Tag: Chicago

Reading Around on May 6th through May 7th

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A few interesting links collected May 6th through May 7th:

  • Amazon.com Knee-Jerk Contrarian Game – Waxy.org – “Kenny G., for instance. His rythmic session is much more regular, whereas Coltrane’s session seems sometimes to loose the beat.”

    FAIL!!

    Umm, for one, “lose the beat” instead of “loose the beat”. And for second, bhwah-ha-ha-ha, Kenny G!!

  • MenuPages Blog :: Chicago: The Green City Market Is Open! Celebrate at Bonsoiree – “The Green City Market opens for outdoor business today! ”

    photo by me

  • BLDGBLOG: How the Other Half Writes: In Defense of Twitter – “Again, I fail to see any clear distinction between someone’s boring Twitter feed – considered only semi-literate and very much bad – and someone else’s equally boring, paper-based diary – considered both pro-humanist and unquestionably good.
    Kafka would have had a Twitter feed! And so would have Hemingway, and so would have Virgil, and so would have Sappho. It’s a tool for writing. Heraclitus would have had a f***ing Twitter feed.”

Flip HD footage of Haymarket

Seth Anderson0 comment

Because I feel as if I am underutilizing the potential fun of owning the Flip HD video camera, I am going to make a concerted effort to shoot more footage with the device. Viewer beware. My first attempt was pretty Cinéma vérité indie film bullshit – I need to drink less coffee perhaps, or invest in a tripod. I actually have a Flip HD tripod, but wasn’t able to use it because I was just leaning out of my window.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3DFiYclsPw

The footage was simply shot out of my office window. Less anarchists and police than in prior years – in fact, quite a lot less. Some years the street by the Haymarket Riot Memorial statue is blocked off, and a stage is erected. This year, the performers and speakers were shunted onto the sidewalk. I am pleased that nobody was run over by a car, as there was some portions of the crowd that lingered in the street.

Same video hosted on Flickr: wonder if there is any difference in the conversion codex?

The clip quickly thrown together in the current iMovie application, and audio provided by Wire1

Oh, used a handful of images taken also from my office window using my Nikon D80 with a 200 mm (digital) lens.

Footnotes:
  1. Field Day for the Sundays – from Pink Flag [↩]

Reading Around on May 1st through May 5th

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A few interesting links collected May 1st through May 5th:

The City I love

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The City I love
The City I love, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

If I wasn’t so lazy, I’d get up early and retake this photo, with a tripod.

from a couple of summers ago

I made the image into a photosketch to hide some of the photo’s blemishes, but actually made the blemishes more obvious (to my eye anyway). Sigh.

The City I love -Selenium

David Simon and Ed Burns Working on a Haymarket Riot piece

Seth Anderson3 Comments

As an aside to the main thrust of the Bill Moyers David Simon interview, Mr. Simon notes that Ed Burns1 is working on a Haymarket Riot piece. Oh please, please, please do this!! And please, please, please, I want to work on the set!. Actually, Richard Linklater was supposedly working on a Haymarket Riot film too, perhaps they could collaborate. Or share research, whatever, as long as I can help in some way with either project.

Haymarket Riot memorial, old version.

DAVID SIMON:

But I look at what’s happened with unions and I think– Ed Burns says all the time that he wants to do a piece on the Haymarket.

BILL MOYERS: The Haymarket strike.

DAVID SIMON: Yes. That– the bombing, and that critical moment when American labor was pushed so much to the starving point that they were willing to fight. And I actually think that’s the only time when change is possible. When people are actually threatened to the core, and enough people are threatened to the core that they just won’t take it anymore. And that’s– those are the pivotal moments in American history, I think, when actually something does happen.

You know, they were– in Haymarket, they were fighting for the 40-hour work week. You know? So, it wasn’t– it sounds radical at the time, but it’s basically a dignity of life issue. And you look at things like that. You look at the anti-Vietnam War effort, in this country which, you know, you had to threaten middle class kids with a draft and with military service in an unpopular war for people to rise up and demand the end to an unpopular war. I mean, it didn’t happen without that. So, on some level, as long as they placate enough people. As long as they throw enough scraps from the table that enough people get a little bit to eat, I just don’t see a change coming.

[From Bill Moyers Journal . Transcripts | PBS]

Haymarket Riot Memorial

Footnotes:
  1. David Simon’s long time writing partner [↩]

Cat Fight Emerson vs Bud

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St. Louis cat-fight!

Taj Mahal

Emerson, one of St. Louis’ largest companies, is apparently steamed at what it thinks is rough treatment at the hands of Anheuser-Busch. The Ferguson-based manufacturer of cooling equipment, network power products, appliances and tools plans to boycott Anheuser-Busch products to protest stingier payment policies and what it claims are Anheuser-Busch’s cutbacks in funding for local non-profits.

In an internal memo obtained by Lager Heads, Emerson sounded off:

“With the InBev acquisition of Anheuser-Busch we have seen negative things happening in the St. Louis community and in regard to Emerson doing business with InBev. InBev payment terms with Emerson have now been stipulated as 120 days – take it or leave it!”

Before being taken over by InBev, A-B typically settled its accounts in 30 days. Emerson, an Anheuser-Busch supplier, is evidently mad at the change. It’s not alone, but this is the most interesting response – by far- to Anheuser-Busch’s new way of dealing with suppliers.

[Click to continue reading Emerson to boycott Anheuser-Busch | Lager Heads | STLtoday]

DDB Chicago has both petulant companies as clients, as Jeremy Mullman reports:

DDB, Chicago, finds itself in exactly that awkward position today following a report in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that Emerson, an engineering conglomerate, has instructed its divisions to boycott Anheuser-Busch products in response to A-B’s new insistence on making vendors — including Emerson — wait 120 days for payments. Emerson also included among its reasons what it described as A-B’s cutbacks in funding to local nonprofits, including the United Way and the Girl Scouts.

The orders were contained in an internal memo obtained by the newspaper. “With the InBev acquisition of Anheuser-Busch, we have seen negative things happening in the St. Louis community and in regard to Emerson doing business with InBev,” the memo reads. “Effective immediately, we will not use Anheuser-Busch InBev products at the Emerson World Headquarters complex, Winfield Conference Center, on Emerson planes, or in Emerson suites at Busch Stadium (Cardinals), Scottrade Center (St. Louis Blues & concerts), and Edward Jones Dome (Rams).

“We want all divisions to comply and not purchase or stock any Anheuser-Busch InBev products. We suggest you use Coors, Miller, Modelo or Heineken products.”

[Click to continue reading Coors Light at Busch Stadium? – Adages – Advertising Age]

I’d be annoyed too if all invoices were paid after 120 days – that really would mess up our cash-flow. A few years ago we did a large marketing program with a major financial corporation, and because they paid their invoices within 60 days, we had to take out a bridge loan with a local bank just so we could stay afloat. Turned out ok, but money was more liquid a few years ago. Four months is a long time to hold someone’s money before paying it.

Reading Around on April 16th

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Some additional reading April 16th from 17:21 to 20:40:

  • Chicago Reader | The Works | Ben Javorsky for Mayor! Responses to your responses to our story about Chicago’s parking meter lease deal By Ben Joravsky – I heard Daley on the radio say, “You have to monetize your assets or else they become liabilities.” What an idiot. Never took an economics or accounting class at the U. of C., that’s for sure. Vote the idiot out. —South Looper

    Now, now, don’t harsh on Mayor Daley. He didn’t have time for economics or accounting—he was too busy studying for that bar exam for the third time.

  • Daily Kos: Why yesterday's protests were stupid – What was the message? Too much taxes? I didn't see many bank executives and Wall Street types out on the streets. And coming on the heels of the biggest tax cut in American history, almost entirely directed at the middle class, this message didn't have much salience. Furthermore, the theme of these protests "taxation without representation", was pretty silly considering that these people did have representation. It's just that they lost the elections, which sort of happens in a democracy. "Representation" doesn't mean you always get your way, it means that you have a vote. So it was an indefensible frame to base the protests around.

    That's probably why the crowds didn't easily rally around it, deciding to freelance it instead. So there was talk about pork barrel spending! And bail outs! And wanting to stick a knife in Obama's eye! And secession! And Obama's birth certificate! And Obama taking away their guns! The American taxpayers are the Jews for Obama's ovens! Obama is Hitler!

  • GO TO 2040 Blog -Edible Change is Enticing at 4th Annual Food Policy Summit – "In its fourth year the summit Edible Change! Building Networks for Policy Action, hosted by the Chicago Food Policy Advisory Council (CFPAC) reached full capacity bringing together over 250 people from the Chicago area and around the region with amazing diversity of geography, ethnicity, and age to talk, learn, and share stories about food. "

    photo of produce by me

Streetwise Magazine May Be Forced To Shutter

Seth Anderson0 comment

A shame StreetWise can’t get a bailout from the federal government: they actually help people. StreetWise sells each issue to the vendors for $0.75, the vendors resell for $2.001, and keep the change.

Streetwise Headquarters

StreetWise, the weekly Chicago magazine for the homeless, has fallen victim to a hobbled economy and could be forced to close its doors by June if it cannot replace hemorrhaging foundation support, its managers say.

A shutdown would end 16 years of publication and put at risk a non-profit publication that employed homeless Chicagoans as writers and vendors.
“We’ve been in trouble for a long time, but now we’re feeling like we can’t dig ourselves out so easily,” said StreetWise executive director Bruce Crane.

Trying to stem the tide, the publication has switched from a weekly newspaper to a magazine, changed the makeup of its board and slashed staffing, services to the homeless and costs. The organization has sought to replace lost income with stepped up fundraising and grant-writing, and expanded its efforts to seek out advertisers.

Nevertheless, the savings and new funding sources are not enough to cover the loss of major foundation support that has kept the publication afloat in the past.

“If we get no grants, no economic stimulus funds, if nothing else would happen, we’d be 45 days from going out of business,” said StreetWise board vice chairman Pete Kadens.

[Click to continue reading Magazine sold by homeless may fold – Chicago Breaking News]

There are some dudes who have become veritable icons on the streets of Chicago, hawking StreetWise from the same corner for years.

Ironically, on the same day, Janie Lorber of the New York Times reports that circulation is up, at least in other cities (StreetWise is not mentioned).

Newspapers produced and sold by homeless people in dozens of American cities are flourishing even as the deepening recession endangers conventional newspapers. At many of them, circulation is growing, along with the sales forces dispatched to sell the papers to passers-by.

The recession has hardly been a windfall for these street papers, most of which are nonprofits that survive on grants and donations as well as circulation revenue. But the economic downturn has heightened interest in their offbeat coverage and driven new vendors to their doors.[Click to continue reading Rising Circulation, at Papers Sold by Homeless – NYTimes.com]

Doh!

Footnotes:
  1. or whatever they can get, a percentage of issues sell for more than $2.00 [↩]

Reading Around on April 9th through April 12th

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A few interesting links collected April 9th through April 12th:

  • Technic News » Can the Statusphere Save Journalism? – Recently, I enjoyed a refreshing and invigorating dinner with Walt Mossberg. While we casually discussed our most current endeavors and experiences, the discussion shifted to deep conversation about the future of journalism in the era of socialized media with one simple question, “are newspapers worth saving?”

    photo by swanksalot

  • Gapers Block : Mechanics : Chicago Politics – The Erosion of Daley and the Coward Defense – The excuse we always hear (off the record of course) from Aldermen, community groups, think tanks, and the rest, is that taking on the Mayor is just too darn scary. He’s too powerful. But what makes him powerful, like all bullies, is the constant refusal of anybody to stand up to him. And of course, it isn’t fear: its convenience. That whole “…but he’s our sonofabitch” mentality. We saw how well that worked with Augusto Pinochet and Saddam Hussein.
  • Washington Post Reporter Says It’s Not His Job to Check the Accuracy of People He’s Quoting – talk about stenography to the powerful. Why would anyone read the Washington Post with this sort of attitude towards politicians? Can just read press releases at the Senator’s website for all the good Paul Kane does.

    Pathetic. and this quote makes me laugh, perhaps not in the way Mr. Kane intends:
    Someone tell Media Matters to get over themselves and their overblown ego of righteousness.

Everything In Its Place

And You Shall Know Us By The Trail of Our Vinyl

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“And You Shall Know Us by the Trail of Our Vinyl: The Jewish Past as Told by the Records We Have Loved and Lost” (Roger Bennett, Josh Kun)

Ha, what a great idea for a book. I want to go to this, though $15 a person seems a little expensive.

An affinity for kitschy album covers became a quest as Josh Kun and Roger Bennett scoured attics and garage sales to collect once-loved gems. In Jewish recordings from the 1940s-1980s they discovered sacred songs, Jewish mambo, comedy, folk tunes, and the “holy trilogy” of Neil, Barbra, and Barry. Their book includes commentary from writers and performers including Aimee Bender, Michael Wex, Shalom Auslander, Sandra Bernhard, Motown legend Lamont Dozier, and TV pioneer Norman Lear. With music and visual images, Josh Kun will share how these recordings speak across generations to tell a vibrant tale of Jews in America.

[From Spertus | Author Event | Booksigning]


“Hot August Night (Remastered / Expanded) (2CD)” (Neil Diamond)

The Amazon blurb says:

What started out as a mutual affinity for kitschy Jewish album covers–think Neil Diamond baring his chest hair on the cover of Hot August Night or Barbra Streisand in hot pants on the cover of Streisand Superman–soon became a quest for identity, history, and culture between the grooves of LPs.

Together, Roger Bennett and Josh Kun embarked on a thrilling journey, scouring the world to collect thousands of vinyl LPs from attics, garage sales, and dusty archives. Pieced together, these scratched, once-loved and now-forgotten audio gems tell a vibrant tale: the story of Jews in America. And You Shall Know Us by the Trail of Our Vinyl spans the history of Jewish recorded music from the 1940s to the 1980s, weaving an account that begins with sacred songs and ends with the holy trinity of Neil, Barbra, and Barry. The LPs found here are also a love letter to forgotten moments in Jewish American pop history, celebrating well-dressed cantors singing Christmas tunes, Long Island suburbanites dancing the mambo, and Chassidic prog-rockers.

The music, much of which is no longer available in any format, is brought to life through commentary from writers Aimee Bender, Etgar Keret, Michael Wex, and Shalom Auslander; performers Sandra Bernhard and Motown legend Lamont Dozier; music critics Oliver Wang and Anne Powers; and TV pioneer Norman Lear. A gateway to a forgotten kingdom of sound, the good, the bad, and the ugly of Jewish vinyl gives this aspect of Jewish culture the attention it so richly deserves.


“Streisand Superman” (Barbra Streisand)

Reading Around on April 9th

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Some additional reading April 9th from 09:50 to 15:24:

  • Fair Use for Fair People – Anil Dash – “Both independent bloggers on the web and the Associated Press are in the news this week for asking for appropriate credit for their work when it’s excerpted for fair use by online news aggregators. But the web natives frame their argument in terms of respect for the reader and defending the credibility of the information being published, assuming correctly that their businesses will grow if they honor these principles. In contrast, the AP leads with its business argument first, establishing an atmosphere of legal threats and aggrieved arguments about licensing fees with no mention of what readers want, or what respect they have for the very stories they’re ostensibly fighting to present. “

  • Daring Fireball Linked List: Kottke on Extreme Borrowing – “And yes, this is yet another instance of me standing up and saying that I’m doing it right where others are doing it wrong, so suck it.“

    quoting myself (Twittered):
    I’ve had a blog nearly ten years, and visitors hardly ever click-thru to the original article. Like 1 in 10, or 1 in 20. I don’t know if the click-thru failure is a failure on my part (probably) or on the part of my visitors (maybe), but hasn’t changed w/ time. So when big-dog blogs like AllThingsDigital or HuffPo take 3 graphs from an indie blog, doubt much traffic gets generated to the indie blog. Of the last 100 visitors to my (tiny) blog, 3 clicked to another site (and 2 more clicked a photo, and one to an Amazon link).

  • Extreme borrowing in the blogosphere – “So I guess my question is: why is All Things Digital getting put through the wringer receiving scrutiny here for something that seems a lot more innocuous than what thousands of blogs are doing every day? Shouldn’t we be just as or more critical of sites like Huffington Post, Gawker, Apartment Therapy, Engadget, Boing Boing, Buzzfeed, Lifehacker, etc. etc. etc. that extensively excerpt and summarize?“
    More discussion (with interesting comments) of the All Things Digital mini-dustup which feeds into the whole copyright vs. blogosphere vs. corporate media discussion that is the story of 2009 so far.

  • Chicago Reader | FAIL: The Story of Chicago’s Parking Meter Lease Deal – How Mayor Daley and his crew hid their process from the public, ignored their own rules, railroaded the City Council, and screwed the taxpayers | By Ben Joravsky and Mick Dumke – “How Daley and his crew hid their process from the public, ignored their own rules, railroaded the City Council, and screwed the taxpayers on the parking meter lease deal“For me, am glad I hardly ever use meter parking (CTA, bike, walking are always better options), but I can see why folks are outraged.

Daley and his Parking Meter Scandal

Seth Anderson1 Comment

Doubt if this particular Mayor Daley scandal has percolated into the national news media yet, but it is only a matter of time.

No one in Chicago has been happy about the recent hike in parking meter rates, but by last week the frustration had become outrage, and the outrage had become a political problem. Since the city’s speedy decision in December to lease the meters for 75 years in return for about $1.2 billion in quick cash, what you get for your quarter has declined precipitously. Worse, residents are fed up with the tickets they’re receiving thanks to broken meters and outdated labeling. Some are boycotting meters by parking on side streets or not driving at all; others have tagged or vandalized them.

Finally, on March 31, city officials called a press conference to confront the problem—or at least to offer up someone who could take the blame so the Daley administration didn’t have to. They presented one Dennis Pedrelli, chief executive officer of Chicago Parking Meters, the private entity that’s now responsible for operating the meters. Pedrelli delivered a mea culpa. “We regret any issues that occurred,” he said. “We are working as quickly as possible to address those issues.” He promised that the company wouldn’t raise rates or write any more tickets until it had fixed the broken meters and posted accurate information.

But the event didn’t touch on what’s really behind the parking meter problems: the deal that put the city’s 36,000 meters in the hands of Pedrelli’s company. Once city officials decided to privatize the meters, they rushed into a deal with little regard for the financial risks or potential impact on the public, turning control of a revenue-generating city asset over to a company that had just qualified for federal bailout funds.

[Click to continue reading Chicago Reader | FAIL: The Story of Chicago’s Parking Meter Lease Deal – How Mayor Daley and his crew hid their process from the public, ignored their own rules, railroaded the City Council, and screwed the taxpayers | By Ben Joravsky and Mick Dumke]

Citizens get angry over the kind of corruption that directly effects them every time they drive in the city; Daley better watch out if he wants to remain Mayor-For-Life. I’m voting against him in the next election, should he decide to run again.

Fixing Another Parking Meter

Not sure if this Department of Revenue employee was repairing a vandalized parking meter, or just a damaged one, but I suspect vandalization as he repaired several on this block or W. Randolph.

–update 4/10/09

Ramsin Canon of Gapers Block has an excellent article expanding on the topic

Progressives, do you think your constituencies will forgive you for your silence, cooperation, and collaboration? Do you think your legitimacy will survive what is now growing into more than a decade of utter silence? Do you think making demands on behalf of some corner or slice of the city will make up for refusing to take on the system that forces you to beg in the first place? It won’t. Your irrelevancy grows with each day you refuse to dissent in any meaningful way. Spending money to replace one group of aldermen, state legislators, or whoever, with another group that have to work with the same rotten system is not an effort at real change; it is political posturing meant to extract more concessions from a system left untouched.

The excuse we always hear (off the record of course) from Aldermen, community groups, think tanks, and the rest, is that taking on the Mayor is just too darn scary. He’s too powerful. But what makes him powerful, like all bullies, is the constant refusal of anybody to stand up to him. And of course, it isn’t fear: its convenience. That whole “…but he’s our sonofabitch” mentality. We saw how well that worked with Augusto Pinochet and Saddam Hussein.

[Click to continue reading Gapers Block : Mechanics : Chicago Politics – The Erosion of Daley and the Coward Defense]

Daley had better watch out, the public rage at his administration is palpable, and growing.

Reading Around on April 6th through April 8th

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A few interesting links collected April 6th through April 8th:

  • Attribution and Affiliation on All Things Digital – Waxy.org – ” Also, where the source of the article is acknowledged, there’s no corresponding link to the page/URI to which it refers (something I’d regard as a convention that’s at least a decade old now). “

  • Roger Ebert’s Journal: Roger Ebert: April 2009 Archives – awesome remembrance of the long-ago vanished world of print journalism. “One of my editors at the Sun-Times once asked me, “Roger, is it true that they used to let reporters smoke at their desks?” This wasn’t asked yesterday; it must have been ten years ago. I realized then, although I’m only writing about it now, that a lifestyle had disappeared. “
  • Audio: Bob Dylan on Barack Obama, Ulysses Grant and American Civil War ghosts – Bill Flanagan: In that song Chicago After Dark were you thinking about the new President?Bob Dylan: Not really. It’s more about State Street and the wind off Lake Michigan and how sometimes we know people and we are no longer what we used to be to them. I was trying to go with some old time feeling that I had.