Orkut

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Only a day after its launch, I’m in at Orkut. Not exactly a fantastic honor, I guess, to join another social networking site that blatantly plays off Google’s failed attempt to buy Friendster (and co-opts questions from Spring Street), but hey — if you want an invite, just ask. And, as the techies point out, Friendster has some serious scalability issues (the database just isn’t up to handling five million users, the search capabilities aren’t capable of generating useful results), whereas Google is excellent at keeping on top of the world without a hitch.

Uptown update

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Crain’s reports that Target has signed a letter of intent for a two-story store at Wilson Yard, the hotly contested parcel under the Red Line tracks in the middle of Uptown. Landmark Theatres has already signed its intent; Target will go below the theaters. Needless to say, the neighbors are worried about traffic, etc., and many wrongly think the result will be a stripmall. Ah well.

My favorite reaction to the endless posts whining about how “we need a posh boutique row just like Andersonville with my favorite retailers, blah blah” comes from a poster named Jeremy:

Ever since Bendel’s left Michigan Avenue I have been at a loss. Crate & Barrel is for street urchins, and the unwashed masses. I know Harrod’s was talking about the block across from Marshall Fields & Co., but to be alone in the Wilson Yards would make them the crown jewel of the neighborhood, and our neighborhood the envy of the Americas. I picture Broadway as the new High Street. And what better place to walk the streets before stopping in for High tea…

I understand everyone has their own “pet” store for Wilson Yard. But until we get Ed Bowie’s underground subway put in, really what is the point? […]

I just don’t buy [a boutique strip] for Broadway, the scale of the street and buildings are not conducive to light retail. Alderman Smith fought with Schiller on this point at one of the early development meetings for the Phoenix — she argued for Big Box retail. The neighborhood was designed as an entertainment district, but live action theatres are almost out of the question, (see the struggling Chicago Theater, downtown theatre district, the shuttered Uptown and the stuggling Riv). I don’t think the ballrooms will return and that pretty much leaves the taverns and speakeasys. We could probably get some more of those. Maybe a movie theatre is on the way. DisneyQuest was a dismal failure, our tourist area is well established. That would leave casinos, and gentlemen’s clubs for us though. Maybe we could approach the alderman about a provisional ward legalization of gambling and prostitution. Pshaw to the secondary effects.

Two important points: first, Target has shown a willingness to adapt its store formats to urban locations; their flagship in downtown Minneapolis is the most obvious example. It sits along Minneapolis’ transit mall, and most customers — as at big boxes and department stores in downtown Chicago — arrive via transit. (Wilson Yard straddles the Red Line.) DPD and Alderman Shiller will make sure that new construction there will respect the existing urban fabric; even if both parties are often known for missing the forest for the trees, they’re not that stupid.

Second, everyone loves small, independent shops — even if many Uptown gentrifiers don’t love the small, independent pawn shops and dollar stores that predominate there and instead long for cute, upscale boutiques like those in Andersonville. However, that’s just unrealistic for this particular site: the developer is up against a wall: building new buildings on literally toxic land, paying for a new parking garage for Truman College (at $30,000 a space) and a new CTA station, and selling the housing at below cost. In order to make the development work at all, there’s got to be big money involved — just to break even on the investment needed to build a new building will require rents far, far higher than small businesses can typically pay. Hence, the scores of new buildings on, say, Lincoln in Lincoln Park have empty shop space at street level (or else mortgage brokers’ or dentists’ offices). Even in a neighborhood which loves boutiques and spawns them by the boatload, the boutiques can’t afford the rent on those spaces.

And Target’s interest in the neighborhood introduces a new potential savior for the Uptown Theatre: conversion to large-format retail. Medinah Temple, after all, is now a Bloomingdale’s. Since the economics of running the theatres as entertainment venues is so weak now, retail conversion — which would save the exteriors and significant interior features — could be a very real possibility in the future.

“Opportunity society”

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While looking up references for the above entry, I stumbled across a blogger who had confused the R’s “ownership society” with the D’s “opportunity society.” Whoops.

The Bush “ownership society,” of course, is just another way to sell Social Security privatization as a good thing, rather than something that will either (a) sink Social Security just as demand for payments rises to record levels, (b) cost an extra few trillion to launch just as deficits rise to record levels, (c) force payroll taxation into the sky just as I enter my peak earning years, or (d) all of the above. “Medical savings accounts” so far have been a boon to LASIK eye surgeons; if properly expanded, we could see a boom in all sorts of cosmetic surgery! Hooray for economic progress! Hooray for the profits to be made by starving the public and enriching the private!

And oh, I shan’t forget to mention how the Rs plan to increase the exemption of investment income from taxation, thus shifting the tax burden from the privileged coupon clippers onto the lowly working classes. But no, that’s because income from capital is income from Ownership, which is Good. The proletariat, oops, no, lucky duckies, no, Regular God-Fearing Americans should pay more taxes, anyhow. That will inspire them to become part of the Ownership Society, which they can do by, well, you know.

Geesh.

Maybe we jinxed the campaign?

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I doubt it. However, we did nix the “hi, we came all the way from [___]” from our little speeches while canvassing suburban Bettendorf — plus, I was feeling awfully self-conscious about having dressed in various shades of black. (We were both wearing square-toed boots, natch.) From Salon War Room:

…put yourself in the boots of an average Iowa Democrat a few days before the caucus. The campaign is so intense that it has become a form of political harassment. Your phone rings every 10 minutes with an automated robo-call on behalf of one candidate or another. Your mailbox is jammed with political junk mail. Then comes a knock on your door and there you find a couple of committed campaigners from Park Slope or Noe Valley or Wicker Park telling you that Howard Dean is your man. And they’re wearing these really loud orange caps.

How would you react if a bunch of Iowans invaded your neighborhood like that? Now you’re beginning to understand what might’ve happened to Dean on Monday.

Actually, we didn’t meet anyone else there from an identifiably hipster hood (save one Logan Square). There were college kids galore, and a few even younger kids (including one who was excitedly telling anyone who’d listen that John Edwards “flipped me off!”), but the overall “I’m a purple-haired wacko and I like this guy and so should you” culture-shock factor was quite minimal.

In any case, Dean has pretty well jinxed his own campaign with The Scream. I’m really not feeling so confident about him after that.

It would seem, though, that John Edwards’ stump speech is perfectly positioned to catch the “opportunity society” meme that Tom Daschle introduced in the SOTU rebuttal. This phrase is, according to Stan Greenberg’s politics-as-psychographic-clustering text The Two Americas), how the Democrats can cohesively explain their vision for government’s role in American society — and to win both left and center.

Commuter bikes back on sale

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A quick look through the 2004 bike catalogs shows that both Trek and Specialized have brought their formerly for-sale-in-Europe-only commuter, street, and utility bikes — complete with fenders, generator lights, and rear racks — to the U.S. market. Previously, both (along with Cannondale and other major U.S. bike manufacturers) had sold commute-ready bikes in Europe and “comfort” bikes in the U.S., assuming that Americans wanted to ride on paths on the weekend, but not to work or around town during the week.

The mere fact that these bikes are available is significant in two ways: first, it plants the seed into bike buyers’ minds that commuting is an option, even if they don’t ride out of the bike shop with a commuter; and second, it shows that there’s market demand for commuters. Either that, or the bike companies figured that they, and not accessory makers, should reap the profits off accessory sales, or are just responding to market pressures from the likes of Breezer or Burley.

A weekend in Davenport for Dean

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I spent most of the weekend in Davenport, Iowa, the heart of the Quad Cities, to knock on doors for the Howard Dean campaign. The campaign actively solicits out-of-state volunteers, counting on its excitable base of young people in cities and college towns to do the legwork in demographically moribund states like Iowa. I went on a lark with Tara, another Wicker Park Green; neither of us were really committed to Dean, but were curious to experience the energy surrounding his campaign and thought it would be fun.

Quick facts about the trip:
Total hours spent in the Quad Cities: 36
Quad Cities I had a drink in: 3 (of 5: Davenport, Moline, and Rock Island, plus recent additions Bettendorf and East Moline)
Doors knocked: about 80 (it was cold!)
Precincts visited: 2, in suburban Bettendorf and in-town Davenport
Dean supporters behind those doors: 7
Candidate rallies attended: 2
Minutes spent waiting for late candidates at said rallies: 95
Bunnies seen: 3
Black squirrels seen: 3
Foreign cars seen: maybe a dozen
Casino billboards seen: maybe a dozen
Ostensibly gay bars visited: 3
Amount I spent on snacks, at a bakery in Chicago and a health food store in Davenport: $30
Photos taken: 32

The daytime photos have a bluish hue, for three reasons: the camera’s light settings were set for yellowish indoor light; Midwestern winters tend to have a grayish blue cast; and it was foggy the first day we were there. I could color correct them, but I won’t.

Bank One’s move

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“Four big banks once graced the Lasalle Street area of downtown Chicago, their line of march bounding along both sides of the street toward the majestic Chicago Board of Trade building. Bank One is the last to stand on its own.” [NYT]

And with that, Chicago loses its last money-center* bank headquarters — putting the city into the same league as Boston, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia, and possibly San Francisco if Wells Fargo is truly in play. Needless to say, Crain’s is shitting its pants, and the trixies are terrified.

Jamie Dimon also is eating his words [scroll to end]: “I did not come here to sell Bank One.” “I have no desire to move back to New York … I am not restless in Chicago.”

* Yeah, that phrase is outdated, but it brings back fond childhood memories of “Wall $treet Week in Review with Louis Rukeyser.”

Whores

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“Neighborhood: Being a trend whore necessitates living at the Bucktown/Wicker Park border.” [so says Cindy Mathew on Metromix]

And to think that North Avenue, this blog’s namesake, used to be known for another, more honest kind of whore.

(Speaking of which, the latest neighborhood gossip is that bones were found in the basement of Lottie’s, a local bar which was once a brothel. The business is closed pending an investigation.)

bequoth

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A photo of mine — the first mini/urban Home Depot, on Halsted in Lincoln Park — made it into the Kansas City Star, of all places. Thanks to Kevin Klinkenberg for making the connection. (It’s a Knight-Ridder “RealCities” site; use username null@carskill.com / pwd carskill to get in.)

Ironically, the author writes: “The Chicago Home Depot has windows rather than blank walls. Its facade is properly scaled to fit the street… The people in that Chicago neighborhood got something different, in part because they had some notion of what they wanted their city to look like. Those desires were written into development rules.” In fact, the neighborhood went up in arms over a previous proposal to rezone the commercial site to build condos; the developer retaliated by plopping (as of right!) a giant gray box which generates even more traffic.

I kind of like how the angles of the buildings are contrasted. It’s hard to get a full-on shot of the store, since it’s so broad and fronts a two-lane road, but in this case it works.

Tie a string around your finger

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“White House officials dismissed the [IMF] report [criticizing fiscal policy in the USA] as alarmist, saying President Bush had already vowed to reduce the budget deficit by half over the next five years.”

Aha. I see that the president is no longer promising, then, to eliminate the deficit (and return us back to the surpluses he promised he’d keep back in 2000) — merely to cut it in half after he’s out of office. Hmm. Strange how many of Bush’s goals fall in either 2005 or 2009, isn’t it?

[Found at TNR &c.]

Liberal radio network announced

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After much buzz, Central Air Radio, programmed by Daily Show creator Lizz Winstead, will soon be broadcasting on stations they’ve bought in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia, and Boston. No word yet on specific personalities, programs, or other markets — to be covered through syndication or affiliation, perhaps, since buying just those five stations will cost a pretty penny.

Strange, though, that they’re starting a political radio network without a Washington presence, or that they’re overlapping with Pacifica Radio in three markets. Then again, Pacifica has been badly bruised; maybe Central Air smells a chance to grab market share.

Update: The Tribune reports that Central Air will broadcast 24/7 on WNTD-AM 950 here. That station is being sold to a third party.