Start the death-watch on the Midway’s long, hard-fought revival; pre-construction work for the “Central Corridor” began today:
Crews have started spray-painting and chalking symbols and numbers on streets and utility poles to guide workers when they start ripping up pavement as early as next month.
Real construction — laying the rails and building the stations — won’t start until next summer at the earliest.
So long, Midway based around a relatively vibrant University Avenue. So long, Frogtown, saved once-upon-a-time by the raw, naked capitalism of a couple generations worth of plucky immigrants. It’s been nice knowing the both of you.
It’s for the children!
It’s for the children!
It’s for the children!
It’s for the children!
It’s for the children…
Mitch, you sound like a liberal. You sound like the anti-2nd amendment rights crowd who said goodbye to Twins games and the state fair because of all the shootouts that will occur after the passing of conceal and carry.
Huh, honestly, I didn’t see the thread below this one before posting the above. Ahhh, Betty. Once a year or so she surfaces from her cave.
Newly added to my list of reasons not to go to St. Paul.
Mitch,
I know you have lived here (in the Midway) longer than I but I think LTR has some potential benefits for the area. I think there are some great neighborhoods and unbelievable housing stock north of University and south of Pierce Butler that will see benefits. I think some of the areas or business that aren’t relatively vibrant could be upgraded (I really have to question the necessity of two “love doctors” within half-a-mile of one another.) I think of places like the Turf Club that I think will benefit from having an LRT stop at there front door.
I acknowledge that LRT sucks for places like the book store that will lose all of their on street parking. I acknowledge that the Snelling/University intersection is a disaster now. I acknowledge that law of unintended consequences will rear its ugly head. However, where you see something that is much better than it used to be, I see something that could be better.
I’m thinking that “China One” will be seeing less of me and my coworkers. Too bad. :-/
So this is being done instead of routine inspection & maintenance on which bridge?
Sorry, LRT lovers; I grew up right off of Snelling and Uni all through the ’80s, and while it sure wasn’t the most fun watching “white flight” take place, Midway’s done a heck of a job rebuilding itself WITHOUT the “help” of a government handout or million.
Watching as Midway Book disappears (THANKS, Met Council, you communist [expletives]!) along with the various other on-street small businesses that will have all their parking vanish spells the death knell for the person who wants to try to open a store in St. Paul and not be in a trendy, hip neighborhood (a la Mac-Groveland), but just offer a service. Couple that with the undeniable fact that the two areas named are where many immigrant families buy their first real homes, and St. Paul’s about to lose a very valuable ethnic neighborhood as well, replacing it with just another lefty hipster upscale yuppified U of M blandfest.
Rah.
If I’d wanted that, I’d have stayed in Minneapolis and become a D@mn Fool Lefty.
It would have made more sense to have it go a block or two north or south of University Avenue. Its places like “Eat Street” and Lake Street and University Avenue which are laying the groundwork for the current wave of immigrants to develop their own voice and move into the middle class. Destroy the commercial heart of a community, and you destroy the community. Hey! I wonder if we’ll get an Applebee’s instead! I can hardly wait!
Wasn’t Light Rail all about revitalizing communities? Put it through Richfield.
(Cheryl: haverber@visi.com. would love to get back in touch with you and others)
But Mitch, you love the anti-car crowd. You and your spandex wearing, bike seat sniffers are part and parcel part of this problem. Once you forget that 95% of MN uses a car to commute to work, you give the discussion over to how to “best” waste our transportation dollar.
You are just like the big government Republicans that wonder why they lose when they cave on core issues. These are your people now Mitch, enjoy you time with the DFL.
Crap, I didn’t think about this: This means that Porky’s and the weekend summer cruises on Univ. Ave thru Midway will be non-existent for years, if not forever.
I was passenger in a couple of well-built 5.0 Mustangs 10-15 years ago that had a substantial of kills marked on the virtual tally board.
My Dad is driving out from Cali in his 72 Chevelle (very powerful, but with a bench seat, no A/C and no radio – talk about masochism) for the Car Craft weekend at the fairgrounds in June. I wonder if the construction prelims will have gotten in-depth enough to cause trouble for this. I bet this will cause problems for Car Craft shows in the future.
But Mitch, you love the anti-car crowd. You and your spandex wearing, bike seat sniffers are part and parcel part of this problem. Once you forget that 95% of MN uses a car to commute to work, you give the discussion over to how to “best” waste our transportation dollar.
What’s the problem, Tracy? Did you have a bad experience with a biker earlier in life or something? Your hatred of all things bike is bordering on the deranged.
Seriously. Get a grip. I’m a conservative activist in every possible area of my life, INCLUDING biking. If you’d care to engage in the discussion rather than plug your ears and go “nya nya nya dangerous hobby nya nya yeraliberal”, maybe it’d be worth having.
You are just like the big government Republicans that wonder why they lose when they cave on core issues.
Right, other than the “I don’t cave in on core issues” bit, you’ve got me dead on.
Criminy.
These are your people now Mitch, enjoy you time with the DFL.
Riiiiiiight.
I”m a pro-gun, pro-life, marriage-is-a-man-and-woman, tight-money, school-choice, tax-cutting, pro-free-enterprise, pro-market, individual-merit, personal-responsibility, “Christianist”, privatization-mongering, small-government, tight-border, flat-tax, strong-defense, law-and-order, strict-constructionist, property-rights activist who actually puts his time where mouth and blog are – indeed, by any rational measure, vastly more conservative than you are.
But I like biking – for purely personal, not social or political reasons (can you imagine that?), because I love the exercise and the fact that I got legs like a fucking 25 year old now, and I enjoy the HELL out of my morning and afternoon commutes – so OBVIOUSLY I’m a Pelosi liberal.
How DOES that work? Completely abrogating reason is supposed to be a *lefty* franchise, innit?
Is it bikes itself that causes you to toss reason aside, or the fact that I eat your lunch on the subject without breaking a sweat that seemingly enrages you unto incontinence?
Unlike some fairweather conservatives, I observe Reagan’s 11th Commandment. Think about it for a while before you respond.
his 72 Chevelle (very powerful, but with a bench seat, no A/C and no radio
My first car.
Memories.
Y’know, this is probably a mistake, but what the heck:
Once you forget that 95% of MN uses a car to commute to work, you give the discussion over to how to “best” waste our transportation dollar.
Really? How does my “forgetting” how Minnesotans get to work cede the debate to the DFL? How does my exercising my choice, of my own free will, to bike to work because I enjoy it give anything to anyone?
Am I, lil’ ol’ Mitch Berg, really that powerful?
Because if I am, then I command y’all to bring me Scarlett Johannsen.
You have your orders. As I bike, so do I command.
Mitch, I just talked to Marisa and she’s pissed. God, I love that little pout.
she’s pissed
I’m counting on it. Making-up is totally worth it.
I guess that hit a bit too close to home. Face it, 95% of the people in MN use cars. When you support a transportation budget that is heavily weighted for anything but cars, you are at odds with most of MN.
It’s time to look around at who’s on your side and decide if those are the people you want to hang with. I choose the car crowd, you choose the bike crowd. You might as well get some hemp shorts and get a Green Peace sticker for your bike so you’ll fit in better at the local Global Warming rallies.
Duce,
I guess that hit a bit too close to home.
Er, have you noticed that I mix it up with libs, including the smart ones as well as all of the nasty, infantile ones, just a bit? And usually win big? Don’t flatter yourself; didn’t hit within three zip codes of “home”. If you work on your technique daily for a couple of years, you might make me break a sweat, if I’m having a bad day and have one temporal lobe tied behind my back. Just saying.
It’s time to look around at who’s on your side and decide if those are the people you want to hang with.
Why the sudden obsession with collectives and groups? You’re going all commie on us? Gonna start herding dissenters into gulags soon here?
Biking is – for those of you who have a hard time with the concept – an individual choice. I do it alone.
You could make a case that “most” guitar players, bikers and people in Saint Paul are liberals. You might even be statistically accurate (in the same sense that “double-income, no-kids couples from Minneapolis are always liberals” is even more accurate). And it’s of absolutely no importance, since it’s what I think – NOT any other biker, guitarist or Saint Paulite or, for that matter, you, that matters.
The polls on this issue closed long ago. You don’t get a vote, much less getting to set the rules.
I choose the car crowd, you choose the bike crowd. You might as well get some hemp shorts and get a Green Peace sticker for your bike so you’ll fit in better at the local Global Warming rallies.
Are you done yet?
Did that make you feel better?
Because your feelings is all that your side is about.
Every day, in every way, as I noted above, I”m not only a conservatve, but more conservative than you are. You can dance about an chant “bike bike bike dangerous hobby bike bike bike” until you collapse in a purple-faced winded pile in your driveway, and it’ won’t change a thing.
Did you completely miss the part of conservative orientation where it says conservatives make their own decisions and keep their noses out of others’ decisions?
I mean, you’re acting like a friggin’ Young Pioneer, dude. I bet you know all the words to “The East Is Red”.
Hey, I don’t know the words to “The East Is Red”. Could you publish them? In an active blog?
I don’t either. Being a Republican and a conservative, I don’t know the words, I don’t try to conflate other people’s personal choices with group characteristics, and I don’t throw reason under the bus when I need to make a cheap point in a meaningless argument.
The real problem with the Damned Train is that it’s based on projections and assumptions which I don’t think apply to this neighborhood, and therefore will make it worse than a failure.
I’ve been to the meetings and seen the “artists conception” watercolors. They always show cheerful families boarding the train after a stroll through the friendly shoppes that have replaced the present storefronts. It’s always a June day, puffy clouds, blue skies; there is ice cream, and although you can’t see him, there’s probably a mime or a balloon salesman just around the corner.
The pictures never show you a single mother slogging through February snow, herding her kids to the train station carrying her bags from Rainbow and Wal-Mart.
There’s a reason the most successful and longest-lived retail establishment on University Avenue is White Castle instead of Starbucks. And putting in a train isn’t going to change that. It’ll just mean we have to walk farther to the train station instead of the bus stop with our groceries.
.
“…tight-money,…tax-cutting, pro-free-enterprise, pro-market, individual-merit,… small-government,… property-rights activist
…”
Yet you support bicycling and the path boondoggles. Sure, Mitch, you are a staunch conservative just like Flush is a centrist. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
I agree that Mitch is a good conservative in some respects and not so much in other respects.
“When you support a transportation budget that is heavily weighted for anything but cars, you are at odds with most of MN.”
Bingo!
KRod,
Er, take a step back:
Yet you support bicycling
Again – do you have any idea what that means? I RIDE. I RIDE BECAUSE I ENJOY IT. Period. “Bicycling” is not a social movement.
and the path boondoggles.
Where have I written about bike paths at all?
Sure, Mitch, you are a staunch conservative just like Flush is a centrist. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha…I agree that Mitch is a good conservative in some respects and not so much in other respects.
OK, KRod. You’re just recycling (hahaha!) Tracy’s incoherent bleatings here. I’ve run down a long, long list of areas where I’m an impeccable conservative, and I’ve debunked and shown as nonsense, over and over, the blather about bicycling being “liberal”.
“When you support a transportation budget that is heavily weighted for anything but cars, you are at odds with most of MN…bingo
No, not bingo, and Tracy is babbling and devoid of fact again (as he always is on this subject). Quick; go through the blog; find the posts I’ve written about transportation. It pretty well debunks your “point”.
“Funding’ for bikes is not even a fraction of a percent of the overall transportation budget, even at its current inflated level.
Really, guys – bring a game. You’re not even a challenge.
It would be nice if you could back up your opposition to spending taxpayers’ dollars on non-auto “transportation” for rail/bike paths… with a link or two of your writing against such spending.
It’s not my job to do your work for you.
I believe what I believe. I’ve spent seven years on this blog,and five on the air, mapping out a system of impeccably libertarian-conservative beliefs.
After all that, convincing an anonymous commenter of what I’ve been putting out for years doesn’t rise to the level of “necessary” or “interesting”, much less “important”.
No big deal, Mitch, if you can’t back it up then don’t attempt to try.
Nah. You’re making the claim against the status quo. The burden of proof is on you.
Nope, your bike bias is obvious, you have convinced yourself it isn’t so, therefore you need not rationalize anymore.
“spent seven years on this blog,and five on the air”
It is not a conservative trait to rest on your laurels, Mitch.