Self-aggrandizement

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Never noticed this before, but American Airlines’ online booking system allows one a laughably wide selection of “titles and honoraria”:https://westnorth.com/img/aggrandize.png to prefix one’s name with. In the end, it was a tough choice between Princess, Right Honourable, or Swami, but luckily the reservation didn’t time out while I wrestled with which personality would be boarding the plane. (Wonder if this’ll show on the boarding pass.)

Insult the troops

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Continuing on yesterday’s theme, Lawrence Kaplan writes that Hummers insult the troops in The New Republic. What makes a Hummer far more intrinsically vile than any comparable wasteful, vain SUV is the cultural baggage that comes with the name and fake-military styling — exactly what low-lifes pay extra for.

bq. It is only in a nation that has been completely insulated from war’s effects that a vehicle of war could become a trophy for the rich. It’s not enough that those who most enjoy the benefits and freedoms of this country serve it the least. Now they’ve made leisure rides of the war machines used by those who serve. The reluctance to abide any measure that might constrain personal autonomy, the conflation of rights and duties–it’s all there in one vehicle.

I’ve scrawled something to the effect of “hey tough guy, drive your road hog to Iraq” on a note left on a windshield, but alas, the thought doesn’t lend it self to a succinct five-word stoplight insult. Just “the bird”:http://fuh2.com doesn’t seem to suffice, either.

At the very least, it appears that AM General has lost the contract to make the Army’s next generation of “small” trucks. We can only hope that whoever secures the new contract won’t go down this road.

Narcissistic, cowardly, sociopathic driver of yellow Hummer sought

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From The Daily Northwestern:

bq. Archana Sriram suffered facial fractures, a broken jaw, a hip fracture and a broken leg after she was hit by a yellow Hummer at the intersection of Lake Street and Sherman Avenue, she said from the hospital Monday… “EPD says they can’t look up registered yellow Hummers in the area, only license plates,” Sriram said. “Hopefully people can keep their eyes out.”

Airlinemeals.net

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Today’s odd web find: sure, I understand taking photos of meals and posting to Flickr, but thanks to the wonders of the web, you can find out what vegetarian curry aboard Air New Zealand (and any number of cuisine/airline combos) looks and tastes like. Or maybe an “Air Zimbabwe meal circa 1981”:http://www.airlinemeals.net/oldies/AirZimbabwe.html is more to your taste.

(FWIW, I’ve stuck to Indian vegetarian [often vegan, sometimes yogurt or cheese] in-flight meals ever since an unfortunate food poisoning incident involving a turkey wrap on a flight to PDX.)

Street Renaissance in NYC

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bq. The choice is clear: either we choose to be defined by worsening traffic and perilous streets or we can define ourselves through great public spaces and lively streets… The “New York City Streets Renaissance Campaign”:http://www.nycsr.org/ is building the movement to re-imagine our streets as lively public places.

A new campaign launched this month to “Reclaim the Streets” in a very broad sense throughout New York City, complete with some inviting renderings of sidewalks thronged with happy pedestrians. (It almost seems possible, too!) With some concerted action, it seems like many Community Boards — filled with “pedestrian voters”:http://www.carsharing.net/library/carandcityexecsummary.html (scroll down to ) — could do a lot to reclaim side streets, in particular, from speeding through traffic — but New Yorkers’ simultaneous sense of complaint and begrudging compliance (“ah, fugeddaboutit”) might slow progress.

The nominations are in

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The entries for the “2006 Charter Awards”:http://cnu.org/awards2006 have been pouring into the office. It has a bit of a Christmas-y air: deliverymen stumbling in with groaning stacks of colorful FedEx boxes, everything diligently wrapped and awaiting discovery.

A cursory look through shows some very promising entries, some formulaic plans, and some pretty obvious “well, if they can win with that, I can win with this” one-upsmanship. Now that it’s in its sixth year, the second generation of New Urbanist architects is well represented, and potentially a third identifiable generation is emerging — people who may not have thought of their work as New Urbanist in the past but are willing to bet real money that it is now.

Perhaps most interesting: several outstanding (in my opinion, but what do I know?) entries feature modern-ist architecture, even though the jury this year includes super-classicist (e.g., inaugural winner of the “Driehaus Prize”:http://www.driehausprize.org) Leon Krier. I can’t disclose any further details until April, but suffice to say the judging will be very interesting indeed.

On the other hand

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Mike Class, a Jesuit priest in Chicago, with yet another “upshot to NSA spying”:http://www.salon.com/comics/boll/2006/01/05/boll/index.html:

bq. They get you free phone service! The feds tapped the phone of the Sisters of Mercy in Washington D.C. because of some anti-war stance or something they took in the 1980s. The good sisters noticed some kind of clicking on the phone at times, and finally decided that someone must have tapped into their phone. Their solution: Don’t pay the bill so the phone company will have to shut off the phone. The phone never went dead, and they quit sending them bills! The Feds wouldn’t let Ma Bell shut them down, and probably began paying the bills. The sisters talked long and free with their friends across the country!

Quoted by Bob Cringely

Dark age ahead

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Tim Kane from St. Louis on the Canadian election, at the “Globe & Mail”:http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060124.welmain0123_6/CommentStory/specialDecision2006/#comment86063

bq. I had flashbacks to 2000 in the US and I’m traditionally conservative. Bush came to power on a minority vote. Today 2000 looks more like a minority coup that looted the treasurey and laid siege to nearly every institution, be it local, national or international, including the UN and Nato. At its core, the conservative movement here doesn’t believe in Democracy. They believe in Aristocracy and they want to prove that Democracy doesn’t work. To make that point they undermine its institutions. Looting the treasury served two purposes. They have not solved a single problem and have spawned numerous new ones. The Iraq war will cost us $2 trillion.Iraq may do to us what Afganistan did to the Soviets… Today the U.S is under a virtual dictatorship of fear, paranoia, war, multilayered deceit and corporate journalism that serves the beast. Harper’s is a minority government, but that’s hardly any different than it was with Bush… With the 2000 election of Bush, America took its first step to fascism and a dark age of anxiety, fear, war, torture, and intimidation.

Hotelier

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A few new mid-market, “loft” style hotel brands have emerged in recent months, which got me thinking about the Northwest Tower’s (“coyote building”) reuse possibility as a boutique hotel with convenient access to O’Hare and downtown, fantastic unobstructed views, and a hip neighborhood ambience. It’s not like I know any adaptive-reuse hotel developers, but it was interesting enough to investigate.

If the assessor’s estimate of 37,200 sq ft of building on 4500 sq ft of land is to be believed, the structure could optimistically house 60-70 rooms on floors 3-12 with reception and a bar on one and two. (There’s just not space for a full-service hotel’s requisite restaurant, deluxe lobby, and pool.) Even though hotel rooms average 300-400 sq ft apiece [and their buildings ~500 sq ft per key] the building’s narrow angle creates problems: the sharp corner, obviously, but less obviously because it has an awkward core lined up against the back wall, which cuts back even more on perimeter space.

Compare that to the Reliance Building, home of the just-barely full-service Burnham Hotel: 62,700 sq ft of building on 4700 sq ft of land, and a much friendlier rectangular layout. The economics don’t really work under 100 rooms; Kimpton requires at least that, with the 122-room Burnham among their smallest properties. The Standard Hollywood has 140 keys, and Starwood’s aloft is targeting 125-175 keys. (Starwood says 90-180, and its aloft prototype has 136 keys in 66,000 square feet, but the full-service W Waikiki counts a mere 51 rooms.)

Adding the neighboring Hollander fireproof warehouse [street view] (24,000 sq ft of building on 5121 sq ft of land, plus niceties like alley access and a loading dock for those laundry trucks) makes the layout infinitely easier but adds challenges: on one hand, its warehouse-height floors don’t line up with the Tower’s, and it’s never given indication that it’s for sale (even as property values have zoomed); on the other, it’s likely sturdy enough to sprout a substantial (if expensive) addition above, provided zoning could be secured. Such an addition could reorganize the tower’s inconvenient core while also adding rooms, although it still leaves the question of what to do with the mismatched third through fifth floors. The two lots just past it — a single story building and a parking lot — also seem ripe for redevelopment. Indeed, the tower and a total of six lots are all now listed for sale by their owner, MCM.

Of course, the whole deal would some kind of parking solution. Ideally, enough capital and organization could materialize to build a shared off-site structure safely away on Elston or Western, but that could complicate what’s already looking like a head-splitter of a deal. Or else the site could participate in some kind of neighborhood shared-parking authority.

Unfortunately, it appears that two major hotel developers with extensive rehab experience in Chicago (Sage Hospitality and Kimpton) both target larger, sometimes much larger projects — most of Sage’s development projects are around 300 rooms. Continental Property and ECD both have aloft hotels in the works locally (O’Hare, South Loop and Lincolnshire, respectively) but don’t do rehabs. Preservationist bête-noire John Buck also has an aloft license, but no local projects. Rehab or hotel expertise could be imported from another city, like Streuver Bros., Eccles & Rouse, but a local partner still seems necessary.

[update 12 December 2007]