{"id":5502,"date":"2009-10-05T06:44:52","date_gmt":"2009-10-05T11:44:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=5502"},"modified":"2009-10-05T06:52:44","modified_gmt":"2009-10-05T11:52:44","slug":"stuck-on-imperious","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=5502","title":{"rendered":"Stuck On Imperious"},"content":{"rendered":"

Minneapolis is getting rid of some of its maze of one-way streets in downtown – most notably Hennepin and First Avenues.<\/p>\n

The change is intended on one level to help make Minneapolis’ downtown streets more pedestrian-friendly, and on another to make the streets less-resemble spillways to allow commuters to escape the failed downtown area quickly at the end of the work day.<\/p>\n

A story in the Strib focuses on the affect the change is having on downtown’s iconic\u00a0 First Avenue nightclub<\/a>. The problem, according to the cluster of management and staff interviewed by Strib <\/em>music critic Chris Riemenschneider, is that the change (adding bike and parking lanes on the new northbound lane on First Avenue) obliterates the bar’s load-in area, requiring bands to haul their gear a block to get in the door.<\/p>\n

The whole story – in part inasmuch as it is actual reporting, rather than “music criticism” – is very much worth a read.<\/p>\n

But for me, the payoff came near the end, in conversation with Warehouse District city councilwoman Lisa Goodman, whose answer to the plan’s critics is the classic urban politician’s retort; “Why should we let actual unintended consequences alter the Master Plan?”<\/p>\n

Well, not quite <\/em>in those exact words:<\/p>\n

Goodman was not sympathetic to the club, though. She accused First Ave’s staff of solely looking out for its best interests. She also said its soon-to-be-obsolete load-in area — hooded meter spaces that have been in use as long as anybody at the club can remember, and for which the club pays about $120 per night — is not even a legal loading zone.”Why should they get any preferential treatment?” Goodman asked.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Oh, I dunno, Lisa Goodman.\u00a0 Perhaps because in the 39 years the club has existed in that space, the City of Minneapolis in its infinite wisdom has inflicted countless miseries upon that part of downtown – City Center, the Conservatory, Block E, the Target Center, the forced condemnation of an entire block of nearby downtown real estate to make way for a corporate HQ for a company that is quietly building a “real” headquarters\u00a0 out in Brooklyn Park, light rail – and yet First Avenue has improbably managed to survive, a tiny, improbable island of the free market in a sea of failed government meddling?<\/p>\n

Because they’ve earned a little “preferential treatment” or, as we call it in the real world, “a concession from the Master Plan”, due to having survived the infinite wisdom of Lisa Goodman and the rest of the gabbling hamsters that run Minneapolis for all these years?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Minneapolis is getting rid of some of its maze of one-way streets in downtown – most notably Hennepin and First Avenues. The change is intended on one level to help make Minneapolis’ downtown streets more pedestrian-friendly, and on another to make the streets less-resemble spillways to allow commuters to escape the failed downtown area quickly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,69],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-minneapolis","category-socialism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5502","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=5502"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5502\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}