Seems like it was over two years ago that voters approved a city bond to be used for traffic light synchronization. So why after two years is it still such a challenge to drive down Capital Boulevard without stopping ten times?

After watching the spectacle of ABC’s Extreme Makeover taking place in Raleigh, the head of Preservation North Carolina, Myrick Howard, questioned why anyone would tear down a beautiful historic bungalow to replace it with a slapped-together home made of cheap modern materials:

“I believe in charity, but if you really care about good housing, then renovate the existing house and it will cost so much less,” he said.

Howard added that the Riggins home was not only salvageable but made of better building materials than “Extreme Makeover” would use.

“We’re replacing real wood and plaster with chip board and sheet rock,” he said. “They’re getting showered with candy rather than a decent meal.”

Good point. It seems the family traded their fine home for 15 minutes of fame. Not only that, city officials dropped the ball by approving the demolition of an historic house in a historic district.

Would you live in a home that was built under a tight deadline of just one week? Do you think a team of volunteer laborers can do a better job in one week than the original, expert craftsmen did a hundred years ago using real building materials? This home stood proudly for the better part of a century. What are the odds that this slapped-together house will still be standing in 2106?

This is one of the things that ticks me off about Raleigh: total disregard for its own history. Tear down historic landmarks to make way for shiny new strip malls, or fake homes in this case. City officials who can’t wait to whore the city out for media opportunities no matter the long-term consequences. We live in a plastic city which has long ago lost its identity.

When the dust settles and the crowds of construction workers and gawkers have gone home, what will be left is yet another hole in the city’s historic heritage.

Looking to reduce the tons of carbon dioxide you put into the atmosphere every year? If you’re driving a diesel, you’re in luck! Piedmont Biofuels recently opened their first Raleigh refueling station, so now you can “gas” up on vegetable oil. Time to go shopping on Craigslist!

Here’s the text of their announcement on the Biofuels Interest Group mailing list:

Have you been banging down our doors?

Over the past year many folks have called and nagged and reminded and re-reminded us that the people of our fair state need a Raleigh option for getting biodiesel. We are happy to announce then that Piedmont Biofuels has now opened a B100 pump, our finest in fact, in the Raleigh area. The Raleigh pump is a card swipe system with unlimited user capacity, which tracks your fuel consumption over the month, and bills you at the end of the month. We even have a very fancy-shmancy graphical interface that allows us to visually see the Raleigh tank level from the safety of our control room in little Pittsboro. All this technology is fine and dandy, and we do love gadgets, but we also do this work in the great hope of getting our members that live or work in the Raleigh area to start using the new pump, and also to get the word out to Raleigh-based friends and relatives of our members. So please, if you know someone that needs to know that there is now a place to get B100 biodiesel in Raleigh, please pass the word along and have them give us a call.

The world’s biggest airplane, the Antonov An-225, landed at RDU this morning. It’s here to pick up a 120-ton generator for shipment to Tanzania, Africa. Talk about shipping First Class!

Check out some of my pictures here.

I found a nice local blog covering the use of CIA planes for extraordinary renditions: Stop NC Torture Taxis.

I’m glad to see folks are still shining a light on this abhorrent practice happening in our own backyards.

I saw in today’s paper how Whose Line Is It Anyway stars Colin Mochrie and Brad Sherwood will be playing Memorial Auditorium October 27th. Unfortunately, we’ll be Charlottesville-bound for N.C. State’s scheduled whupping of UVa, so we can’t go. I don’t think any TV show has ever made me laugh as hard as Whose Line did. Seeing Colin live and having him act out audience suggestions would make for a hilarious evening.

Just to lessen the pain of not going to the show, I fished up this video clip from the show, where Richard Simmons made a cameo. It had Kelly and me rolling in the aisles, even after I’d seen it already. Its one of the funniest skits I’ve seen on the show.

If you’re in town on October 27th, the Colin and Brad show is the place to be.

There has been lots of debate on active recreation facilities in North Raleigh, particularly surrounding the awesome natural Horseshoe Farm Park on the Neuse River. As recounted on MT.Net, even though a City Council-appointed committee worked for many many months to craft a plan for Horseshoe Farm, and even though that committee recommended to keep a gymnasium off the property, the city Park’s committee ignored the master plan committee’s recommendation and stuck in a gym anyway. This is in spite of a large, impressively organized group of concerned citizens opposed to spoiling the natural beauty of the park.

Now arguments are being made for putting said gym in Durant Nature Park, which is a park right next to my neighborhood. Durant Park would be more accomodating than Horseshoe Farm, yet it would be a shame if its two lakes and wooded trails were paved over for parking lots and basketball facilities.

My question is this: there are plenty of citizens opposed to active recreation. Where are the citizens in favor of it? Why does the Horseshoe Farm Master Plan Committee get thrown a gym they didn’t want or request? Who is driving this supposed need?

I don’t know of any citizens who are driving this need. It seems to be driven from the top down, starting perhaps with Jessie Taliaferro and going through the city’s parks and rec committee. Parks don’t have to have big buildings in them to be parks.

With Horseshoe Farm, Durant Nature Park, and the newly-announced park near Falls Lake, does North Raleigh have a lot of natural parks? Absolutely. Is there anything wrong with it? No. Is anyone complaining that these parks are “too natural?” Not to my knowledge, and that’s the rub. Outside of some city leaders, I haven’t heard anyone who is opposed to keeping these parks natural.

There is no need to plow under our wonderful, natural parks – these wildlife sanctuaries – to build pavement and palaces. A huge tract of park land is due to open up when (if?) the North Raleigh landfill finally closes. If anything deserves to be paved over and developed, its the landfill. I would trade a smelly landfill for a park any day. With this supposedly on the way, why the rush to do something else?

The people have made their preference known. It’s time to respect it. Quit trying to give us something we don’t want and don’t need.

Unless you’ve been under a rock, you know something about the legal issues a nightclub in North Raleigh is facing. The Supper Clubb [warning: like the club, the website plays music] on Atlantic Avenue is in a legal battle to keep its doors open amid protests from the neighborhoods around it. Residents have complained about club patrons parking on their neighborhood streets, loud noise, and violence in the club parking lot. The Raleigh City Council has sided with the neighborhood and voted to revoke the club’s amplified music permit.

While I understand the residents’ concerns about the noise and violence, I think its a bit of a shame that the club is being forced to close. The owners have obviously put a lot of money into it. The food is good. The music is good. Its just that they’ve had problems controlling what goes on outside the club.

The Supper Clubb moved into a moribund, faceless strip mall, setting up shop in what was a long-vacant restaurant building. It became popular with the African-American community with its soul food menu and hopping music. Sure, the noise and traffic is a problem for the neighbors, but those are problems that could be solved without condemning the joint.

I can’t help but wonder if this is more of a race thing than anything else. Maybe the neighbors don’t want black people milling around near their homes at night. Seems like the old Plum Crazy nightclub near Brentwood went through the same thing.

I was an NCSU student when Raleigh police aggressively targeted Hillsborough Street bars in the early 90’s, using the noise ordinance to close them down. Neighbors who complained about college kids having a good time successfully closed many bars and catapulted neighbor Benson Kirkman to a seat on the city council. In that case, however, the university – and the bars that front it – had been there practically forever and were arguably the reason the houses were built. If you don’t like the college bar atmosphere, don’t buy a house next to college bars!

College kids want to go drinking. They will find bars that will allow them to do that. It makes much more sense to have those bars within walking distance to campus to discourage drunk driving. I thought the enforcement was a snotty move by the city and I still do. Now the Hillsborough Street scene is largely a ghost town, filled with blowing trash, shuttered stores and wandering vagrants. The neighbors got what they wanted.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a college student, white, African-American, Latino, or all of the above. We all need a place to meet friends and have good times. We don’t need a place where we can get stabbed or overrun neighborhoods, however. The city should be more willing to work with business owners to make things right. The Supper Clubb’s success proves there is a need and desire for what it offers and that should be considered, too. I hope the club can work out its problems and continue operating, perhaps by finding another location if need be.

I hear there are vacancies on Hillsborough Street.

Is there anything lower than sabotaging a kiddie train full of passengers? That’s what some little punk or punks did Sunday afternoon at Pullen Park. The perp put rocks on the tracks and watched as the train derailed, sending 77-year-old train driver Jackson Dean Oakley to the hospital with a cut hand. This kid was at the scene of the derailment. Police want to talk to him.

If that wasn’t enough, the park’s caboose was vandalized Tuesday morning. Some kind soul broke the windows on it.

We were at the park Sunday morning and were disappointed that the train wasn’t running until the afternoon. Still, we could have been on that train and would not have been amused when it derailed. Now I’m going through my pictures from that morning to see if that kid is in any of them.

Now the kid in question may have just been conincidentally hiding in the weeds near the derailment. Yeah, and I may be mayor of Raleigh. Fortunately for the perp we weren’t around when he pulled his little stunt. If the twit had derailed the train my family was on, he would have been begging for the cops to arrive.

I hope they catch this delinquient and get him the help he needs before he moves on to bigger destruction.