Atlanta Braves moving to Cobb County

Atlanta is abuzz over the beloved Atlanta Braves baseball team, which is physically moving from Atlanta to suburban Cobb County.



Turner Field, built in 1996 for the Olympics, will be razed. (Already?!) The people of Cobb County are in shock. Some are ecstatic, while others are already feverishly-planning alternate driving-routes for use during Atlanta's wildly-popular baseball season.

PRICEY REAL ESTATE is at STAKE, people, and its a crisis. The money-men have spoken; the movers and shakers have pushed this through in a hurry and with a vengeance. The property that is now occupied by Turner Field will become a "large-scale development"--and the profits will be astronomical.

What is interesting to me is how the local Tea Party unexpectedly made common cause with some of the liberal Democrats in the area. From a Daily Beast post, aptly titled Tea Party Strikes Out Against the Atlanta Braves:

[Instead of] protests from fans in their current home downtown, the team has gotten an earful from furious Tea Party activists in Cobb County, the Republican-dominated portion of the metro area that was once the heart of Newt Gingrich’s congressional district and will now be home to the 60-acre site the team has chosen for its new stadium.

The Tea Party anger is focused on the county’s usually small-government, anti-tax Republican board of commissioners, which enticed the baseball team with a commitment of $300 million in public funds to go toward a new $672 million stadium for the ball club. But while the county commission called the stadium deal a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” the local Tea Party activists called foul, accusing the commission of rushing to a vote without enough public review and opening up the latest front in the war between Tea Party groups and the Republican establishment that pushed for the deal.

“I’ve had several members of the Chamber of Commerce tell me that the Tea Party needs to stick to federal issues and leave local issues like this alone,” said Debbie Dooley, the head of the Atlanta Tea Party. “Well, that’s not going to happen.” Dooley had mounted a significant opposition to the plan, which she called “a done deal from the beginning,” and formed an unusual coalition among Tea Party activists, the Sierra Club, Common Cause, and other groups from across the political spectrum that opposed the deal for their own reasons.

At the public meeting before the commission voted four-to-one to approve the deal Tuesday night, commissioners heard discussion on “public private partnerships,” new local sales taxes, new taxes on hotels and apartments near the proposed site, and plenty of feedback from Dooley’s coalition and voters opposed to the deal, which was announced just two weeks earlier and did not include an environmental impact statement nor an economic impact statement.

“We’re spending millions of Cobb County taxpayer dollars on this deal and we’re going to take two weeks and ram it though?” said Patricia Hay, a local resident.

The only dissenting vote on the Cobb County Board of Commissioners was Democrat Lisa Cupid (quoted in italics):

"And I certainly can understand why the public has issue with their own tax dollars being committed for 30 years, binding this generation and the generation to follow. And how dare they have questions and want to be a part of this process. I believe this could have been a win-win for so many more people today, if we only took more time to get that win. So many people have asked us to wait.

"It frightens me, the number of threats I've received. If you wanted a 5-0 vote, you could have gotten it. It could have been easy. But I will not be bullied into sacrificing my commitment to the people who put me in this position."

Cobb Commissioner Lisa Cupid explains her decision to vote against the Braves' agreement. She was the lone dissenting vote at last night's Board of Commissioners meeting.

The Tea Partiers seemed to understand what was going on, while the rank-and-file Republicans (dubbed "Chamber of Commerce Republicans" in most of the Atlanta press) do exactly as they are told by real-estate developers.

As Sports Illustrated writes:

Such a move will make it the first of the 24 major league ballparks to open since 1989 to be replaced, and buck the trend of teams returning to urban centers. The proposed park is in the suburbs and closer to the geographic center of the team’s ticket-buying fan base, a much higher percentage of which happens to be white. US Census figures from 2010 put Fulton County at 44.5 percent white and 44.1 percent black, while Cobb County is 62.2 percent white and 25.0 percent black.

Hmmm. Is this about making it (supposedly) "safer" for the white fan-base to attend Braves games? The psychological factor of NOT having to drive into deepest, darkest Atlanta? Eric Brown of International Business Times says yes:

When the Atlanta Braves announced their intention to move from their urban Atlanta home to the suburbs of neighboring Cobb County, the team cited a “lack of consistent mass transit options.” Bafflingly, though, the team’s new location has no mass transit options at all. The real reason for the move? Separating the team's largely white fanbase from Atlanta's black residents.

And where is the money coming from? Guess.

On this one, I have to give it to the Tea Party. From the above link:

The lion’s share of the $672 million facility – a whopping $450 million – will be financed by the county, which will presumably pass that cost on to taxpayers, while the team will kick in just $200 million. By comparison, the current venue, which was originally built as Centennial Olympic Stadium with a capacity of 85,000, was financed by the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games — completely with private money — and then retrofitted for the Braves after the Summer Olympics ended.

The increased traffic alone is a thoroughly nightmarish prospect; I have written here before about how much Atlanta traffic freaks me out. I can't imagine it getting worse. (But of course, I realize it can always get worse.)

The new venue is at the intersection of Interstates 75 and 285, said to be a major traffic snarl, “the place so congested we Cobb Countians know to avoid if at all possible,” as the Journal-Constitution‘s Mark Bradley described it. The county has resisted the expansion of the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) into its domain since its inception in 1971, so it’s not served by light rail, and while the team claims “significantly increased access to the site” via Home of the Braves, it offers no specifics on the matter.

And is this the beginning of a disturbing new urban trend?

In all, while the announcement of the new ballpark is good news for many suburban Braves fans, it’s unsettling for the industry as a whole. The Oakland A’s have spent the past decade battling for a new park to replace the dilapidated Coliseum, which they’ve called home since 1966, while the Tampa Bay Rays are hamstrung by the location of Tropicana Field. Both franchises would take Turner Field as their home in a heartbeat if it could be shipped to them.

Meanwhile, 13 current major league venues have been in service longer than Turner Field, seven of which opened from 1989-95. If some of those teams start getting restless and looking to build again, local taxpayers could be asked to replace the perfectly functional single-use ballparks that in turn had replaced less aesthetically pleasing multi-use facilities whose lifespans were much longer. Particularly as teams reap a new windfall with increased television revenues, that’s not going to go over well with fans.

More about the move:

Atlanta Braves move to suburbs approved (CNN)

Cobb County commissioners approve plan for Braves stadium (USA Today)

Braves: Moving to Cobb County in '17 (ESPN)

Cobb GOP chairman concerned about (those) people coming to Braves' games (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

Cobb Commission Approves Braves Stadium Agreement (WABE radio - NPR)

Asylum Gallery

... is in Greenville's Far West End art district, also known as The Village.

The distinct neighborhood was once the largest mill village in the area, and I used to troll the place back in the late 80s, where the Salvation Army and several other super-thrifty, extremely-cheap thrift shops occupied an entire block in what appeared to be long-defunct furniture and appliance stores. I loved the environment and felt so sorry that the neighborhood (with its signature, cozy, compact mill-houses) appeared to be going belly-up, as Carolina textile businesses moved out of the county in droves. While the rejuvenation and gentrification of downtown Greenville happened, this area seemed to be left behind.

Lo and behold, the punk rockers, Zen masters and alternative artists have discovered the neighborhood (and inexpensive property), and it is now starting to thrive once again. I attended a craft fair in this delightful village a couple of weeks ago and was stunned to see all the cool peoples. And I was invited to view the work of Syprian Harvey in his very unique Asylum gallery. Totally visionary and exciting, Syprian comes to us by way of New Jersey, Germany, Singapore and Asheville.

I really enjoyed his gallery and his work, so have a look. (as always, you can click to enlarge)


~*~

From Brooklyn to Bob Jones University...

I was attempting to psychoanalyze the tea-partiers, when someone helpfully Twittered this article from New York magazine, titled Clash of the Bearded Ones, Hipsters, Hasids, and the Williamsburg Street.

All I could say was: Whoa.

Simply change the names of the principle protagonists, and it could be right here in Greenville; instead of "Hasids"--insert "Bob Jones University"--and you have the ongoing Culture War of Greenville. It's utterly amazing how little difference there is between the two groups, right down to the clothes.

Fundamentalists have so much in common, regardless of the religion in question.

Like the Brooklynites, we also have the situation of the new arrivals... the oodles of mega-trendy folk moving into lofts converted from old textile and cotton mills. Who worked in those mills? The BJU people's kinfolks, that's who. As I also wrote here, it can be particularly galling to be called a redneck and priced out of the town you built, as well as the actual neighborhood you grew up in. This feud is also about class and class-mobility; global vs local, and a host of other issues.

As my regular readers know, I dislike the Bob Jones people, and I doubt I'd get on any better with the Hasids. But they were there before anyone else... and I think that does count for something. (We seem to believe that it does count when discussing Native Americans, but not when discussing fundamentalists who have lived in one locale for a long period, and made said locale the desirable location it has now become.)

From the article:

The hipster incursion began in the late nineties and was first written off as a fluke—some strangely dressed types poking around the abandoned warehouses and factories. The initial reaction, says Isaac Abraham, who has lived in the neighborhood for 58 years after emigrating from Austria (“Schwarzenegger country!”), was indifference. “Maybe the red carpet wasn’t out for them, but they came in masses and there was no objection from the community. Everybody went on with their daily lives.”

But after a while, says one Hasidic real-estate developer, “People started talking to the rabbis—‘Hey, something’s happening, all these young white people are moving in.’ ” When the Satmars [Brooklyn Hasids] realized that the Artisten—the Yiddish name they used for the bewildering newcomers—were there to stay, something like panic set in. Rabbis exhorted landlords not to rent to the Artisten, builders not to build for them. One flyer asked God to “please remove from upon us the plague of the artists, so that we shall not drown in evil waters, and so that they shall not come to our residence to ruin it.’’ Rabbi Zalman Leib Fulop announced that the Artisten were “a bitter decree from Heaven,” a biblical trial.

Yowza, it's the same language! And the same concept: a war with the Domestic Evildoers.

The hyper-conservative Bob Jones folks (and their fellow travelers) are especially fond of this Old Testament verse: "If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sins, and will heal their land."--II Chronicles 7:14.

They wear it on T-shirts and everything. If you were watching the various news networks' coverage of the recent tea-party rally in Washington D.C. (which they memorably held on the 15th anniversary of Timothy McVeigh's terrorist mass murder... aren't they just so cute with that shit?)*... then of course, you saw the t-shirt multiple times.

More from the article:

[In] 2007, came the bike lane, part of a citywide push to make streets more cycling-friendly. As bike lanes go, it wasn’t as plush as the ones springing up in Manhattan these days; it wasn’t even as nice as the one on neighboring Kent Avenue. But Bedford is Williamsburg’s main thoroughfare, and the pathway immediately found a thriving clientele. Morning to night, boys and girls whipped by Hasid minivans on their fixed-gears, hoods and hems flapping, thoughtful produce rattling in the baskets. It’s not that people didn’t bike down Bedford before, but the lane threw them into relief, marked them as a category.

The Satmars were incensed. Hasids are prohibited from looking at improperly dressed members of the opposite sex, and some complained that the women cycling through their neighborhood were an affront. “It’s a major issue, women passing through here in that dress code,” Simon Weiser, a Hasidic member of Community Board 1, told the Post. “Most Hasids have acclimated to living in New York,” says Sholom Deen, a semi-lapsed Hasid who, since 2003, has been publishing a blog called Hasidic Rebel. But each fresh bit of modernism—the Gretsch Building, the bus ads for Sex and the City—tends to touch off an uproar, he says, and the bikes were something new altogether: “It’s a direct intrusion.” The city, having spent $11,000 on the bike lane, appeared to encourage that intrusion, and the cyclists themselves seemed, if not improper, impudent. It felt like a seniority issue. “How long have you lived in the community that you now want to make the rules and totally ignore my opinion, when I’ve lived here for 50 years?” Abraham says. “You just got here. You either offer to help and do as the Romans do, or …”—and here Abraham goes into a spirited, if odd, impression of a spoiled young man—“ ‘I live here now. I lived here for ten years, and now I’m going to make rules for the entire community!’ ”

For a full year, the city seemed to ignore the hipster-Hasid war. Then, on December 1, 2009, came a sudden announcement. The Department of Transportation—under Janette Sadik-Khan, the bike-friendliest commissioner it’s ever had—was going to rip up “a small portion” of the lane between Flushing and Division Avenues, fourteen blocks in all. The deal to remove the lane is said to have been quietly brokered as far back as last April. Just about everyone’s assumption, including that of more than a few Hasids, is that Michael Bloomberg had needed the Satmars—who tend to vote enthusiastically and in a single block—in the upcoming election and that this was an easy bone to throw them.

On December 1, a crew of municipal workers descended on Bedford, sandblasting the lane and its stenciled biker figures off the asphalt. The next day, a group of three bike activists—Quinn Hechtropf, Katherine Piccochi, and a man we’ll call Ben—had an idea. That Friday night, around 3 a.m., they hit the street with aerosol cans and handmade stencils. According to Ben, more than a few Satmars saw them paint. “As they walked by, I made sure I said hello, explained to them that we’re not vandalizing the street, and asked if they wanted to help,” he says. “At first, they were a little standoffish, but a couple of guys had a sense of humor about it.” But by Saturday, fresh snow covered the group’s efforts, and the painters, encouraged by the adventure’s relative ease and cheered on by myriad bike blogs, decided to finish the job Sunday night.

Yes, a war over a bike lane. (You really need to read the whole thing!) I could easily see the same thing happening over on Wade Hampton Boulevard, which is why there will never be a bike lane over there.

And then, there is this side-account of some guys in a deli:

Right now, on a slow Thursday afternoon, the talk of the deli is Rachel, an 18-year-old Hasidic girl who “went off”—the local term for breaking with tradition.

“She got a huge tattoo,” reports Baruch Herzfeld to a gangly copper-haired cook in full beard and payess.

“No way,” says the cook, ecstatic. “No. Way.”

“Seriously. She shows it if you ask, too. Right here”—Herzfeld points at his thigh. “So fucking hot.”

The cook just grins.

I think this is what strikes abject fear into the hearts of all fundamentalists, and the author of the New York piece, Michael Idov, goes straight for it. I am thinking of that old hippie/biker bumper sticker: We have come for your daughters. Yes, this is the heart of it, and Idov knows it:

Herzfeld grabs his iPhone and opens Facebook, searching for photos of Rachel. The Hasidic Facebook is its own phenomenon, a parallel universe where the prim girls you see on the street in turban hats and snub-nosed forties shoes post their bikini snapshots and glamorously lit studio pictures. Herzfeld enthusiastically scrolls through his four-figure friend list, picking out the hotties for us to look at. “Esther. Hot girl. Her father is super-religious. The interesting part is how many friends they have. Look: 273 friends. Most of them are Hasidic guys.”

...

It is the undercurrent of thwarted lust beneath the Satmars’ pious exterior that’s causing the tension with the Artisten, Herzfeld believes (“Orthodox is you don’t want to look at a girl in a bathing suit. Ultra-Orthodox is you want to close down a beach”). And it’s also what will bring about the sect’s downfall, he says.

Herzfeld is convinced there’s a massive generational split within the Hasidic community...

And for the record, I believe this is true of Bob Jones University also. I've lived here for 22 years, and I've heard a lot of gossip; some of the kids can't wait to break loose, and don't waste any time doing it.

The internal inconsistencies certainly don't help, such as telling the faithful that Catholicism is evil, then paying the Church around a million dollars to get your son a Ph.D. from Notre Dame (?)... or claiming that Mormonism is an evil false gospel, all whilst backing a Mormon for president (?). Bob Jones (like the two Rabbis Teitelbaum of the Brooklyn Hasids) has one standard for himself, and another for the faithful. Very cultish, but seemingly acceptable to the cult. Go figure. One hopes that after awhile, they will wise up.

In any event, I am surrounded by conservatives, and I can feel their hostility towards the hip, young newcomers. I can also feel the derision of the newcomers, as they take for granted the beauty and good manners of the upstate, carefully crafted and cared for by the same people they despise.

Stay tuned, sports fans.




~*~


* Another internal inconsistency: we have tea-partiers claiming to be for law and order (or what Abbie Hoffman used to call Lawn Order), and openly celebrating a mass-murdering terrorist of 168 people. I ask you, would lefties be allowed to say "whoops!" and wink at the camera in the case of such a "coincidence"? Ha, not hardly. Why didn't they change the day of the rally? Obviously, this was intentional. Thank God, Bill Clinton didn't hold back.

DEAD AIR supports Cecil Bothwell!

Cecil Bothwell, atheist elected to Asheville City Council. Photo by sweetashvegas.




The difference between here and Asheville is: We could NEVER elect an atheist candidate. The national news-blogs reporting, "An openly atheist candidate has actually been elected to office, and in Asheville, North Carolina, of all places," (italics mine) let us know that these national writers don't know Asheville; it is a very liberal area, the counterpoint to ultra-conservative Greenville. They are like yin and yang, but parts of a whole. We all watch the same TV stations and listen to the same radio stations.

The hoopla over atheist Cecil Bothwell (well-known in the area) being elected to City Council, has gone viral, covered by Rachel Maddow on MSNBC last night. What the national news-media keeps missing is what this represents.

Last week, quoting JG Ballard, I talked about the colonizing of the inner-cities by the affluent. The locals who grew up here resent this phenomenon, as well they should. What does it mean to be priced out of the neighborhood you grew up in? What does it mean to have tourists all over your hometown, who sneer at you as if you don't belong and haughtily classify you as a redneck? REDNECKS BUILT THIS PLACE, is the overriding sentiment. The Carolina freak-out over Bothwell is much bigger than Bothwell, dramatizing locals' fears of "outsiders" coming in and transforming the values of Western North Carolina.

Note: I am not saying that Bothwell is an outsider--I don't actually know where he is from. (I'm from Ohio myself; not criticizing outsiders, she quickly clarified!) I am saying that he comports himself like an educated person, blogs about culture, has published books, etc. He is the New South, bringing in gonzo, scary ideas like atheism and frightening the horses.

The tension between these two forces is formidable. But it isn't as simple as Old vs New; it is also class-based, and represents local anxieties about increasing gentrification and residential displacement. People like Bothwell get caught in the fallout.

And then, of course, there is the issue of how atheists are systematically shit on, here in the Heartland. I'm sure atheism is utterly passe on the coasts and in the big cities. But not in the south; at least, not in this neck of the woods. It is enough to get you fired (if three people have to go, the atheist will get the sack) and enough to keep you unemployed, if you are honest about it. As I said here, "Which church do you go to?" is routinely (and inappropriately) asked of politicians running for office. And no way Cecil Bothwell could get elected here in Bob Jones University-land.

The discriminatory idea that an atheist isn't as morally upright as a believer, ANY believer, is even covered in North Carolina's constitution:

Opponents of Cecil Bothwell are seizing on that law to argue he should not be seated as a City Council member today, even though federal courts have ruled religious tests for public office are unlawful under the U.S. Constitution.

Voters elected the writer and builder to the council last month.

“I'm not saying that Cecil Bothwell is not a good man, but if he's an atheist, he's not eligible to serve in public office, according to the state constitution,” said H.K. Edgerton, a former Asheville NAACP president.

Article 6, section 8 of the state constitution says: “The following persons shall be disqualified for office: First, any person who shall deny the being of Almighty God.”

Rights enshrined in the U.S. Constitution trump the restriction in the state constitution, said Bob Orr, executive director of the N.C. Institute for Constitutional Law.

“I think there's any number of federal cases that would view this as an imposition of a religious qualification and violate separation of church and state,” said Orr, a former state Supreme Court justice.

In 1961, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Maryland's requirement for officials to declare belief in God violated the freedom of religion guaranteed by the First Amendment.

Additionally, Article VI of the U.S. Constitution says: “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”

And so, the conflict is evident--national values or North Carolina values? (I'm proud to say that atheists are now eligible to run for any office in South Carolina, thanks to Herb Silverman.)

Of course, Bothwell's atheism should not even be an issue.

I hope you will join me in supporting Cecil Bothwell's right to serve the voters, as he was properly elected to do.

We won't give pause until the blood is flowing

Photo of the greatest writer and philosopher of the 20th century, JG Ballard, from The Northern Light.







I have been trying to articulate what I dislike about mass-market holidays. In particular, the mass market holiday that Christmas has become.

And I find myself going to my late guru to explain; may his soul rest in peace. I miss him like he was my own father. Maybe he was, in a way.

From V. Vale's quite invaluable J.G. Ballard: Conversations, some excerpts that say it far better than I can:

People use mental formulas that they've learned from TV. Even in ordinary conversation, if you're talking to the mechanic at the garage about whether you need new tires for your car, you and he probably talk in a way that his equivalent thirty years ago would never have done. You use--not catch phrases, but verbal formulas. Suddenly you realize you're hearing echoes of some public-information, accident-prevention commercial. It's uncanny.

[...] What's interesting [about Reality TV shows like Big Brother] is that almost nothing happens. There's a certain amount of bitching and gossip and sitting around the supper table talking in a sort of half-hearted way, but there's no drama. Nonetheless, the audiences are riveted. And they're riveted by very similar programs where TV producers put people on desert islands and see how they survive; a series called Survivor did just that. I think this reflects a tremendous hunger among people for "reality"--for ordinary reality. It's very difficult to find the "real," because the environment is totally manufactured.

Even one's own home is a kind of anthology of advertisers, manufacturers, motifs, and presentation techniques. There's nothing "natural" about one's home these days. The furnishings, the fabrics, the furniture, the appliances, the TV, and all the electronic equipment--we're living inside commercials. I think people realize this, and they're desperate for reality, which partly explains the surge in popularity of "adventure" holidays. People think that by living on some mountainside in a tent and being frozen to death by freezing rain, they're somehow discovering reality, but of course that's just another fiction dreamed up by a TV producer. And there's no escape.

Holidays like Halloween and Christmas are spectacles that people engage in, because they are on TV. Working retail, I consider a certain type of existential-shopping (wherein people don't really know what they are "looking" for) part of this Ballardian phenomenon.

There are so many fabulous quotes in this book, I will be blogging lots of them. For instance, about the disparity between rich and poor:

In England [this conversation was recorded in 2003], we're getting unprecedented disparities of wealth. The people who run our biggest corporations have begun to affect life in London primarily by buying up property, and the old middle class (doctors, civil servants, teachers, salaried professionals) can no longer afford to live in central London. Now there are whole areas of central London given over to the rich. I've often thought that in due course all these very rich financiers are going to leave very large sums of money to their children. Then you'll get a sort of New Leisure Class who never work, but have huge spending power--like the ancien regime in France. Supposedly, the same thing is happening in Manhattan: the middle class has been forced out...

V. Vale replies that the same thing is happening in San Francisco; New York and San Francisco are the two most expensive cities in the USA. I would add that it's even true in lil ole Greenville; the 'centers' of towns/cities are now priced out of range for the actual natives of those towns/cities. Most of the people moving into the new high-priced condos in downtown Greenville, for instance, come from someplace else, often from Europe or the coasts. The rich colonizing the cities and leaving the outlying suburbs to the poor and the rabble, is the exact reverse of what happened in the 60s, when the rich moved to the suburbs and left the inner-cities to rot. Now that they crave authenticity, they have moved back to cities in droves. However, they still aren't getting the authenticity they crave, since the only people who can afford to live in cities are rich, affluent people who are all just like them.

In the cities, a bizarre new class-based uniformity has taken hold, while in my suburban apartment building, every race and age and nationality and economic status is well-represented.

Authenticity has been priced out of the market.

Speaking of which, here is Ballard on the future of sex:

[The] time is going to come when no young woman will regard penetrative penis-and-vagina sex as real sex, because it isn't deviant enough to be considered "real sex." These days, magazines for teenagers sold openly on newsstands have headlines like, "Interested in S&M sex? Junior Cosmo explains all you need to know." And this is a magazine that's going to be bought and read by 14-year-olds. The period of conventional, penetrative, penis/vagina sex will be over by the time you're about 15, and then you'll move into the area of conceptualized sex, S&M, and whatever--and that's what will be regarded as real sex. To me, this seems like a daunting thought.

Ballard on the future of reading:

People don't use libraries as much as they used to. One thing I miss terribly--I don't know if the same thing applied in America, but over here in the Forties and Fifties when I first came to England, what I loved were the second-hand bookshops. Every small town had a second-hand bookshop, which was constantly being stocked up... when someone died, the family took their books to the second-hand bookshop and got sixpence each for them. There were a lot of unserious materials, popular novels and the like...but there were a lot of very serious books. You know, one serious collector in a lifetime could produce enough books to keep a second-hand bookstore open for a year.

I did most of my reading in second-hand bookshops. I remember when I was living in London somewhere I used a local one. Also, serendipity came into it [...] You made accidental discoveries all the time. And this sort of refreshed one. You were constantly being surprised, constantly making discoveries. All this is gone now, of course. There can't be more than a half a dozen used bookshops in the whole of West London, if any.

What we've got now is a new kind of literacy. We've got people who are expert at reading the labels on products, expert at reading instructional manuals that come with a new kind of vacuum cleaner, or a computer or what have you. They're expert at that kind of reading, but not at anything else. Not with a more traditional book.

I don't know if the internet has affected that. I have very high hopes for the internet, which I think could be the sort of--if we're entering a New Dark Age, the internet could help to keep the lights on!

I'll be revisiting these Conversations often, which Ballard would be pleased to know, I found by browsing bookstores in the serendipitous manner he has described so well.

I miss you, man.

~*~

Ballard would have understood this song/video, which is where we get today's blog-post title. Caution, may trigger, may offend, watch out, yada yada.

(Not for the faint of heart or the oversensitive. Really.)

Vicarious - Tool



Note: Well, damn, there is some argument over exactly the lyrics I was going to quote. I always heard:

We all feed on tragedy
It's the virtue of empire

Other listeners report: "It's the virtual vampire," and still others, "like blood to a vampire." (Does anyone know the official lyrics?)

I guess you can still understand the concept, though.

Put another way:

If you're like me, you may have wondered...

Population density map of South Carolina, from Wikipedia


...if your impressions of any given place are accurate. Wow, you think, lots of ____(fill in the blank)___ here, compared to where I am from. Or you think, wow, didn't used to be so many _____ (fill in the blank)____ here, as there are now, or as there once was. And it's very difficult to find demographic information that is neighborhood-focused, rather than municipality-focused.

From Bean and Zuzu, over at Feministe, comes the fascinating "Zip Skinny" webtool, which provides demographic information for zip codes. Although I am certain there are the usual census-related flaws, it's still fun to play with, and learn from.

For instance, when I put my own zip code in, I discover that no, I am not imagining things when I think there are a lot more affluent people here now, than there used to be. But you have to read between the lines; I know that there are pockets of poverty, since I know exactly where those pockets are. So, when I read Median Household Income: $58,279--I know that means there are a lot of millionaires (and I know where they are, too) since that number is still pretty high, IMO. (When they tell us 4.2% of people have an income over $200,000, they don't tell us how much over--but I'd love to see a further breakdown of that.) 42.6% of people have a Bachelors and our unemployment rate is 2.3%, below the national average. Below Poverty Line: 6.9%.

However, it also claims our Asian population is slightly higher than our Hispanic population, and no way that is accurate. Obviously, certain groups of people are under-reported.

Looking at some zip codes I used to live in, I see the very definition of slacker, as I look up 43202, the Ohio State University neighborhood I lived in for many years:

Bachelors degree: 32.1%
Graduate/Professional: 20.4%
High school or higher: 92.6%
Bachelors or higher: 52.5%

And then you get to:

Below Poverty Line 20.7%
Median Household Income: $33,002

Everybody is educated, but people aren't wild about working! But nobody wants to be POOR, so unemployment is below the national average. And this is summed up very well in another statistic: Median Age: 28.6 yrs.

And then there is the matter of population density. My zip code:

Population: 23803
Density: 1311.33
(people per square land mile)
Housing Units: 9676
Land Area: 18.15 sq. mi

My daughter's zip code, which is out in the middle of nowhere (Texas):

Population: 18151
Density: 24.53
(people per square land mile)
Housing Units: 8484
Land Area: 740.02 sq. mi.

And then, we go to, say, New York City; I chose zip code 10011 at random:

Population: 46669
Density: 72847.35
(people per square land mile)
Housing Units: 30277
Land Area: 0.64 sq. mi.

And we wonder why people's politics are so different?

It's fun to play with this zip-code thing, but depressing too, as I took a moment to check out all the zip codes of my past... I came across a neighborhood we all had to vacate, because the gentrification-droids wanted it. Who can afford to live in zip code 94611 now? This was the Oakland of the Black Panthers, and now, well--take a look:

Bachelors degree: 35%
Graduate/Professional: 31.8%
High school or higher: 95.6%
Bachelors or higher: 66.8%

Household Income
$100,000-$149,999 15.1%
$150,000-$199,999 7.9%
$200,000+ 12.5%
Median Household Income: $68,853
Unemployed 2%
Below Poverty Line 6.8%

Hispanic/Latino: 5.1%
White: 69%
Black: 9.8%
Native American: 0%
Asian: 11.5%
Hawaiian/Pacific Islander*: 0.1%
Other: 0.5%
Multiracial*: 3.8%

I guess they succeeded, huh? Gentrification complete!

Do you notice anything similar, in playing with this? I'd love to hear about it.

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Listening to: Sonic Youth - Teen Age Riot
via FoxyTunes