I've decided to come back to the blog because I'm trying to find a way other than Facebook to post and collect interesting articles. Ultimately I'd like to find a way to make it more magazine-like, but we'll see...
Ontario Article
This is a good article on how a new senior housing project is helping breathe life into Downtown Ontario. Ontarion, like so many Inland Empire communities, has a walkable downtown with not too much activity, but still has a lot of cool buildings. Good luck!
LA Times Article
The flipside of the Inland Empire, of course, is the housing bust that has plagued so many parts of California, especially the inland areas. Combine the message of the two articles and it looks like there's some hope in walkable downtown areas and a certain amount of despair in over-built suburbs.
Monday, January 10, 2011
Monday, January 18, 2010
In Praise of the Lowly Hamburger
First, apologies to my arteries: I had three burgers this weekend. Two of them were pretty bad and one was exactly what I expected and perfectly satisfying. That got me thinking about what I really like in a burger, and what I think actually makes a good burger.
The first, on Friday, was a McDonald's Quarter Pounder with Cheese. I'd taken part of the lunch hour touring one of our commissioners around several projects we have underway, and by 2:00 I was pretty hungry and grabbed it from the drive thru on the way back to the office. My mistake, I think, was waiting until I got back to the office to eat it: the bun had hardened a bit, the cheese had congealed and the meat was no longer really hot. Laura, the consummate cheese lover (rugged English cheeses and pungent French cheeses are fine with her) can't understand how I can even eat a cheeseburger but I ate it, but it reminded me that I didn't eat McDonald's for years because I didn't like the taste of their beef -- it often tastes gamey -- as if it tasted like a feedlot smells. Not all of the time, and usually their regular burger tastes just fine, and I have to admit that there are times that only a Big Mac will do.
On Saturday I was under the same time pressure at lunchtime, racing to meet my real estate agent at my house in the desert after driving for six hours. Del Taco was on the way, so I drove through and got a regular burger and a quesadilla. Not the Big Del burger or any double burger, but a simple, small regular burger with pickles and ketchup, no cheese. Perfect.
Finally, on Saturday night we were in Hollywood to see the Behemoth show at the House of Blues. I should have rolled the dice on the House of Blues menu, but wanted to spend an hour or so walking Sunset Strip, and decided to stop in an (unnamed) diner there for a bite before the show. Maybe I should have gotten the Thai wrap, but I was looking for a good diner burger. Instead got a truly mediocre chili burger. Sure, it wasn't what I ordered but thought it looked intriguing on the menu before I passed on it. I would probably have been better off sending it back in favor of the regular cheeseburger.
So that trio of burgers -- plus Xan's In N Out on Sunday -- got me thinking about what really works for me. As it turns out, smaller and relatively plainer, so that the meat/grease, bun, and condiments are all in balance, is the ideal. Like most food preferences, I think it goes back to my youth.
I'm not very nostalgic for home cooked burgers, as we didn't grill at home and pan-fried is, well, pan-fried. But in New England in the 1960's and 1970's, Friendly's ruled. Friendly's burger was served on toasted white bread, not a bun. And I think the toast was even buttered. (As a side note, there's a whole genre of food writing about Friendly's and Howard Johnson's hot dogs -- frankfurters -- grilled in butter.) If I remember correctly, the patty was square like the bread, and was larger than a McDonald's -- it was probably a quarter pounder. The patty was definitely juicy and came with ketchup and pickles, which worked great with the crunchy, buttery toast.
My real favorite burger from my youth came from an after-hours diner in Holyoke called Rene's (or Rainy's: there was no sign or menu so you never saw the name written anywhere -- I've always assumed that the local French-Canadian pronunciation of Rene was the actual name). Rene's was only open from midnight until 6 a.m. and catered to drunk high school and college kids and served lots of burgers. It was a small dining-car place with about 10 counter stools and a half-dozen two-seater tables and manned by a two grumpy men -- Butchy and Billy. By the time I moved back to Holyoke after college the business was gone and replaced with a more upscale catering business. I don't know if anything is there today.
It was a pretty limited menu -- not as limited as John Belushi's "cheeseburger, cheesebuger, cheeseburger" but not much more and the specialty was a cheesburger. I think a cheesburger was about $1.50 in 1978. They would lay the white American cheese (remember white American?) on the buns and put them into the toaster. The buns would crisp slightly and the cheese would melt and then they'd pop the perfectly cooked chuck patty onto it. You'd get it plain, and I think the only condiment handy was ketchup. No mustard, no pickles, no lettuce, no tomatoes, no thousand island, no relish, no onions, no bacon, no avocado. Just a perfectly cooked patty on a perfectly cooked bun.
I think there's a myth that old-school burgers were all bun and little meat. Reading the obituary for Al Bernardin, inventor of the McDonald's Quarter Pounder, who recently died of a stroke at 81, brought that home:
"Bernardin went to work at McDonald's corporate headquarters in 1960 and quickly rose to dean of Hamburger University, McDonald's training centre. Later, as vice-president of product development, he played a major role in the formation of McDonald's signature fish sandwich, french fries, and hot apple and cherry pies. But Bernardin's claim to fame came in 1971, when, as a franchise owner in Fremont, he introduced the Quarter Pounder, with the prophetic slogan, "Today Fremont, tomorrow the world."
""I felt there was a void in our menu vis-a-vis the adult who wanted a higher ratio of meat to bun," he said in 1991." This was long before McDonald's introduced the Angus third pounders. (And don't get me started on why I think the fast food industry has latched on to Angus beef as a way of distracting attention from concerns over mass-produced beef leading to e. coli scares -- as if Angus is a different product produced differently, more carefully.)
That thinking, of course, helped unleash two generations of ever-larger burgers, including the recent introduction of The Big Carl by Carl's Jr. (I like Carl's commercials as much as most guys, but they normally don't entice me to go buy their burgers. I've outgrown the demographic of "cravers" that supports the burger industry -- men 16-35 that will eat there at least twice a week.) Wendy's seems to allow you to add an unlimited number of patties to any burger, and Jack in the Box has several huge burgers. Jack poked fun at this a few years ago with their commercials for the "beefy cheesy" burger -- two huge patties and at least two slices of cheese, when they showed Jack watching a focus group where one of the participants said, "I like the meat and cheese, but if you could get rid of the bun..." Jack flips out, saying "you'd be eating meat with your hands" to the unfazed guy, and then promises to look into it. The ultimate Bernardin's ratio: 1:0.
Eric Schlossr's Fast Food Nation goes into a lot of gruesome detail about the production of meat and other foods for the fast food industry and as a result has a lot of praise for the In N Out chain, which does things quite differently. They have a really good burger, of course, but at its essence it's a relatively modestly-sized burger. Fresh (never frozen) beef makes a big difference in the quality of the burger.
But then are gourmet burgers better? Sort of. The Kobe burger at the Viceroy, for example, is juicy and flavorful, but because of what a higher-end restuarant charges you (hence the "Six Dollar Burger" campaign by Carl's) they tend to serve you a really large burger -- up to 8 ounces in a lot of places. It may make paying $12-$16 feel worth it, but I think it unbalances the Bernardin ratio by making it too high. Add to it fancier buns, like an onion brioche, and intensely flavored toppings (jalapenos, chipotle dressing, bleu cheese) and you end up with something unrecognizable as a simple burger.
Which brings me back to the second unsatisfactory burger above: the chili burger. Somehow migrating from the childog to the chili burger causes the appeal of chili to wane. The best chili burgers are served open-faced (a la the "Chili Size," which meaning is said to take its name from the "hamburger size" ladle that legendary Los Angeles chili parlor proprietor Ptomaine Tommy used decades ago to spoon chili over the open-face burgers he served) and use a real bowl-ready chili, not beanless hotdog chili.
If you order a chili burger and it's served like a burger, wrapped in paper to be eaten by hand, it's just not right. Worse is if it has other hamburger fixings, like tomato and pickles, like mine did. Then it feels like the chili is an afterthought. Billy Reed's in Palm Springs does it right: a nice grilled burger patty served open-faced on a bun, smothered in a pretty good homemade chili. Add some cheese, onions and green Tabasco and you're on your way. The Billy Reed's patty is of the "larger" variety, but I consider a chili burger a different dish than a regular burger. You can even skip the bun and save the carbs. It's a little charbroiled and may be sirloin and not chuck.
The classic burger meat is chuck, though, and not sirloin. As a matter of fact, some of the most satisfying burgers -- White Castles -- may not even be as good as chuck. They meat is so finely ground and so thin that it's the essence of beef that the diner gets. Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle only resonated because there are millions of people that know that exact craving -- drunk, stoned or sober. Even the editors of Gourmet (or maybe it was Bon Appetit) did a photo shoot of White Castles a few years ago and the editor talked about the really visceral experience that the staff had to the photographer walking in with the warm "suitcase" of White Castles. (I think that's a case of 24, right from the restaurant.) Tummies rumbled. One staffer said they looked like "meat petit fours." The perfect snack.
So, finally Saturday's Del Taco burger. There's a lot about Del Taco I really like, and I think they do a relatively good job of preserving the feel of a Southern California taco and burger stand, even though they are a relatively large chain. They even recently introduced chili fries (which sucked, but their heart was in the right place). Their larger burgers are okay, but it's the plain hamburger I love. They don't even show it on the menu, except in the kid's meal, and I think it's under a dollar. I think it you cut a 2 inch by 2 inch square out of the middle you'd come close to a White Castle, except for the sesame seed bun. It's where the heritage of the lowly burger is, and we'd do well (and maybe live longer) to eat these smaller, simpler burgers. Meat petit fours, indeed.
The first, on Friday, was a McDonald's Quarter Pounder with Cheese. I'd taken part of the lunch hour touring one of our commissioners around several projects we have underway, and by 2:00 I was pretty hungry and grabbed it from the drive thru on the way back to the office. My mistake, I think, was waiting until I got back to the office to eat it: the bun had hardened a bit, the cheese had congealed and the meat was no longer really hot. Laura, the consummate cheese lover (rugged English cheeses and pungent French cheeses are fine with her) can't understand how I can even eat a cheeseburger but I ate it, but it reminded me that I didn't eat McDonald's for years because I didn't like the taste of their beef -- it often tastes gamey -- as if it tasted like a feedlot smells. Not all of the time, and usually their regular burger tastes just fine, and I have to admit that there are times that only a Big Mac will do.
On Saturday I was under the same time pressure at lunchtime, racing to meet my real estate agent at my house in the desert after driving for six hours. Del Taco was on the way, so I drove through and got a regular burger and a quesadilla. Not the Big Del burger or any double burger, but a simple, small regular burger with pickles and ketchup, no cheese. Perfect.
Finally, on Saturday night we were in Hollywood to see the Behemoth show at the House of Blues. I should have rolled the dice on the House of Blues menu, but wanted to spend an hour or so walking Sunset Strip, and decided to stop in an (unnamed) diner there for a bite before the show. Maybe I should have gotten the Thai wrap, but I was looking for a good diner burger. Instead got a truly mediocre chili burger. Sure, it wasn't what I ordered but thought it looked intriguing on the menu before I passed on it. I would probably have been better off sending it back in favor of the regular cheeseburger.
So that trio of burgers -- plus Xan's In N Out on Sunday -- got me thinking about what really works for me. As it turns out, smaller and relatively plainer, so that the meat/grease, bun, and condiments are all in balance, is the ideal. Like most food preferences, I think it goes back to my youth.
I'm not very nostalgic for home cooked burgers, as we didn't grill at home and pan-fried is, well, pan-fried. But in New England in the 1960's and 1970's, Friendly's ruled. Friendly's burger was served on toasted white bread, not a bun. And I think the toast was even buttered. (As a side note, there's a whole genre of food writing about Friendly's and Howard Johnson's hot dogs -- frankfurters -- grilled in butter.) If I remember correctly, the patty was square like the bread, and was larger than a McDonald's -- it was probably a quarter pounder. The patty was definitely juicy and came with ketchup and pickles, which worked great with the crunchy, buttery toast.
My real favorite burger from my youth came from an after-hours diner in Holyoke called Rene's (or Rainy's: there was no sign or menu so you never saw the name written anywhere -- I've always assumed that the local French-Canadian pronunciation of Rene was the actual name). Rene's was only open from midnight until 6 a.m. and catered to drunk high school and college kids and served lots of burgers. It was a small dining-car place with about 10 counter stools and a half-dozen two-seater tables and manned by a two grumpy men -- Butchy and Billy. By the time I moved back to Holyoke after college the business was gone and replaced with a more upscale catering business. I don't know if anything is there today.
It was a pretty limited menu -- not as limited as John Belushi's "cheeseburger, cheesebuger, cheeseburger" but not much more and the specialty was a cheesburger. I think a cheesburger was about $1.50 in 1978. They would lay the white American cheese (remember white American?) on the buns and put them into the toaster. The buns would crisp slightly and the cheese would melt and then they'd pop the perfectly cooked chuck patty onto it. You'd get it plain, and I think the only condiment handy was ketchup. No mustard, no pickles, no lettuce, no tomatoes, no thousand island, no relish, no onions, no bacon, no avocado. Just a perfectly cooked patty on a perfectly cooked bun.
I think there's a myth that old-school burgers were all bun and little meat. Reading the obituary for Al Bernardin, inventor of the McDonald's Quarter Pounder, who recently died of a stroke at 81, brought that home:
"Bernardin went to work at McDonald's corporate headquarters in 1960 and quickly rose to dean of Hamburger University, McDonald's training centre. Later, as vice-president of product development, he played a major role in the formation of McDonald's signature fish sandwich, french fries, and hot apple and cherry pies. But Bernardin's claim to fame came in 1971, when, as a franchise owner in Fremont, he introduced the Quarter Pounder, with the prophetic slogan, "Today Fremont, tomorrow the world."
""I felt there was a void in our menu vis-a-vis the adult who wanted a higher ratio of meat to bun," he said in 1991." This was long before McDonald's introduced the Angus third pounders. (And don't get me started on why I think the fast food industry has latched on to Angus beef as a way of distracting attention from concerns over mass-produced beef leading to e. coli scares -- as if Angus is a different product produced differently, more carefully.)
That thinking, of course, helped unleash two generations of ever-larger burgers, including the recent introduction of The Big Carl by Carl's Jr. (I like Carl's commercials as much as most guys, but they normally don't entice me to go buy their burgers. I've outgrown the demographic of "cravers" that supports the burger industry -- men 16-35 that will eat there at least twice a week.) Wendy's seems to allow you to add an unlimited number of patties to any burger, and Jack in the Box has several huge burgers. Jack poked fun at this a few years ago with their commercials for the "beefy cheesy" burger -- two huge patties and at least two slices of cheese, when they showed Jack watching a focus group where one of the participants said, "I like the meat and cheese, but if you could get rid of the bun..." Jack flips out, saying "you'd be eating meat with your hands" to the unfazed guy, and then promises to look into it. The ultimate Bernardin's ratio: 1:0.
Eric Schlossr's Fast Food Nation goes into a lot of gruesome detail about the production of meat and other foods for the fast food industry and as a result has a lot of praise for the In N Out chain, which does things quite differently. They have a really good burger, of course, but at its essence it's a relatively modestly-sized burger. Fresh (never frozen) beef makes a big difference in the quality of the burger.
But then are gourmet burgers better? Sort of. The Kobe burger at the Viceroy, for example, is juicy and flavorful, but because of what a higher-end restuarant charges you (hence the "Six Dollar Burger" campaign by Carl's) they tend to serve you a really large burger -- up to 8 ounces in a lot of places. It may make paying $12-$16 feel worth it, but I think it unbalances the Bernardin ratio by making it too high. Add to it fancier buns, like an onion brioche, and intensely flavored toppings (jalapenos, chipotle dressing, bleu cheese) and you end up with something unrecognizable as a simple burger.
Which brings me back to the second unsatisfactory burger above: the chili burger. Somehow migrating from the childog to the chili burger causes the appeal of chili to wane. The best chili burgers are served open-faced (a la the "Chili Size," which meaning is said to take its name from the "hamburger size" ladle that legendary Los Angeles chili parlor proprietor Ptomaine Tommy used decades ago to spoon chili over the open-face burgers he served) and use a real bowl-ready chili, not beanless hotdog chili.
If you order a chili burger and it's served like a burger, wrapped in paper to be eaten by hand, it's just not right. Worse is if it has other hamburger fixings, like tomato and pickles, like mine did. Then it feels like the chili is an afterthought. Billy Reed's in Palm Springs does it right: a nice grilled burger patty served open-faced on a bun, smothered in a pretty good homemade chili. Add some cheese, onions and green Tabasco and you're on your way. The Billy Reed's patty is of the "larger" variety, but I consider a chili burger a different dish than a regular burger. You can even skip the bun and save the carbs. It's a little charbroiled and may be sirloin and not chuck.
The classic burger meat is chuck, though, and not sirloin. As a matter of fact, some of the most satisfying burgers -- White Castles -- may not even be as good as chuck. They meat is so finely ground and so thin that it's the essence of beef that the diner gets. Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle only resonated because there are millions of people that know that exact craving -- drunk, stoned or sober. Even the editors of Gourmet (or maybe it was Bon Appetit) did a photo shoot of White Castles a few years ago and the editor talked about the really visceral experience that the staff had to the photographer walking in with the warm "suitcase" of White Castles. (I think that's a case of 24, right from the restaurant.) Tummies rumbled. One staffer said they looked like "meat petit fours." The perfect snack.
So, finally Saturday's Del Taco burger. There's a lot about Del Taco I really like, and I think they do a relatively good job of preserving the feel of a Southern California taco and burger stand, even though they are a relatively large chain. They even recently introduced chili fries (which sucked, but their heart was in the right place). Their larger burgers are okay, but it's the plain hamburger I love. They don't even show it on the menu, except in the kid's meal, and I think it's under a dollar. I think it you cut a 2 inch by 2 inch square out of the middle you'd come close to a White Castle, except for the sesame seed bun. It's where the heritage of the lowly burger is, and we'd do well (and maybe live longer) to eat these smaller, simpler burgers. Meat petit fours, indeed.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Cheap Music
There's almost nothing in music I like better than the used CD section in the local record store. Most music stores now mix used high-demand titles in with their new CDs, as they probably make as much money selling a new-used CD for $9.99 as the new version for $14.99. It also helps them compete with the chains, since you can buy new CDs cheaper at Costco, Target or Wal-Mart than the local record store.
But it's not those titles I'm not interested in. My local store, Rasputin Music, has a whole aisle of 50 cent CDs. And a few times a year they lower the price to 25 cents. But what's in there?
A lot of it, I'll admit, is stuff that most people wouldn't even pay 25 cents for. There are a lot of genres I'm not interested in (rap, country, or most pop) and there are a lot of CDs by unknown artists, various compilations, foreign pop CDs, cheap classical, etc. You may have to flip through 1,000 CDs, but there's always something good. Take tonight, when I came home with two 70's collections; "The Soul of Russia" by 101 Strings; Brazilian Beat Remixes; Rachael Yamagata; a CD of U2 remixes by Paul Oakenfold; Volume 3 of the Lilith Fair compilations; an R.E.M. single ("Strange Currencies") with a couple of live tracks ("Drive," "Radio Free Europe"); Trance Nation; the "Rush" soundtrack, entirely written and performed by Eric Clapton; George Michael's "Listen Without Prejudice"; a CD called "Paris under a groove"; and, another compilation called "Monitor This!" with songs by Gomez, The Doves, and others. The whole pile was $7.08.
A couple are disappointments: the 70's compilations are described as "New Studio Recordings by the Original Artists," which really means that the producers bought the rights to the music but not the original performances. It's a little unnerving to hear a 55-old-man sing a song intended for a 20-year-old. But it has great, obscure songs like "Indiana Wants Me" and "One Toke Over the Line" that I haven't found elsewhere. The 101 Strings version of "The Russian Soul" is, well, 101 Strings. And it's not really Russian soul, or folk, but some of the post popular Russian classical compositions done in the inimtable 101 Strings style.
The compilations: I think these are some of the best bargains, especially in the discount bin. This Lilith Fair CD has both Suzanne Vega's "Luka" and Sixpence None the Richer's "Kiss Me"; both indipensible addiitions in a 90's collection. Usually soundtracks are great collections, too, but in the case of Rush it's all original compositions by Clapton, except for "Tears of Heaven" which of course appears elsewhere. By I buy everything I see by Clapton, as is the case of R.E.M. I have most if not all of their albums so singles and other EPs are a great find.
Single artists: The George Michael CD popped up recently on VH1's "100 Best Songs of the 1990's" not as a winner, but as one that just missed the cut. Still, it's a good CD and for 50 cents hard to pass up. The other was Rachael Yamagata. I know her name and know I've heard the music but couldn't (and still can't) name any song she's done. A good intro at 50 cents.
Then there's the remixes: who could resist Oakenfold remixing U2? Or MAW featuring Liliana Chachion doing Brazilian beats? The "Paris under a groove" CD is great: just the thing for a quiet (and maybe sexy) evening at home. It's divided into Cocktails, Party Groove, and Light Night Groove. What could be better? The last is an edition of Trance Nation, just to add to my collection of trance music.
But it's not those titles I'm not interested in. My local store, Rasputin Music, has a whole aisle of 50 cent CDs. And a few times a year they lower the price to 25 cents. But what's in there?
A lot of it, I'll admit, is stuff that most people wouldn't even pay 25 cents for. There are a lot of genres I'm not interested in (rap, country, or most pop) and there are a lot of CDs by unknown artists, various compilations, foreign pop CDs, cheap classical, etc. You may have to flip through 1,000 CDs, but there's always something good. Take tonight, when I came home with two 70's collections; "The Soul of Russia" by 101 Strings; Brazilian Beat Remixes; Rachael Yamagata; a CD of U2 remixes by Paul Oakenfold; Volume 3 of the Lilith Fair compilations; an R.E.M. single ("Strange Currencies") with a couple of live tracks ("Drive," "Radio Free Europe"); Trance Nation; the "Rush" soundtrack, entirely written and performed by Eric Clapton; George Michael's "Listen Without Prejudice"; a CD called "Paris under a groove"; and, another compilation called "Monitor This!" with songs by Gomez, The Doves, and others. The whole pile was $7.08.
A couple are disappointments: the 70's compilations are described as "New Studio Recordings by the Original Artists," which really means that the producers bought the rights to the music but not the original performances. It's a little unnerving to hear a 55-old-man sing a song intended for a 20-year-old. But it has great, obscure songs like "Indiana Wants Me" and "One Toke Over the Line" that I haven't found elsewhere. The 101 Strings version of "The Russian Soul" is, well, 101 Strings. And it's not really Russian soul, or folk, but some of the post popular Russian classical compositions done in the inimtable 101 Strings style.
The compilations: I think these are some of the best bargains, especially in the discount bin. This Lilith Fair CD has both Suzanne Vega's "Luka" and Sixpence None the Richer's "Kiss Me"; both indipensible addiitions in a 90's collection. Usually soundtracks are great collections, too, but in the case of Rush it's all original compositions by Clapton, except for "Tears of Heaven" which of course appears elsewhere. By I buy everything I see by Clapton, as is the case of R.E.M. I have most if not all of their albums so singles and other EPs are a great find.
Single artists: The George Michael CD popped up recently on VH1's "100 Best Songs of the 1990's" not as a winner, but as one that just missed the cut. Still, it's a good CD and for 50 cents hard to pass up. The other was Rachael Yamagata. I know her name and know I've heard the music but couldn't (and still can't) name any song she's done. A good intro at 50 cents.
Then there's the remixes: who could resist Oakenfold remixing U2? Or MAW featuring Liliana Chachion doing Brazilian beats? The "Paris under a groove" CD is great: just the thing for a quiet (and maybe sexy) evening at home. It's divided into Cocktails, Party Groove, and Light Night Groove. What could be better? The last is an edition of Trance Nation, just to add to my collection of trance music.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Hello Friend
"Hello Friend" is a phrase recently popularized by Bill Cosby after the murder of his son Ennis at a freeway exit in Los Angeles. It was a greeting used by Ennis and the grieving Cosby wore it stenciled on sweatshirts for several years when he performed.
It's also a phrase for our times, with the growth of Facebook and the phenomenom of "friending." The world is now divided into three groups: those on Facebook, those who haven't joined yet, and those who've joined but aren't working it very hard.
I've been thinking about Facebook a little lately. I joined in early 2008 because I wanted to share photos from my trip to Harvard with others in the class, and wasn't familiar with Flickr or any of the other photo sharing programs. Plus, I was bored at home recovering from surgery and it gave me something to do. I now have a good number of friends, though some friends are organizations.
The list grows and shrinks as friends are added, people leave Facebook, or they just decide to defriend you.
Strangely, I haven't been bothered by being defriended. I can't decide if it's just like real life or actually a little bit different. First of all, it takes a while to figure out if somebody has dropped you. (Just like real life.) If they have, you may not be sure when and you'll never know why, unless you ask them in person (gasp!). I've had two former coworkers defriend me, one when she left Facebook because she couldn't stand the lack of privacy, and the other to spare my feelings because she tended to post religious messages. Nothing to get worked up about.
I have a lot of artist friends, as well as those involved in theatre. I've also had a number of people I know in both groups ignore requests. Same with architects and realtors -- lots of friends in both categories, which makes it surprising when somebody doesn't respond. It's a little more understandable when it's a consultant that you've only worked on one or two projects. In the category of people that I knew a little, largely through the arts or architecture, from projects or being friends of friends or knowing each other by reputation, it's understandable that there's a pretty thin connection there. One was an artist that originally friended me and that I wasn't sure I knew, but maybe knew peripherally. I wasn't completely sure. One day he was gone, though, perhaps after waking up and realizing he really didn't know me either.
A business associate that moved out of town, like me, accepted my request, then we exhanged the "what are you up to these days?" messages and carried each other for a few months on our friends lists until one day he was gone, too. I also had another colleague that was a personal friend drop me, too, as well as another colleague who was, I guess, friendly, also drop me. There must be reasons, or maybe no reason at all.
So far, one Fresno friend has dropped me. It was a local gadfly/blogger, a colorful chap who ended up moving out of town. He either dropped everybody, everybody in Fresno, or everybody associated with the City. I was on one of those lists. I still haven't friended that many people yet in Fresno, but so far I've already had a few business owners I know ignore the request. We're still friendly in "real life," and neither of us mention the ignored request.
I have only defriended one person: a guy I know who friended me, sent a dozen different notifications, and finally sent a notification to joind the group "I just want to bang girls on Facebook." This is guy at least in his 50's. He had to go.
A restaurant defriended me but the owner is still a friend. Not sure why that happens.
I'm still not sure what to think when people ignore a friend request. It's surprising sometimes. How do you know if they've hit "ignore?" Check "All Connections" under the friends tab, and their name isn't there with a "Friend Request Pending" label, they got your request and hit "ignore." One of the beauties of Facebook is its politeness. Nobody "declines" or "rejects" your request, it just gets ignored and quietly disappears. It's as if you never sent the request, and if neither of you ever mention it in person, nobody needs to be embarrassed.
The other alternative, of course, is to withdraw a request that's lingered too long. I give organizations three business days, and I used to give potential friends about three weeks to respond, though that changes every now and then. Organizations in Fresno seem especially slow to respond, and I've withdrawn requests from a number of them. But the Coachella Valley is not immune, and I even withdrew a request from Carnegie Mellon when it sat for weeks without a response.
I've had a former Assembly member and traveling companion ignore my request, along with a couple of current mayors, even though Antonio Villaraigosa and Arnold Schwarzenegger accepted my request (until Arnold hit the 5,000 friend barrier and had to switch to a fan page). I've withdrawn a request from a local councilman (not in a city I worked) who let it sit. I think it was around he time he was losing his race, too.
I've been ignored by a handful of local and national media figures, but one was in the middle of having her contract terminated while my request was pending. The request disappeared at the same time she did. I had a film festival ignore me (not Palm Springs). Go figure. Also ignoring my request was a locally prominent fashion designer, though that didn't surprise me. No connection.
I've also been ignored by a few high school, college and grad school classmates. With the high school friends, a few I knew (it was a small class) but were not close to, but one was a friend during high school years, I think. I think that was a case of "don't be somebody's first friend." The college friend was a former Iranian student who, I think, was living in Iran at the time of the recent elections and my friend request. Another was part of a small circle of friends (women) from another college. We'd traded Christmas cards for a few years after school, but that was hard to sustain an we didn't pick up on Facebook. A couple, like above, were periheral friends in grad school. It also helps to figure out the line of appropriate friending: a year ahead or behind in school, less likely. Somebody in your class or, better yet, in your study groups or circle of friends, much more likely.
I had a couple of good friends from Rotary ignore me, though one was new on Facebook and I believe he did it by accident, and the other seems to be on, then off, then back on again. A third friend from Rotary was somebody I'd also helped with his business, so I thought we were better connected. We weren't. It's less and less likely I'll be adding more, since I've been away for about a year now. A number of former co-workers have ignored me. Some colleagues from other cities have ignored me, which is sort of understandable. A local attorney who'd represented the other side in a number of my projects, but with whom I'd had a fun, very cordial relationship, ignored me. A couple of locally prominent preservationists ignored me, I guess because my preservation cred is suspect.
Not that developers are more likely to respond. Several developers with whom I'd worked for years on their projects failed to respond to a friend request. Is it because their projects never got built? Blame the market, not me.
Still, it's been fun following people that I know and being part of their "audience." Some of my most interesting Facebook friends are people I barely knew in real life, but turn out to be great foodies, or have a passion for music or art or design, or have something else very cool to offer. The wider the circle gets, the more interesting the daily news feed becomes -- it's not just Farmville and Mafia Wars.
It's also a phrase for our times, with the growth of Facebook and the phenomenom of "friending." The world is now divided into three groups: those on Facebook, those who haven't joined yet, and those who've joined but aren't working it very hard.
I've been thinking about Facebook a little lately. I joined in early 2008 because I wanted to share photos from my trip to Harvard with others in the class, and wasn't familiar with Flickr or any of the other photo sharing programs. Plus, I was bored at home recovering from surgery and it gave me something to do. I now have a good number of friends, though some friends are organizations.
The list grows and shrinks as friends are added, people leave Facebook, or they just decide to defriend you.
Strangely, I haven't been bothered by being defriended. I can't decide if it's just like real life or actually a little bit different. First of all, it takes a while to figure out if somebody has dropped you. (Just like real life.) If they have, you may not be sure when and you'll never know why, unless you ask them in person (gasp!). I've had two former coworkers defriend me, one when she left Facebook because she couldn't stand the lack of privacy, and the other to spare my feelings because she tended to post religious messages. Nothing to get worked up about.
I have a lot of artist friends, as well as those involved in theatre. I've also had a number of people I know in both groups ignore requests. Same with architects and realtors -- lots of friends in both categories, which makes it surprising when somebody doesn't respond. It's a little more understandable when it's a consultant that you've only worked on one or two projects. In the category of people that I knew a little, largely through the arts or architecture, from projects or being friends of friends or knowing each other by reputation, it's understandable that there's a pretty thin connection there. One was an artist that originally friended me and that I wasn't sure I knew, but maybe knew peripherally. I wasn't completely sure. One day he was gone, though, perhaps after waking up and realizing he really didn't know me either.
A business associate that moved out of town, like me, accepted my request, then we exhanged the "what are you up to these days?" messages and carried each other for a few months on our friends lists until one day he was gone, too. I also had another colleague that was a personal friend drop me, too, as well as another colleague who was, I guess, friendly, also drop me. There must be reasons, or maybe no reason at all.
So far, one Fresno friend has dropped me. It was a local gadfly/blogger, a colorful chap who ended up moving out of town. He either dropped everybody, everybody in Fresno, or everybody associated with the City. I was on one of those lists. I still haven't friended that many people yet in Fresno, but so far I've already had a few business owners I know ignore the request. We're still friendly in "real life," and neither of us mention the ignored request.
I have only defriended one person: a guy I know who friended me, sent a dozen different notifications, and finally sent a notification to joind the group "I just want to bang girls on Facebook." This is guy at least in his 50's. He had to go.
A restaurant defriended me but the owner is still a friend. Not sure why that happens.
I'm still not sure what to think when people ignore a friend request. It's surprising sometimes. How do you know if they've hit "ignore?" Check "All Connections" under the friends tab, and their name isn't there with a "Friend Request Pending" label, they got your request and hit "ignore." One of the beauties of Facebook is its politeness. Nobody "declines" or "rejects" your request, it just gets ignored and quietly disappears. It's as if you never sent the request, and if neither of you ever mention it in person, nobody needs to be embarrassed.
The other alternative, of course, is to withdraw a request that's lingered too long. I give organizations three business days, and I used to give potential friends about three weeks to respond, though that changes every now and then. Organizations in Fresno seem especially slow to respond, and I've withdrawn requests from a number of them. But the Coachella Valley is not immune, and I even withdrew a request from Carnegie Mellon when it sat for weeks without a response.
I've had a former Assembly member and traveling companion ignore my request, along with a couple of current mayors, even though Antonio Villaraigosa and Arnold Schwarzenegger accepted my request (until Arnold hit the 5,000 friend barrier and had to switch to a fan page). I've withdrawn a request from a local councilman (not in a city I worked) who let it sit. I think it was around he time he was losing his race, too.
I've been ignored by a handful of local and national media figures, but one was in the middle of having her contract terminated while my request was pending. The request disappeared at the same time she did. I had a film festival ignore me (not Palm Springs). Go figure. Also ignoring my request was a locally prominent fashion designer, though that didn't surprise me. No connection.
I've also been ignored by a few high school, college and grad school classmates. With the high school friends, a few I knew (it was a small class) but were not close to, but one was a friend during high school years, I think. I think that was a case of "don't be somebody's first friend." The college friend was a former Iranian student who, I think, was living in Iran at the time of the recent elections and my friend request. Another was part of a small circle of friends (women) from another college. We'd traded Christmas cards for a few years after school, but that was hard to sustain an we didn't pick up on Facebook. A couple, like above, were periheral friends in grad school. It also helps to figure out the line of appropriate friending: a year ahead or behind in school, less likely. Somebody in your class or, better yet, in your study groups or circle of friends, much more likely.
I had a couple of good friends from Rotary ignore me, though one was new on Facebook and I believe he did it by accident, and the other seems to be on, then off, then back on again. A third friend from Rotary was somebody I'd also helped with his business, so I thought we were better connected. We weren't. It's less and less likely I'll be adding more, since I've been away for about a year now. A number of former co-workers have ignored me. Some colleagues from other cities have ignored me, which is sort of understandable. A local attorney who'd represented the other side in a number of my projects, but with whom I'd had a fun, very cordial relationship, ignored me. A couple of locally prominent preservationists ignored me, I guess because my preservation cred is suspect.
Not that developers are more likely to respond. Several developers with whom I'd worked for years on their projects failed to respond to a friend request. Is it because their projects never got built? Blame the market, not me.
Still, it's been fun following people that I know and being part of their "audience." Some of my most interesting Facebook friends are people I barely knew in real life, but turn out to be great foodies, or have a passion for music or art or design, or have something else very cool to offer. The wider the circle gets, the more interesting the daily news feed becomes -- it's not just Farmville and Mafia Wars.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Art and Culture in Regional Economies
It was announced a few weeks ago that the American Craft Council will move to Minneapolis. It was headquartered in New York for 66 years, but the high cost of doing business in New York caused them to look elsewhere. The Board president Leilani Duke said that "As part of a year-long strategic planning process, the Council Board determined that relocating to the Midwest — with its rich craft traditions and energetic artist communities - is an exciting and positive step."
"Minneapolis, one of the country’s most vibrant centers for art and craft, provides tremendous opportunities for the Council to enhance its contributions to art and craft communities at a national and local level," Duke said.
Of course the Minneapolis Mayor was happy and quick to point out the economic impact of artisits in the Twin Cities. "Nearly 9,000 people work in the arena of nonprofit arts and culture in Minneapolis. The arts are a driving force in the city’s economy. Already home to 275 arts and cultural organizations, we welcome the American Craft Council to our community."
From my perspective, Minneapolis is a natural location for ACC. A year or so ago, I got to attend a lecture by Dr. Ann Markusen of the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Center at the Palm Springs Art Museum. Look up her work on the economic impact of artists and cultural institutions in a regional economy. Their impact extends beyond the "charitable" giving to the museum or opera and goes right to the core value of a community: quality of life is what drives the decision of those who have options to stay or go. And it is those who can live anywhere you want in your community.
See the full article:
http://www.minnpost.com/artsarena/2009/11/05/13200/american_craft_council_will_move_to_minneapolis
I've rounded up a few articles on arts in the places I'm familiar. Palm Springs undervalues its museum and its public art program, but both succeed nonetheless. Fresno struggles, but actually has a more dynamic community of working artists than the desert -- it's a bigger area, there are more young people and more types of voices here. With the university here, there are also more artists and more academics studying and documenting the benefits of an arts economy here. Just wish they had a good public art program. Are you listening, Jennifer?
Arts in Palm Springs
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2009/07/palm-springs-museum-gets-bonanza-of-contemporary-art.html
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2008/11/dudamel.html
http://www.huliq.com/13/78515/palm-springs-museum-exhibits-portraits-robert-mapplethorpe
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2008/11/haring-prop8.html
Panel unveils 'Cubes' uptown mydesert.com The Desert Sun
http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=32145
Arts in Fresno
http://abclocal.go.com/kfsn/story?section=news/business&id=6681248
http://www.artdaily.com/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=28104
http://my.fresnoarts.net/group/artistsfornewurbanism
http://fresnobeehive.com/opinion/2008/10/starving_artists_are_worth_mil.html
"Minneapolis, one of the country’s most vibrant centers for art and craft, provides tremendous opportunities for the Council to enhance its contributions to art and craft communities at a national and local level," Duke said.
Of course the Minneapolis Mayor was happy and quick to point out the economic impact of artisits in the Twin Cities. "Nearly 9,000 people work in the arena of nonprofit arts and culture in Minneapolis. The arts are a driving force in the city’s economy. Already home to 275 arts and cultural organizations, we welcome the American Craft Council to our community."
From my perspective, Minneapolis is a natural location for ACC. A year or so ago, I got to attend a lecture by Dr. Ann Markusen of the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Center at the Palm Springs Art Museum. Look up her work on the economic impact of artists and cultural institutions in a regional economy. Their impact extends beyond the "charitable" giving to the museum or opera and goes right to the core value of a community: quality of life is what drives the decision of those who have options to stay or go. And it is those who can live anywhere you want in your community.
See the full article:
http://www.minnpost.com/artsarena/2009/11/05/13200/american_craft_council_will_move_to_minneapolis
I've rounded up a few articles on arts in the places I'm familiar. Palm Springs undervalues its museum and its public art program, but both succeed nonetheless. Fresno struggles, but actually has a more dynamic community of working artists than the desert -- it's a bigger area, there are more young people and more types of voices here. With the university here, there are also more artists and more academics studying and documenting the benefits of an arts economy here. Just wish they had a good public art program. Are you listening, Jennifer?
Arts in Palm Springs
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2009/07/palm-springs-museum-gets-bonanza-of-contemporary-art.html
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2008/11/dudamel.html
http://www.huliq.com/13/78515/palm-springs-museum-exhibits-portraits-robert-mapplethorpe
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2008/11/haring-prop8.html
Panel unveils 'Cubes' uptown mydesert.com The Desert Sun
http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=32145
Arts in Fresno
http://abclocal.go.com/kfsn/story?section=news/business&id=6681248
http://www.artdaily.com/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=28104
http://my.fresnoarts.net/group/artistsfornewurbanism
http://fresnobeehive.com/opinion/2008/10/starving_artists_are_worth_mil.html
Hard Times in the Valley
It's hard to even know where to start with the farm crisis. First, there's the drought: several years of lower-than-average rainfall that have reduced the Sierra snowpack and therefore water deliveries to farmers in the Central Valley. Then, there's the fish: federal court rulings and various biological opinions that have required water to be diverted into the San Joaquin/Sacramento River delta to ensure the survival of endangered fish species. The combination of the drought and the biological opinions have lead to water delivieries that have been reduced by 90% or even eliminated. Farmers are plowing under fields or even cutting down orchards in anticipation of permanent water reductions.
Then there's the misery. Towns like Mendota, largely agricultural, have been flattened economically by the water reductions. Unemployment is officially at 40% but that doesn't even include those that are underemployed, and then there are the families. The foodbanks are out there weekly for distribution and even they can't keep up with the demand.
The problem is that even before the drought life in those towns were already miserable. Between the seasonable labor, the low wage, the pesticides, other forms of pollution, the lack of services, and just the poverty, the places were already pretty marginal. See the NPR article on the poor nutritition in the Valley.
I'm still thinking about what I think.
Hard Times in the Land of John Steinbeck Newsweek Business Newsweek.com
Mendota: A Town Scraping Bottom (SF Gate)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/07/25/MNQ718IAAI.DTL
Central Valley Disconnect: Rich Land, Poor Nutrition (NPR)
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106061080
Drought Adds to Hardships in California (New York Times)
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/22/us/22mendota.html?_r=1&emc=eta1
Dying on the Vine
http://www.newsweek.com/id/211381
Then there's the misery. Towns like Mendota, largely agricultural, have been flattened economically by the water reductions. Unemployment is officially at 40% but that doesn't even include those that are underemployed, and then there are the families. The foodbanks are out there weekly for distribution and even they can't keep up with the demand.
The problem is that even before the drought life in those towns were already miserable. Between the seasonable labor, the low wage, the pesticides, other forms of pollution, the lack of services, and just the poverty, the places were already pretty marginal. See the NPR article on the poor nutritition in the Valley.
I'm still thinking about what I think.
Hard Times in the Land of John Steinbeck Newsweek Business Newsweek.com
Mendota: A Town Scraping Bottom (SF Gate)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/07/25/MNQ718IAAI.DTL
Central Valley Disconnect: Rich Land, Poor Nutrition (NPR)
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106061080
Drought Adds to Hardships in California (New York Times)
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/22/us/22mendota.html?_r=1&emc=eta1
Dying on the Vine
http://www.newsweek.com/id/211381
Down and Out in Fresno
In June, Esquire published an article about being down and out in America, specifically California. As it turns out, the author, Colby Buzzell, lives in the Tenderloin district in San Francisco and actually seems to like it. It's inexpensive and he's learned to navigate the obvious hazards and besides, it's more fun to drink with colorful characters than with boring suburbanites.
That's fine. Every freelance writer needs to live through his bohemian phase. But the article starts in Fresno. Fresno scared the shit out him. Three days later, he was back in the comforts of the Tenderloin.
First, he ventured into Motel Row. Seen from the 99 Freeway, Motel Row is a row of mid-century motor lodges that were located on the "Old 99," now Golden State Boulevard, and were part of the early auto culture in California. Palm Springs is full of properties of the same vintage and architecture and slowly they're being recaptured into hip, lively destinations. In Fresno, their fate is quite different. Many of them, like the Storyland (see the link below) devolved into de facto SRO housing. Families, sometimes large families, crammed into small motel rooms; prostitution, drugs, the list is familiar. They are scary properties, and would be anywhere.
The problem is, what's the alternative? When the City of Fresno shut down the Storyland Motel this winter, displacing something like 60 families, where do they go. The Astro, next door? The solution, of course, is safe, clean, affordable housing, but the Fresno Housing Authority has a waiting list of 20,000 for public units. I think that's about 8 years.
Then there's the actual homeless. The second part of Buzzell's stay in Fresno was in one the homeless encampments near the Union Pacific tracks. I think what he learned was that housing of any type, even a small flat in the Tenderloin, was preferable to living in a "rented" tent in a homeless camp. We forget that safety is one of the things we take for granted, and something that the homeless never take for granted. The ongoing stress of just being homeless takes a physical and mental toll that takes a long time to unwind, even if they are placed into housing.
An example of just how tought the problem is, the City made a commitment to shutting down one of the encampments, in part because it bought the property for a future downtown water tank (more on downtown water in a future post). They received about $600,000 in Rapid Relocation funds from HUD and working with the Housing Authority, moved about 130 people into permanant housing. Several months later, about 95% of the relocated are still in housing, which is a good track record. But the problem hasn't gone away. A month ago the tents started appearing again, this time at Ventura and F Street, just off the freeway.
Sometimes it feels like we're dealing with teaspoons.
Down & Out in Fresno and San Francisco
Posted using ShareThis
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/us/26tents.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss
http://abclocal.go.com/kfsn/story?section=news/local&id=6527424&rss=rss-kfsn-article-6527424
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/04/19/18590374.php
http://abclocal.go.com/kfsn/story?section=news/local&id=6858971
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/65578.html
That's fine. Every freelance writer needs to live through his bohemian phase. But the article starts in Fresno. Fresno scared the shit out him. Three days later, he was back in the comforts of the Tenderloin.
First, he ventured into Motel Row. Seen from the 99 Freeway, Motel Row is a row of mid-century motor lodges that were located on the "Old 99," now Golden State Boulevard, and were part of the early auto culture in California. Palm Springs is full of properties of the same vintage and architecture and slowly they're being recaptured into hip, lively destinations. In Fresno, their fate is quite different. Many of them, like the Storyland (see the link below) devolved into de facto SRO housing. Families, sometimes large families, crammed into small motel rooms; prostitution, drugs, the list is familiar. They are scary properties, and would be anywhere.
The problem is, what's the alternative? When the City of Fresno shut down the Storyland Motel this winter, displacing something like 60 families, where do they go. The Astro, next door? The solution, of course, is safe, clean, affordable housing, but the Fresno Housing Authority has a waiting list of 20,000 for public units. I think that's about 8 years.
Then there's the actual homeless. The second part of Buzzell's stay in Fresno was in one the homeless encampments near the Union Pacific tracks. I think what he learned was that housing of any type, even a small flat in the Tenderloin, was preferable to living in a "rented" tent in a homeless camp. We forget that safety is one of the things we take for granted, and something that the homeless never take for granted. The ongoing stress of just being homeless takes a physical and mental toll that takes a long time to unwind, even if they are placed into housing.
An example of just how tought the problem is, the City made a commitment to shutting down one of the encampments, in part because it bought the property for a future downtown water tank (more on downtown water in a future post). They received about $600,000 in Rapid Relocation funds from HUD and working with the Housing Authority, moved about 130 people into permanant housing. Several months later, about 95% of the relocated are still in housing, which is a good track record. But the problem hasn't gone away. A month ago the tents started appearing again, this time at Ventura and F Street, just off the freeway.
Sometimes it feels like we're dealing with teaspoons.
Down & Out in Fresno and San Francisco
Posted using ShareThis
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/us/26tents.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss
http://abclocal.go.com/kfsn/story?section=news/local&id=6527424&rss=rss-kfsn-article-6527424
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/04/19/18590374.php
http://abclocal.go.com/kfsn/story?section=news/local&id=6858971
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/65578.html
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)