22. October, 2003 - neighborhood doings, bikes, carrots
- Because some people seem to be interested: Last night’s neighborhood association meeting was pretty calm. We only finished a few minutes late with the board meeting, and we’d managed to create a committee to deal with the bylaws changes proposed last month, and deal with an above-average number of zoning and planning requests, too. The general membership meeting had more attendees than usual, which was a good thing, and the only real slow point was a discussion about lighting which is being championed by a gal from the Pan-Hellenic council. My take is that the lighting on some of the streets in the neighborhood is pretty bad, even when all the existing streetlights are working, and they’re not all working at the moment. I urged people to report the ones that aren’t, and that’ll be a start. But the big thing that has to happen is that someone needs to lean on this issue, probably for the better part of a year, pestering city government, looking for grants from the state (University Avenue and 4th St SE are state highways, so there’s a different pot of money for improvements on them), and generally working all the angles. It’ll be interesting to see whether someone will have the energy to improve the lighting, or whether, as happened in 1999, a study will be done, and then the student pulling together the results of the study graduates, taking all the data that was gathered with them when they leave the neighborhood.
Also, as an aside: the requirement in the bylaws for a year of residency to be on the board does not discriminate against students. It may discriminate against Greeks, who can’t live in their houses over the summer, but while all Greeks are students, not all students are Greeks and the people who are pushing for more student involvement in the neighborhood association need to remember that.
- Inspections of University-area housing to begin this week. My landlord was one of the “lucky” ones who got inspected before the house-fire on 15th, and he’s been busy fixing up his places ever since. A couple months later, he’s getting close to finished, and I think his places were probably pretty average for rental housing in the neighborhood. Might be time to buy Home Depot stock, since a bunch of other landlords are going to be fixing up their places this winter…
- The Tour de Mississippi is three folks biking the river from the headwaters in Itasca down to the salt-water. There’s also a writeup of my friend Scott’s bike trip around Lake Superior . I’m kinda jealous, since I didn’t get much riding done at all this summer.
- And in another rant from the half-bakery: I’ve officially had enough of the Baby Carrot scam, and it’s time to expose the vegetable pushers for the frauds they are. Real baby carrots are things of genuine yumminess, small, tender and oddly-shaped. What stores are selling as baby carrots are simply little chunks cut from bigger carrots and they’re nothing like as good as real baby carrots. I wonder whether I report these fraudsters to the FDA or the FTC.
Here’s an example of slightly more real baby carrots in that they’re at least not chopped up, but the delicious little bites of orange I’m talking about are genuine immature carrots, and they’re just not the same as these imitations that are bred to be smaller.
Brooke Biggs blew the lid off the scandal over a year ago so I guess I’ll just let it drop now. Unless someone wants to form the Truth In Carrot Advertising League, in which case I’ll be happy to send a donation.
Copyright 2008, Dave Polaschek.
Last updated on Wed, 22 Oct 2003 07:47:35.