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Just think: if I’d actually pursued a career in planning, I could have spent all my time coming up with grandiose schemes like this one, which will probably never come to pass (and probably never should)…

What is this fascination so many small and medium-size sunbelt cities have with downtown stadiums and “grand pedestrian plazas” with cutesy little concrete doodads? They’re just like those stupid “downtown mall” schemes which blocked off main steets by the hundreds in the 1970s and are now being ripped up all over the country after succeeding at little but turning Main Street into a giant shooting gallery…

And why is it that municipal governments, when faced with lots of colorful sketches of ideas which have failed miserably everywhere else they’ve been tried, always manage to convince themselves that their city is the one place in the whole country where the scheme will definitely work and will “save downtown”, as long as enough money is poured into it?

If people decide to return en masse to downtown Greensboro (or Charlotte or Fresno or wherever), it will be beacuse an interesting culture has developed there over time which provides something not available elsewhere. It will not be because of some grand city-financed “master plan” which redesigns everything and assigns it a cute little name. And spending a fortune to induce white suburbanites to use mass transit is just plain ridiculous in most cities of the south and the west; it’s never going to happen…

They’ve already rebuilt downtown Greensboro about three times since 1970. Strangely enough, its most prosperous times have been the years before and in between, when they just left everything the hell alone…

If this sounds like a rather conservative viewpoint, it’s not really. I don’t mind cities spending money. What I mind is cities spending money on complete idiocy…

My first website in Spanish was particularly interesting, given that I don’t speak Spanish. A patient client is a great thing to have…

While avoiding some work this afternoon, I was thinking about TV theme songs. In some ways, they’re just not as important as they used to be, although shows seem to be moving away from that creepy trend toward just running the opening credits over the first scene. There are still some good ones around, little ditties which make you feel instantly good the second you hear them.

Thumbs up:

• The Drew Carey Show (it makes me believe that Cleveland does, in fact, rock)
• The Family Guy (instant happy)
• Malcolm in the Middle (short, sweet, and classic)
• The Simpsons (still a contender due to that psychic bond Danny Elfman and I have shared ever since he rode in the front seat of my car)

Thumbs way, way down:

• Enterprise (what the hell were they thinking with that miserable piece of Muzak by some dismal Rod Stewart wannabe?)
• Dawson’s Creek (I don’t wanna wait for this song to be over.)
• Cops (“Bad Boys” was funny for a while, but now it’s just irritating.)

Yes, “Dawson’s Creek” is the one show listed above that I never watch anyway. But I really hate that song and I have to hear it on Muzak everywhere I go…

So now I’m pondering barbecue and greens with Dan and Jamie tonight and whether or not to make an unscheduled trip to the Central Valley to see Mark tomorrow…

Note to my bus driver from this afternoon: a little patchouli goes a REALLY long way…

Unrelated: a friend of mine asked if I was going to the Castro for Halloween tonight. OK, it wasn’t a very close friend, but still. Everyone knows I go out of my way to avoid the Castro even at the most inocuous of times. Why on earth would I go down there on a night when the streets would be full of half a million people, 499,992 of whom would really get on my nerves?

Leaving town for a couple of days. Don’t expect email to be answered, even if it’s “urgent”…