Joe Doakes from Como Park writes:<\/p>\n
Asian businesses along University Avenue, seeing their livelihood destroyed by Light Rail, came up with a marketing plan for their neighborhood. They\u2019ll call it \u201cLittle Mekong\u201d after the famous river in Southeast Asia that runs through many of the residents homelands: Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and China.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Makes perfect sense to me. \u00a0“Frogtown” predates the Asian influence in the neighborhood by a solid 100 years. \u00a0They have pretty much redefined the area. \u00a0More power to ’em, I say!<\/p>\n
Not everybody likes the plan<\/a>.<\/p>\n
\u201cIrna Landrum, executive director of the Summit-University Planning Council, said it makes sense to have a strong identity around each of the light rail stations. But she said Frogtown already has one.<\/p>\n
“I’m not immediately convinced it has to be this big cultural branding. People know where Frogtown is. You know there’s a lot of natural curiosity for people who don’t live in these communities about what these strong community names mean,” Landrum said.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I’m not sure that the curiosity about “Frogtown” goes much beyond “why is it called Frogtown?”, and I live here. \u00a0(Answer; \u00a0Maybe it was frogs in the long-gone swamps. \u00a0Maybe it was the French settlers. \u00a0We may never know).<\/p>\n
No matter. \u00a0As it was, it shall be evermore!<\/p>\n
Doakes:<\/p>\n
The Summit-University Planning Council got left out and they\u2019re miffed. I wonder why they were left out?<\/p>\n
Could it be because they are most city planner types who support light rail and urban renewal, living on grants and government handouts while spreading their gaze over such a large and diverse area as University Avenue and Summit Avenue that they can\u2019t get anything useful done?<\/p>\n
So local business people step up and do it themselves.<\/p>\n
And get criticized for it.<\/p>\n
Welcome to St. Paul.<\/p>\n
Joe Doakes<\/p>\n
Como Park<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
That’s part of it.<\/p>\n
The other part? \u00a0Community councils in Saint Paul have tended to draw the kind of people who love to exert petty, passive-aggressive power over others. \u00a0The Summit-University council seems to do little but <\/em>fuss and phumpher over things like names and numbers in zoning formulas, and while they create little of value, they certainly destroy much<\/a>.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Joe Doakes from Como Park writes: Asian businesses along University Avenue, seeing their livelihood destroyed by Light Rail, came up with a marketing plan for their neighborhood. They\u2019ll call it \u201cLittle Mekong\u201d after the famous river in Southeast Asia that runs through many of the residents homelands: Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and China. Makes perfect […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberal-tyranny","category-st-paul"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26522"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26522\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26542,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26522\/revisions\/26542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}