My Quiet Life

Erica Gilmore is pushing a single-beer ban in the council.

I have already discussed some misconceptions about alcoholism, so I won’t re-hash those, but it’s quite relevant to how this proposed ban is misguided at best. Gilmore supposes that banning single-beer purchases will result in some sort of litter-free utopia. (You know, like .. Denver..) What it will likely yield instead is:

• Alcoholics pooling their money together to buy six-packs instead, and likely an increase in violent crime related to fighting over money or purchases.
• An increase in purchases of alternate sources of alcohol, leading to worse health (possible death), and littered empty mouthwash bottles instead of beer bottles. Oh, and nice pools of red/green/blue-tinged vomit on our sidewalks.

For a more practical and creative approach to dealing with urban alcoholism, consider things like the managed alcohol project.

Yes, Another Picture Of the Damn Skyline. What can I say, I like it up there. I saw my homeless buddy Jackie and he didn’t ask me for money this time so hopefully we’re past the awkward “money? no. money now? no. money this time? NO.” phase and can just chat from now on. It was really nice up there tonight, though there was a very nasty slick of oil on the river that you can see in this picture.

I think my camera is dying. Although this is promising. I am going to try that this weekend. At this point I have shot around 15,000 frames with my Canon 20D, and I bought it used, at that, so who knows how many exposures are on that shutter, but I’ve heard most consumer EOS bodies are good for 50k exposures. Maybe it’ll last me a while after all. I dread the day that it dies, though.

Looks like they’re doing another zombie walk. Last one I went to was okay. Lots of good humor, and of course, photo opportunities. This year it looks like they’re trying to break some world record. Or provide a plausible premise for hundreds of thousands of zombies appearing worldwide, so that we let our guard down.

So, I’ve been sick all weekend, and pretty much slept it all way, but by tonight I felt like I needed some fresh air, so I went out for a nightly constitutional. A cop stopped me on the way back. Actual exchange:

Cop: Hey, where are you going with that camera? What are you going to take pictures of?
Me: Well, actually I’m just goin h–
Cop: Well you should really be walking on 2nd avenue on your way.. If you go down 1st avenue, the homeless down there, they’ll take any opportunity, you know.
Me: Well actually I live on 1st.. but thanks!

Teehee. Silly cop.

For the purposes of sparing my twitter followers that don’t care, relocating discussion here. So far:

cwage: ok this story is awesome: http://www.wsmv.com/news/17008504/detail.html
cwage: why was it important to the story that he was homeless, though.. sounds to me like his defining characteristics were “drunk” + “crazy”
pwnicholson: @cwage I agree the story probably emphasized his homelessness, but it is normal practice to say “John Smith of Antioch” so it fits to me.
cwage: @pwnicholson “John Smith of Antioch” is an identity. “homeless man” is not
pwnicholson: @cwage Their local headline section: #1 is “Clarksville man” #3 is “Homeless man”. Not saying there isn’t bias, just not sure this is it

I left a comment on the story as well. This is not a new argument — institutional bias in media coverage does exist. Witness the age-old argument of how often you see “A black youth” versus “A white youth”, etc. In a news story, ideally you’d identify characteristics that are either relevant to the story or serve as a general cue for the subject’s identity or tie in why it’s even being reported. “John Smith of Antioch” == an identity. “Clarksville man” == “oh, he was from Clarksville, which is near here. that’s why WSMV is reporting it”. “homeless man” is not an identity, nor was it relevant to the fact that he got drunk and stole a trolley. “Drunk man”, yes. “Crazy dude”, yes.

Anyways, wanted to spare the twitterers the discussion. Feel free to continue arguing below! Or not.

I have been thinking about making a concerted effort to actually revive my blog in some capacity. Not sure what that’ll look like. Here’s a picture in the meantime:

I learned where a pair of hawks live on 1st, last week. (”learned”, here, means “nearly shit my pants when one swooped out of a tree 3 feet away from me”). So I was out stalking them with my longer lens a few days ago. I didn’t think I got much since they were chillin’ on a pole rather high up, but when I got home I really liked the look of this shot. These are undoubtedly the hawks being introduced to combat the Pigeon Problem in Nashville, though this one had just finished feasting on a poor little mouse — who, along with the hawks, are the only current residents of our ill-fated Sounds stadium site.

This picture is proof that cool clouds make any picture better.

Via the Nashville Post, I learned that various council members and city officials plan on swimming across the river to demonstrate its improved state and cleanliness:

The Cumberland once was once considered a septic tank with undertow. For a long time, the river’s only saving grace with the EPA was that – unlike the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland – it never caught fire. The Cumberland was only removed from the agency’s environmental hazard lists in 2002.

In order to change the perception of the river, city and environmental leaders are going to take the plunge and show that the Cumberland is on the rise. While we can brag that the fickle Blue Heron is now nesting on the banks of the river, apparently the sight of city leaders in Speedos will better drive home this message. (Note to Nashville TV stations: Please DO NOT broadcast this event in HD.)

If they really wanted to change the perception of the river, they might consider removing (or eliminating the need for) signs like these at riverfront:

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Annoytement \An*noyt”ment\, n. [OF. anoiance, anuiance, escitement.]
1. The peculiar mix of annoyance and excitement at being woken up by fireworks at 10:30PM on a Wednesday.

For a private party, no less. It sorta annoys me to see public places hold private events. Merely for the fact that they’re in a public space that suddenly I can’t go to. Riverfront park, the shelby street bridge. I assume that the amount it costs to rent riverfront or the gateway bridge more than covers the cost of infrastructure to support closing it off — city costs, police, etc. I hope. Right?

Today’s entry in the continuing adventures of the Great Nashville Homeless Hysterical Episode. All quotes are real. The names have been withheld to be nice:

Homeless man robs Dunn brothers at Knifepoint
…
According to what the owner told me, a black homeless man threatened his life in attempt to rob him. I walked in around 11:30 a.m. on Saturday morning and police had already handcuffed the man and put him in a police car. William met me there for coffee a few minutes later.

Just another reason not to live downtown for most Nashvillian’s and why Tony will never build his condo tower for the mega rich. A guy cannot even get a coffee anymore without a homeless thug committing a crime. I would love to read if the homeless guy defends the homeless on this one.

Not sure how he knew the guy was homeless. Maybe he was branded with a scarlet “H”.

Context to the next few. A couple that lives downtown was mugged last week. I have no doubt that this is a very scary thing to have happen to you, without a doubt, and I have nothing but sympathy. But .. anyways. Quotes:

I’m so sorry for what just happened to you, I hope you are ok. THESE GUYS WILL SOME DAY PAY FOR WHAT THEY DID!

This quote isn’t that bad or anything, I just thought it was funny. Okay, batman. Anyways, the real beaut:

There’s something else you could bring up if you have time, and if you agree with me. I think we ought to request that Public Works relocate some of the benches on Church Street to other parts of the downtown area…even as far as James Robertson. We’ve had the benches a few years now and all they do is encourage loitering and panhandling on Church Street. It looks bad for our city.

DOWN WITH BENCHES!! This will fix our panhandling problem for sure. Sigh.

ZOMBIES!! Nashville’s first second zombie walk. I kept up for half of it before steeplechase fatigue kicked in and I went home. More pictures here.