I know the guy in the picture. He owned Uncle Hugo’s/Uncle Edgar’s, named for the premier awards for science fiction and mystery writing. Hundreds of authors signed books for fans in that store. I came out in a blizzard to have Larry Corriea sign a book for me. Don Blyly opened in 1974, and Uncle Hugo’s was the oldest independent SF bookstore in the U.S.
The store was miles from the police precinct. It wasn’t even that close to Lake Street. But someone busted out the windows, and someone tossed in some fuel. It takes no imagination to figure out how a building with no sprinklers, but chock full of dry paper would burn. It burns even better if the fire department never comes.
Don’s son organized the GoFundMe. It’s raised somewhere over $100,000. Insurance will provide some more, but the lost is estimated at half a million dollars, and that doesn’t include the priceless signed first editions that were consumed.
Don became the face of Minneapolis’ vicious policies. While he was in limbo, unable to get a permit to clean up (it’s a lot more than just property taxes), the contractor for the dental office next door knocked down salvageable walls, and dumped debris into the hole of Don’s store. Nice, eh? You save on dump fees that way. Oh, and prove that a store built in the early 1960s did not have asbestos in it, or pay triple for the more expensive cleanup.
Can one even get a contractor right now? They have plenty of customers. The corporate chain stores have been scoured down to the pad, but they have resources a guy like Don doesn’t have. A lot of those chain stores aren’t going to rebuild in the old form; I know three of the five Walgreens will not. The shoplifting was so bad, what with the city and county refusing to prosecute theft. They’ll open a drive-thru pharmacy only store.
I suppose Don didn’t have much theft. Shoplifters don’t grab and run with books. But he still wants to rebuild, and reopen in Minneapolis. Don is an idiot. I don’t know his politics, but I’m betting he did not vote for any R- candidate in the last 40 years. I bet he’s regretting that he didn’t have BLM signs in all of the windows the thugs broke to start the fire.
Chain stores are a cancer on the body of towns and cities. I didn’t used to think so, but I’ve been convinced. Business owners care about the town. Store managers don’t.
Okay. Burn down Chicago. The whole thing. It’s just property. And what do the lives do then? Where do they sleep? Where do they eat? What structures and systems exists to house and feed them? Of course, no, they don’t want to burn it down. They just want to own it, because they will do All the Good Things with it. The fact that there are glittering stores on the Michigan Mile in the first place is a manifestation of inequity, so these things must be redistributed, and then they will be replaced with food stalls that give away healthy produce from the communal farms, and storefronts that trade art for things like dental work.
Who thinks like this? The ideological whip holders, the privileged 1%, perhaps, but not the foot soldiers enjoying the chaos. They will end up with some consumer goods, a bricked phone, awesome pictures for social media, tales to tell, a burnishing of the meaningless credentials they use to make themselves feel like good people. (All the people involved in the rioting and looting would be angry if you called them bad people. There’s no deficit of self-esteem in that whoopin’ hootin’ crowd: these stores are all full of L’Oreal, and they deserve it!)
There were two ideas that took a catastrophic hit in 2020:
1. Public officials are competent to manage the unforeseen, especially the unforeseen things everyone with half an imagination could foresee, particularly if “foreseeing” was baked into their job description, and
2. American cities have roared back from their post-60s slump, and have become dynamic once more.
I know everyone is calling the cities “over,” which seems an exaggeration. But previous hits to the idea of the city were incremental. Disorder increased, residents and businesses trickled out. Combine it with the sudden collapse of the Office Imperative, and whoa: all of a sudden no one has to go in to the office.
And some say that’s the way it’s going to be. Why go to a 70-story skyscraper when you can work at home in your pajamas?
Because it’s a 70-story skyscraper? A lot of people proclaiming the death of the office have never spent more than half a year working from home. Oh, it’s great. I love it. But it lacks so much – co-workers, for one. The give-and-take, the office conversations, the sense of belonging to a shared enterprise. The views! The sense of connection and pride you get when you look out the window at a forest of towers. The sense of a place, a concentrated place, where things are done. The sense that home is a refuge.
I go to the office now to get a faint hint of those things, and it’s almost, barely, fractionally sufficient. Never been a 9-5 guy, because that’s not how I work, but I’ve never felt so random and atomized as I have the last few months. Not because I don’t like being at home, but because there’s this haunting knowledge that there is nothing downtown.
No one is obliged to go downtown. No one is required to stay in the city. No one can be kept for moving out to a place that feels safe. No one has to sacrifice their happiness for the Ideal of the Good City. But. I talked to a storeowner today who was red-faced with fury over what’s going on in Minneapolis, how they feel completely alone, how the property taxes – which are unreal for a small commercial building – are apparently meant for everything except public order.
All I’m saying is this: imagine if the riots and looting had been stopped, at once, and all the public leaders and opinion makers repudiated every stich of the intellectual quilt behind the defenders of disorder.
Imagine a world in which the major newspaper didn’t respond with fashion layouts of the clothes prefered by people who light public buildings on fire.
Sorry, bad-lyric-Lennon-song reference here, but imagine that? It’s not easy. I can’t.
Imagine a city government that, in the spirit of never letting a good crisis go to waste, leveraged a race riot in order to collect property taxes.
It’s easy. And I didn’t even have to try.
Boat GuyAugust 16, 2020, 7:04 AM
I can still imagine people holding their employees accountable, but merely “voting them out of their jobs” isn’t going to do it; tar and feathers might.
It’s been said that police forces are to protect criminals from lynch mobs, guess we’ll see what happens when there aren’t cops around to do that…
Strange how Trump’s inauguration led to realization of the incompetence of most people elected to public office. As said, they generally are unable to do anything other than what they have been programmed by party politics.
Sam L.August 16, 2020, 9:34 AM
The Dems and other lefties hate us. They apparently hate cities, too.
ghostsniperAugust 16, 2020, 10:27 AM
SgtBob sed: “…incompetence of most people elected to public office…”
========
Well, perhaps.
I’ve said right here and other places many times, gov’t employees would be killed on sight if not for their salvation with the gov’t. They simply cannot make it out here with us normal folks that do, so like moths to a light they are drawn to it.
Further, those that are previously capable become incapable upon indoctrination into gov’t employ. It’s the nature of the beast I suppose.
Make employees unaccountable, and their supervisors too, and what do you end up with?
Well, out here in Normalville you’ll end up with a failed business enterprise pretty quick, but in the world of gov’t you’ll excel until you can’t, til you’ve killed the golden goose.
The US gov’t is the largest criminal enterprise the world has ever known and it is way past time to meet it’s demise.
Not germane, not on topic, but Millie Weaver and her husband were arrested immediately before her documentary, on the Shadow State was to be published. Right now it’s on youtube; https://youtu.be/9HFxVvrXjCg , thought I’d mention it in case anyone wants to watch it before youtube takes it down.
Kevin in PAAugust 16, 2020, 2:43 PM
What would happen if these law abiding Americans just said, Stuff It! and went about removing the damn debris without the bloody permit?….and not pay the damn taxes, as retribution for the cities failure to protect their property during the riots. What are they going to do, reconstitute the police force to arrest those who have disobeyed? Ha.
But, truly, the best course of action is to leave the rubble where it lay and move on. Do Not Rebuild in a jurisdiction that doesn’t value what business brings to their community.
Gordon ScottAugust 17, 2020, 3:20 AM
I know the guy in the picture. He owned Uncle Hugo’s/Uncle Edgar’s, named for the premier awards for science fiction and mystery writing. Hundreds of authors signed books for fans in that store. I came out in a blizzard to have Larry Corriea sign a book for me. Don Blyly opened in 1974, and Uncle Hugo’s was the oldest independent SF bookstore in the U.S.
The store was miles from the police precinct. It wasn’t even that close to Lake Street. But someone busted out the windows, and someone tossed in some fuel. It takes no imagination to figure out how a building with no sprinklers, but chock full of dry paper would burn. It burns even better if the fire department never comes.
Don’s son organized the GoFundMe. It’s raised somewhere over $100,000. Insurance will provide some more, but the lost is estimated at half a million dollars, and that doesn’t include the priceless signed first editions that were consumed.
Don became the face of Minneapolis’ vicious policies. While he was in limbo, unable to get a permit to clean up (it’s a lot more than just property taxes), the contractor for the dental office next door knocked down salvageable walls, and dumped debris into the hole of Don’s store. Nice, eh? You save on dump fees that way. Oh, and prove that a store built in the early 1960s did not have asbestos in it, or pay triple for the more expensive cleanup.
Can one even get a contractor right now? They have plenty of customers. The corporate chain stores have been scoured down to the pad, but they have resources a guy like Don doesn’t have. A lot of those chain stores aren’t going to rebuild in the old form; I know three of the five Walgreens will not. The shoplifting was so bad, what with the city and county refusing to prosecute theft. They’ll open a drive-thru pharmacy only store.
I suppose Don didn’t have much theft. Shoplifters don’t grab and run with books. But he still wants to rebuild, and reopen in Minneapolis. Don is an idiot. I don’t know his politics, but I’m betting he did not vote for any R- candidate in the last 40 years. I bet he’s regretting that he didn’t have BLM signs in all of the windows the thugs broke to start the fire.
Chain stores are a cancer on the body of towns and cities. I didn’t used to think so, but I’ve been convinced. Business owners care about the town. Store managers don’t.
Gordon ScottAugust 17, 2020, 3:22 AM
Kevin in PA: What happens is that the city inspector comes and issues a cease and desist order. Then the state pulls the contractor’s licenses. With no license, there’s no insurance, and without insurance, no builder will let you on the site. It gets worse, from there.
Gordon ScottAugust 17, 2020, 3:32 AM
I had a nice comment written and it vanished.
I know the guy standing in the rubble. It’s Don Blyly, who owned the oldest independent SF bookstore in the US. The city and county have put numerous obstacles in his way as he tries to rebuild. Insurance, you BLM fuckers, covered about a fifth of his loss. A GoFundMe has helped but he’s still out at least a quarter million, and that doesn’t include his inventory. He had thousands of signed first editions.
Fletcher ChristianAugust 17, 2020, 7:13 AM
Ghostsniper:
I disagree. The biggest criminal enterprise ever seen is the global banking and financial system. Routinely do things (such as, for example, selling things they don’t own) that would earn anyone else twenty years, and they take and take and take and give nothing back.
One UK banking group, RBS Group, has had around £100,000,000,000 in taxpayers’ money and is still nowhere near paying it back or becoming saleable. (The figure includes immense amounts of printed money from the “quantitative easing” done over the last decade or so.)
What we need is some rather unpleasant decorations on lamp posts on Wall Street and in the City of London and Canary Wharf.
Too big to fail is just too big.
OneGuyAugust 17, 2020, 8:05 AM
They should keep all of the burned and destroyed areas in Minneapolis just as they are and dedicate it all to BLM (Black looters and murderers). Make it a national park where we can visit on vacations. List the names of those who were arrested and not prosecuted who did this. Put the pictures of the mayor and city council there so we know who allowed it. Make it a national monument to stupidity.
Conversation was sparkling and informative. Our guests live downtown, and related an incident on the 4th when they were coming home from a long day dealing with a familial medical situation. A block from the house they were stopped by protestors on bikes and forbidden to proceed. Whereupon two black-clad men with AR-15s appeared and told them they could go no further, because a BLM march was due to pass through. They were “security,” you see. Before you get sarcastic and say “Second Amendment, right?” This is not that. This is illegal. Self-appointed “security” cannot brandish AR-15s and tell you that you may not go to your home.
They had stories of what it’s like to live downtown now, and if I could sum it up, it would be this: SUDDENLY CRAZY. Emboldened lawlessness. A year ago: living in a beautiful neighborhood with spectacular views, access to parks and restaurants, peaceable dog walks after dark. Now: Carjackings, fireworks, madmen muttering outside the front door, a spiky sense that anything outside of a block or two radius is questionable. These are long-time downtown residents.
It should be noted that they did not gentrify anything and drive out residents; the area was utterly depopulated until the condos were built in the husks of the old industrial buildings. They pay a huge amount of taxes. And they feel as if no one has their back, because no one does.
It’s not that no one can fight the disorder. It’s that there aren’t enough resources, and disorder is something they’re expected to accept.
It took 20 years to build up this part of the city, and three months to spoil it.
Sam L.August 17, 2020, 10:25 AM
James ONeil, it’s TOO LATE. OURTUBE has dumped it.
Fuel FilterAugust 17, 2020, 11:36 AM
To James and Sam:
There are now at least three sites just like shittube where there is *NO* censorship of content nor ideas.
There is simply NO excuse for NOT cross-posting content to one or more of these platforms. That’s what WayOfTheWorld, Sargon of Arkad and many others do as a matter of course.
I have no earthly idea why, for example, Stafan Moleneux didn’t avail himself of one of these options. Perhaps he thought he was immune. Perhaps his ego was too big. Who knows. Shit, even that cuck website Federalist got hit.
Nobody is immune if you are remotely right of center. Even Tim Pool says, quite often, he’s really worried about being taken down.
So Mike V., if you’re reading this I hope you’ve got a backup plan.
Real World Address for Donations, Mash Notes and Hate Mail
Gerard Van der Leun
1692 MANGROVE AVE
APT 379
Chico, Ca 95926
Green Pants Interior by Klahn
Who Am I? by Carl Sandburg
My head knocks against the stars.
My feet are on the hilltops.
My finger-tips are in the valleys and shores of universal life.
Down in the sounding foam of primal things I reach my hands and play with pebbles of destiny.
I have been to hell and back many times.
I know all about heaven, for I have talked with God.
I dabble in the blood and guts of the terrible.
I know the passionate seizure of beauty
And the marvelous rebellion of man at all signs reading “Keep Off.”
My name is Truth and I am the most elusive captive in the universe.
Duty, Beauty, Liberty, Country, Honor, Family, Faith — Plus a few simple easy to follow rules for guys
Men saw the stars at the edge of the sea
They thought great thoughts about liberty
Poets wrote down words that did fit
Writers wrote books
Thinkers thought about it
Take it where you find it
Can’t leave it alone
You will find a purpose
To carry it on
Mainly when you find it
Your heart will be strong
About it
Many’s the road I have walked upon
Many’s the hour between dusk and dawn
Many’s the time
Many’s the mile
I see it all now
Through the eyes of a child
Take it where you find it
Can’t leave it alone
You will find a purpose
To carry it on
Mainly when you find it
Your heart will be strong
About it
[Chorus]
Lost dreams and found dreams
In America
In America
In America
Lost dreams and found dreams
In America
In America
In America
And close your eyes
Leave it all for a while
Leave the world
And your worries behind
You will build on whatever is real
And wake up each day
To a new waking dream
Take it where you find it
Can’t leave it alone
You will find a purpose
To carry it on
Mainly when you find it
Your heart will be strong
About it
[Chorus]
Change, change come over
Change come over
Talkin’ about a change
Change, change
Change come over, now
Change, change, change come over
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I see my light
See my light
See my shining light
I see my light
See my light
See my shining light
Gerard Van der Leun
Comments on this entry are closed.
Imagine a city government that, in the spirit of never letting a good crisis go to waste, leveraged a race riot in order to collect property taxes.
It’s easy. And I didn’t even have to try.
I can still imagine people holding their employees accountable, but merely “voting them out of their jobs” isn’t going to do it; tar and feathers might.
It’s been said that police forces are to protect criminals from lynch mobs, guess we’ll see what happens when there aren’t cops around to do that…
Strange how Trump’s inauguration led to realization of the incompetence of most people elected to public office. As said, they generally are unable to do anything other than what they have been programmed by party politics.
The Dems and other lefties hate us. They apparently hate cities, too.
SgtBob sed: “…incompetence of most people elected to public office…”
========
Well, perhaps.
I’ve said right here and other places many times, gov’t employees would be killed on sight if not for their salvation with the gov’t. They simply cannot make it out here with us normal folks that do, so like moths to a light they are drawn to it.
Further, those that are previously capable become incapable upon indoctrination into gov’t employ. It’s the nature of the beast I suppose.
Make employees unaccountable, and their supervisors too, and what do you end up with?
Well, out here in Normalville you’ll end up with a failed business enterprise pretty quick, but in the world of gov’t you’ll excel until you can’t, til you’ve killed the golden goose.
The US gov’t is the largest criminal enterprise the world has ever known and it is way past time to meet it’s demise.
Not germane, not on topic, but Millie Weaver and her husband were arrested immediately before her documentary, on the Shadow State was to be published. Right now it’s on youtube; https://youtu.be/9HFxVvrXjCg , thought I’d mention it in case anyone wants to watch it before youtube takes it down.
What would happen if these law abiding Americans just said, Stuff It! and went about removing the damn debris without the bloody permit?….and not pay the damn taxes, as retribution for the cities failure to protect their property during the riots. What are they going to do, reconstitute the police force to arrest those who have disobeyed? Ha.
But, truly, the best course of action is to leave the rubble where it lay and move on. Do Not Rebuild in a jurisdiction that doesn’t value what business brings to their community.
I know the guy in the picture. He owned Uncle Hugo’s/Uncle Edgar’s, named for the premier awards for science fiction and mystery writing. Hundreds of authors signed books for fans in that store. I came out in a blizzard to have Larry Corriea sign a book for me. Don Blyly opened in 1974, and Uncle Hugo’s was the oldest independent SF bookstore in the U.S.
The store was miles from the police precinct. It wasn’t even that close to Lake Street. But someone busted out the windows, and someone tossed in some fuel. It takes no imagination to figure out how a building with no sprinklers, but chock full of dry paper would burn. It burns even better if the fire department never comes.
Don’s son organized the GoFundMe. It’s raised somewhere over $100,000. Insurance will provide some more, but the lost is estimated at half a million dollars, and that doesn’t include the priceless signed first editions that were consumed.
Don became the face of Minneapolis’ vicious policies. While he was in limbo, unable to get a permit to clean up (it’s a lot more than just property taxes), the contractor for the dental office next door knocked down salvageable walls, and dumped debris into the hole of Don’s store. Nice, eh? You save on dump fees that way. Oh, and prove that a store built in the early 1960s did not have asbestos in it, or pay triple for the more expensive cleanup.
Can one even get a contractor right now? They have plenty of customers. The corporate chain stores have been scoured down to the pad, but they have resources a guy like Don doesn’t have. A lot of those chain stores aren’t going to rebuild in the old form; I know three of the five Walgreens will not. The shoplifting was so bad, what with the city and county refusing to prosecute theft. They’ll open a drive-thru pharmacy only store.
I suppose Don didn’t have much theft. Shoplifters don’t grab and run with books. But he still wants to rebuild, and reopen in Minneapolis. Don is an idiot. I don’t know his politics, but I’m betting he did not vote for any R- candidate in the last 40 years. I bet he’s regretting that he didn’t have BLM signs in all of the windows the thugs broke to start the fire.
Chain stores are a cancer on the body of towns and cities. I didn’t used to think so, but I’ve been convinced. Business owners care about the town. Store managers don’t.
Kevin in PA: What happens is that the city inspector comes and issues a cease and desist order. Then the state pulls the contractor’s licenses. With no license, there’s no insurance, and without insurance, no builder will let you on the site. It gets worse, from there.
I had a nice comment written and it vanished.
I know the guy standing in the rubble. It’s Don Blyly, who owned the oldest independent SF bookstore in the US. The city and county have put numerous obstacles in his way as he tries to rebuild. Insurance, you BLM fuckers, covered about a fifth of his loss. A GoFundMe has helped but he’s still out at least a quarter million, and that doesn’t include his inventory. He had thousands of signed first editions.
Ghostsniper:
I disagree. The biggest criminal enterprise ever seen is the global banking and financial system. Routinely do things (such as, for example, selling things they don’t own) that would earn anyone else twenty years, and they take and take and take and give nothing back.
One UK banking group, RBS Group, has had around £100,000,000,000 in taxpayers’ money and is still nowhere near paying it back or becoming saleable. (The figure includes immense amounts of printed money from the “quantitative easing” done over the last decade or so.)
What we need is some rather unpleasant decorations on lamp posts on Wall Street and in the City of London and Canary Wharf.
Too big to fail is just too big.
They should keep all of the burned and destroyed areas in Minneapolis just as they are and dedicate it all to BLM (Black looters and murderers). Make it a national park where we can visit on vacations. List the names of those who were arrested and not prosecuted who did this. Put the pictures of the mayor and city council there so we know who allowed it. Make it a national monument to stupidity.
Lileks has more in the Monday Bleat (http://lileks.com/bleats/archive/20/0820/081720.html):
Conversation was sparkling and informative. Our guests live downtown, and related an incident on the 4th when they were coming home from a long day dealing with a familial medical situation. A block from the house they were stopped by protestors on bikes and forbidden to proceed. Whereupon two black-clad men with AR-15s appeared and told them they could go no further, because a BLM march was due to pass through. They were “security,” you see. Before you get sarcastic and say “Second Amendment, right?” This is not that. This is illegal. Self-appointed “security” cannot brandish AR-15s and tell you that you may not go to your home.
They had stories of what it’s like to live downtown now, and if I could sum it up, it would be this: SUDDENLY CRAZY. Emboldened lawlessness. A year ago: living in a beautiful neighborhood with spectacular views, access to parks and restaurants, peaceable dog walks after dark. Now: Carjackings, fireworks, madmen muttering outside the front door, a spiky sense that anything outside of a block or two radius is questionable. These are long-time downtown residents.
It should be noted that they did not gentrify anything and drive out residents; the area was utterly depopulated until the condos were built in the husks of the old industrial buildings. They pay a huge amount of taxes. And they feel as if no one has their back, because no one does.
It’s not that no one can fight the disorder. It’s that there aren’t enough resources, and disorder is something they’re expected to accept.
It took 20 years to build up this part of the city, and three months to spoil it.
James ONeil, it’s TOO LATE. OURTUBE has dumped it.
To James and Sam:
There are now at least three sites just like shittube where there is *NO* censorship of content nor ideas.
a) lbry.tv b) BitChute.com and c) https://banned.video/
There is simply NO excuse for NOT cross-posting content to one or more of these platforms. That’s what WayOfTheWorld, Sargon of Arkad and many others do as a matter of course.
I have no earthly idea why, for example, Stafan Moleneux didn’t avail himself of one of these options. Perhaps he thought he was immune. Perhaps his ego was too big. Who knows. Shit, even that cuck website Federalist got hit.
Nobody is immune if you are remotely right of center. Even Tim Pool says, quite often, he’s really worried about being taken down.
So Mike V., if you’re reading this I hope you’ve got a backup plan.
Thanks for the links Fuel.