss my transfer coming home, I’ve got an hour to wait. I think at the end of the day, the best thing that CapMetro can do is run more buses. They get a lot of flack for empty buses, but I think they could counter this with a convenience message. If their goal is to make sure that you can take a bus and never wait more than 5 minutes for a transfer, then the bus becomes much more convenient for getting places. And if a commute takes 45 minutes rather than 65 minutes, that’s a huge difference in deciding to ditch a car. And if a trip to the grocery store takes 15 minutes by bus rather than 35 minutes, I’d be much more likely to consider the bus. We’re spending hundreds of millions of dollars just to build the new Red Line, what kind of additional bus service could we get for that? And what about a line going up and down 360 with WiFi? It seems like no one would take it, but I’d contend that with good advertising it could be a packed route. There are a lot of workaholics on 360 and if you could let them work on their commute they’d jump at it. I think this is a big difference between the potential audience on 360 and the audience currently being shuttled into downtown.

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Comments

Alex

2010-01-18T23:36:42.000Z

Agreed. The problem is that they’re building the light rail, which is actually just a commuter line, where no one wants to go. We should be spending hundreds of millions on putting in the first line that feeds major employment, shopping, university, and residential areas of the city, rather than on a commuter rail for a distant suburb. Interconnecting lines that take passengers to the airport, suburbs, etc should be planned for the future. Light rail done right is a way for the city’s inhabitants to get around the city, first and foremost.

Alex

2010-01-19T04:33:08.000Z

I think m1ek, has it exactly right. http://mdahmus.monkeysystems.com/blog/archives/000627.html

Tim (http://www.loadedguntheory.com/)

2010-01-19T04:45:13.000Z

He Alex, we’ve actually been debating this on Facebook (including m1ek). You’re welcome to join us: http://www.facebook.com/timthomas.lgt My biggest issue is still that even though I’m less than 2 miles from the proposed light rail line (not Red Line, the COA light rail proposal), I’ll either have to take a bus that comes every 70 minutes and transfer, or walk 1/2 mile to a bus that comes every 20 minutes. The connections are still a massive pain and I’m in a pretty good transit location between 3 bus routes (7,9, and 328).

A few of my thoughts. Julie eventually got too agitated to watch it so we quit over half way through.

1. I thought Medina came off pretty well, but then eventually went completely over the top. She threw in an “eliminate all property taxes” without in any way explaining it which sounded looney. That said, she also consistently countered Perry’s blatant lies with actual facts and figures. Which was great. I have no clue why Hutchinson wasn’t ready to do the same thing. (She did try, she just didn’t have the facts at her fingertips like Medina).

2. Perry was creepy. I thought Bush was creepy. Perry is like a really creepy animatronic Bush. He also appeared to be a bobble head doll with one arm on TV. It did not help matters. His answers were on message, but he really tried to get away with some statements that ranged from stretching to outright lies. He tried to use job numbers from 2007 and got called on it. He tried to claim he cut business taxes after raising them last year. It as classic Republican “they’ll believe me if I say it enough”.

3. While I give Hutchinson points for having a nuanced view on Abortion and actually trying to express it, she did so in such an inelegant way that it was laughable. She basically was trying to make the point that if Roe v. Wade was overturned there would be places in the United States where abortion was very, very legal and it would be quick car ride to get to them. Whereas under Roe v. Wade the federal government has control and can restrict abortions everywhere even if they can’t completely eliminate them. In other words Roe v. Wade gives the anti-abortion movement control at the federal level and thus is a good thing (in so far as it can be in her view). That said, she was obviously trying to avoid the headling “Hutchinson for Roe v. Wade”, and her answer danced and danced. It was patently ridiculous.

4. On the emminent domain question, Perry talked like Bush. He said he was extremely for emminent domain which I couldn’t tell if it was a freudian slip. He said he’d presented a bill for the voters, that they had overwhelmingly approved. It was a constitutional ammendement. But the worst part was they asked about farmers who felt they weren’t getting a fair shake with regards to access and new roads. He said he grew up on a farm (random). And then proceeded to give a completely tone deaf answer. He said the voters were overwhelmingly for tort reform and these farmers concerns were actually just trial lawyers trying to start a new cottage industry in frivolous lawsuits. Which possibly it is. But he really pretty much told rural Texas to take a flying fuck. And with a big ass smirk on his face.

5. Hutchinson quoted a figure from the Dallas Morning News and Perry said that he didn’t take them as a paper of record. WTF? The Dallas Morning News? That’s a Republican newspaper. I understand attacking “the media”, but attacking a right-wing news source, makes you seem ridiculous.

6. Perry brought up the fact that he’s not afraid to veto bills. But I think that misfired, since he just reminded people that he tends to veto bills that they’re counting on. Like the recent retired teacher bonuses bill.

I thought Medina was the only one who came off as being able to articulate a point. Unfortunately her points were a bit to wacko to be elected. She did a great job, though, of breaking through the current Republican trend of being able to flat out lie and have no one call you on it. I have no clue why Hutchinson didn’t do a better job of that.

Hutchinson looked somewhat human and gave the best answers. She talked about Texas being great right now, but needing to plan for the next 20 years. Which is a really good counter to Perry’s platform of nothing. I mean, he really had nothing. That said, he didn’t completely fall on his face, and Hutchinson wasn’t as compelling as she needed to be, so the advantage went to Perry.

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Comments

Jeff

2010-01-15T22:59:50.000Z

I’m sure Hutchinson didn’t call Perry out with live fact checking because 1) she’s not smart enough and 2) she’s as complicit in the lie-till-they-believe-it school of politics as any establishment republican. Sadly though, I’m tempted to register to vote in their primary in the hopes she’ll pull it out over goodhair, because I’ve seen nothing to shake my faith that the Texas dems will fuck it up yet again this year.

So I’ve gotten kindof into the idea of talking about theater lately, and where it should go, and what it should look like. And I realize there’s a difference between my idea of theater, and the idea of theater in some town where they get hundreds or millions of dollars in funding. I mean, I’m a little bitter about Zach Scott getting a new theater on my dime, but it really seems kind of practical when you read this. To sum up for those of you not interested in the subject matter:

FugardChicago2010 is a website jointly created by three Chicago theatres, my day job, Remy Bumppo and Timeline. The League of Chicago Theatres supported the project by helping to cover some of the costs around the project. The rest of the project was paid for by the three theatres. The purpose of the website and the related efforts is to increase the public’s awareness of Athol Fugard, a South African playwright and author.

For those who don’t know who Athol Fugard is, this is basically like 3 south african theaters geting together to create a website to increase awareness about Arthur Miller. Athol Fugard is probably the most famous African playwright. A few people have heard of him. Like a few people have heard of Tony Kushner.

So apparently to raise awareness of one of the world’s most well known living playwrights (which I realize makes him still about as well known as your favorite indy band), we need to pool our grant money to make a website?

Seriously. Established theater’s cannot die quickly enough to stop wasting their resources.

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Comments

Holmes (http://the-holmes.blogspot.com)

2010-01-15T21:37:06.000Z

Yeah, a lot of “established theater” often sucks because it seems to be so in love with itself and where it’s already been instead of trying to go somewhere new. I got nothing against restaging a work if there’s a good reason to do so, even if that reason is nothing more than “lots of people like this play.” Still, that’s no way to push the artform forward and create something new. It’s the equivalent of Hollywood playing it safe with remakes, reboots, and movie versions of old TV shows. They might be kind of neat, and in some cases even really awesome, but overall there’s no risk being taken, nothing new. Instead of standing on the shoulders of those that came before, they’re trying to sit in their lap.

So, I’ve been thinking some more about ticket prices. About as experimental with prices as we’ve gotten in Austin is “Pick-you-price”. I’ve observed a few trends:

• You have to run 3 weeks to make your money back. Week 3 pays for week 1.
• Sell-outs happen in the last week.
• People almost always pick the cheapest price on “Pick-your-price”

So I’m thinking about adding some new features to BuyPlayTix to allow experimentation with price. What if we took the pick your price tiers and assigned them to a different week. So for example:

Week 1 - $10
Week 2 - $15
Week 3 - $20

We’d hopefully be encouraging people to buy tickets in Week 1, and if they didn’t we’d make more money in week 3.

And what about sell out shows? Would it be useful to automatically make the last 10 tickets to any show $2 more than their standard price?

So The Holmes wrote a great post that pretty much sums up how I’ve been feeling about religion lately. One of the things I’ve been struggling with is our brain’s love of narrative (I know, crazy for a writer, right?). One of the things that I’ve heard people use to justify the idea of a God (any God) and an afterlife is that pretty much everyone on earth seems to think there’s something after death.

But I just wonder if that’s because our brains are hard-wired to invent narrative. What happens in a romantic movie after the final kiss and the credits roll? Our brains tell us that these people live a wonderful life, do wonderful things. But they’re characters in a story. And unless there’s a sequel, technically nothing happens. They’re gone. No thoughts. No actions. Nothing.

Our brains have a real problem with this concept. Sure if we think about it we can wrap our heads around the idea that at the end of Jurrassic Park the survivors don’t continue living their lives. It’s just credits and black. But we like to imagine new adventures. New lives. We do it naturally without even thinking about it. My brain thinks of the characters who are still alive at the end of the story as still being alive (which is definitely bizarre if you’re talking about a silent movie from the turn of the century).

Which, coming back to religion, I just wonder if this built in need for narrative is what drives our need for religion. Because we have a real problem with death being nothing. Not nothing like a black void. But nothing, as in no continued consciousness. Not watching our children grow old. Not hanging around in robes continuing our life on earth more or less with more singing. Just the end.

I’m still trying to wrap my brain around it. And my brain keeps suggesting alternatives. It really doesn’t like this idea of an unresolved narrative that just abruptly ends.

And that makes me wonder about the evolutionary function of it. As a species did we get too neurotic knowing that death could be around any corner and that was the end? Does this evolutionary delusion make us more productive and more likely to take risks thus increasing our genetic mixing?

I’ve been spending way too much time thinking about this.

Went to the tail of lights on Sunday. It was pretty miserable for us due to miscommunication and illness, but I thought it was still really pretty and worth the trip.

We drove to Barton Creek Mall, parked near the lower level Sears and got on a number 30 bus. It’s a bit of a circuitous route, but they drop you off right at the entrance to the trail. It’s a great painless way to get there.

Although we’ve got to do something about people letting their dogs off leashes and not picking up. It smells horrible there. Anyone who’s run the Hike and Bike trial when it’s raining knows the smell. I think that this area due to the number of people who let their dogs off leash might be even worse, though. I understand some people have high energy dogs, but seriously , if we’re going to have places where dog’s can go off leash they probably need to not be parks. They probably need to be outdoor areas completely covered in mulch, carefully graded for runoff to go directly into the sewer system. Like a cattle yard.

How do other cities deal with this? It’s foul.

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Comments

travisbedard

2009-12-19T04:14:11.000Z

Are you sure it’s not the Dillo Dirt base?

Tim

2009-12-19T04:25:12.000Z

Definitely. I have lots of dillo dirt in my yard. And it’s the same smell the hike and bike trail has which has no dillo dirt.

Let’s get really pro-life. In addition to not letting Americans buy health plans that provide coverage for abortions, and not allowing the government to pay for abortions with tax dollars, I think we should also deprive health care funding for any prisons that have a death row. Seems fair to me.

Hey, I’m just taking a page from the Republican playbook.