Neighborhoods // Current TV

Part 5 of Liddonfield: One Neighborhood's Struggle With Public Housing

The original tenants of Liddonfield Housing Project in Northeast Philadelphia were... more

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History of Liddonfield Project Involves Key Public Figures in Philly

From the public officials who attempted to control the problems at Liddonfield and the... more

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5 months ago
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Guy Wanders into Wrong Neighborhood, Gets Beaten and Stripped by Mob

Guy wanders into Wrong Neighborhood, Gets Beaten and Stripped by Mob... more

CarlosBobthe3rd
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1 year ago
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Blockboard: Know Your Neighborhood

An old friend of mine who I haven't seen in probably close to 30 years, Ian... more

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1 year ago
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Driving with the coach: '4th and Forever' Overtime

In this "4th and Forever" web exclusive, Coach Raul Lara talks about his busy schedule during football season. He reflects on how the long days and sleepless nights are worth the effort as he gains influence in his players lives.

"4th and Forever" chronicles the 2010 football season of Long Beach Polytechnic High School, touted by Sports Illustrated as the "Sports School of the Century" and boasts the largest roster of high school players who have gone on to the NFL. After decades of success, Poly had a down year in 2009. They had their worst season in 15 years and lost to local rival Lakewood for the first time in over 25 years. After years of being pegged as "the team to beat," the aura of invincibility is gone. The players are worried that their hopes for a college scholarship have dimmed. The clock is ticking and the question is: Can Head Football Coach Raul Lara pull the team together for one more season of greatness? And, can the players avoid the temptations of the street, succeed in the classroom, and emerge victorious on the field?

Tune in Thursdays at 9/8c for all-new episodes of "4th and Forever."

For more, go to http://current.com/4thandForever

Current Media, the Peabody-and Emmy Award-winning television and online network founded in 2005 by Al Gore and Joel Hyatt, engages viewers with smart, provocative and timely programming -stories that no one else is telling in ways that no one else is telling them. Current's programming shines a light where others won't dare and boldly explores important subjects -- opening minds, sparking conversations and forming deep connections with its viewers. The channel's audience is comprised of affluent, curious, social and connected adults who crave the kind of entertaining, enlightening, witty and informative programming found on Current's TV and online properties. Current is now available via cable and satellite TV in 75 million households worldwide - 60 million households in the US - through distribution partners Comcast (Channel 107); Time Warner ; DirecTV (Channel 358 nationwide); Dish Network (Channel 196 nationwide); Verizon and AT&T. In the UK and Ireland, Current is available on BSkyB (Channel 183) and Virgin Media (Channel 155), and in Italy, Current is available on Sky Italia (Channel 130). Viewers can also find Current online at http://www.current.com.In this "4th and Forever" web exclusive, Coach Raul Lara talks about his... more

4thandForever
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Housing Project Kitty

This cool cat has a message for NIMBYS (Not in My Back Yard people who don't want... more

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2 years ago
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Seattle’s Lusty Lady strip club is closing its doors

There are cities that would be uncomfortable with the idea of a strip joint stuck like a squashed tomato in the middle of downtown, cities that would summon up a righteous case of outrage over a bawdy marquee offering titillation and temptation right next to the art museum, the hip tourist hot spot and one of the toniest hotels in town.

But these cities would not be Seattle.

Since the Lusty Lady announced it would be closing its doors in June after 27 years on 1st Street, a city that admittedly spent several years trying to shut the place down — or at least tame it into civility — has been practically in mourning.

"There's just something about the vibrancy of their presence that made it difficult for people to perceive them as a negative force in the community," said Phil Bevis, owner of Arundel Books down the street, who emphasized, as did many others, that he had never set foot inside the Lusty Lady. "What's that fancy French word I don't know how to pronounce? Insouciance. That's what they had."

The Lusty Lady's large, pink-and-black marquee has become one of the best-known features of the downtown Seattle landscape, luring customers with the fine art of the risque pun — turns of phrase that, more than being merely clever, often serve as a barometer of the city and the times.

"Skirt Locker," the Lusty Lady proclaimed after " The Hurt Locker" won this year's Oscar for best picture (earlier this month, again on a movie kick, it said, "Clash of the Tight Buns").

At Christmastime, the Lusty Lady celebrated "Jingle Balls," and for St. Patrick's Day it was "Erin Go Braugh-less." In honor of its neighbor the Seattle Art Museum and its famous "Hammering Man" statue, the Lusty Lady has come up with such tributes as "Hammer Away, Big Guy," and when the city was paralyzed by protests over the World Trade Organization in 1999, the Lusty proclaimed, "W-T-Ohhhh."

"There haven't been any problems of the kind one might typically associate with that kind of place, and maybe that's one of the reasons Seattle has such a fondness for it," said art museum spokeswoman Nicole Griffin. "They've got this great visual presence on one of the main streets of the city, and they have great humor about it. And you know, Seattle's a city of individual-ness, and I think people have appreciated that."

The Internet has been the main culprit in driving down business,....

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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-lusty-lady-20100430,0,3626434.story?track=rssThere are cities that would be uncomfortable with the idea of a strip joint stuck like... more

remanns
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3 years ago
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The Surprising Reason Why Americans Are So Lonely, and Why Future Prosperity Means Socializing with Your Neighbors | | AlterNet

Access to cheap energy made us rich, wrecked our climate, and made us the first people on earth who had no practical need of our neighbors -- that has to change.
April 27, 2010 |

Community may suffer from overuse more sorely than any word in the dictionary. Politicians left and right sprinkle it through their remarks the way a bad Chinese restaurant uses MSG, to mask the lack of wholesome ingredients. But we need to rescue it; we need to make sure that community will become, on this tougher planet, one of the most prosaic terms in the lexicon, like hoe or bicycle or computer. Access to endless amounts of cheap energy made us rich, and wrecked our climate, and it also made us the first people on earth who had no practical need of our neighbors.

In the halcyon days of the final economic booms, everyone on your cul de sac could have died overnight from some mysterious plague, and while you might have been sad, you wouldn't have been inconvenienced. Our economy, unlike any that came before it, is designed to work without the input of your neighbors. Borne on cheap oil, our food arrives as if by magic from a great distance (typically, two thousand miles). If you have a credit card and an Internet connection, you can order most of what you need and have it left anonymously at your door. We've evolved a neighborless lifestyle; on average an American eats half as many meals with family and friends as she did fifty years ago. On average, we have half as many close friends.

I've written extensively, in a book called Deep Economy, about the psychological implications of our hyperindividualism. In short, we're less happy than we used to be, and no wonder -- we are, after all, highly evolved social animals. There aren't enough iPods on earth to compensate for those missing friendships. But I'm determined to be relentlessly practical -- to talk about surviving, not thriving. And so it heartens me that around the world people are starting to purposefully rebuild communities as functioning economic entities, in the hope that they'll be able to buffer some of the effects of peak oil and climate change.

The Transition Town movement began in England and has spread to North America and Asia; in one city after another, people are building barter networks, expanding community gardens. And they've paid equal, or even greater, attention to suburbia; in the developed world, after all, that's where most people live. Though our sprawl is designed for the car, the sunk costs of those tens of millions of houses mean they're not going to disappear just because the price of gas rises. They'll have to change instead. "Suburbia, not as a model for material consumption, but as a legal and social lattice of decentralized and more uniformly distributed production land ownership, has the potential to serve as the foundation for just such a pioneering adaptation," writes Jeff Vail, a widely read economic theorist who envisions "a Resilient Suburbia."

In fact, quite sober economists have begun to insist that even in our seemingly globalized world, our economies are actually far more local than we realize. Despite the "pervasive image of a single U.S. economy," the economists William Barnes and Larry Ledeber write, "local economies -- primarily metropolitan-centered and strongly linked -- are the real economies in the United States." They build, with rich statistical backing, on the original insights of thinkers like Jane Jacobs, who always insisted that the city was the fundamental building block of our economic life. These "Local Economic Regions" comprise the web of transportation and communication links, the chain of educational institutions in a region, and the web of emotional ties. (My Vermont neighbors may not care much how many gold medals the United States captured at the Olympics, but they are deeply involved with how many runs the Red Sox scored last night.)

Those local economies were originally shaped by geography -- a port, a river, a low place in the mountains where you could build a canal. For a while those assets seemed less important; with endless cheap energy, you could always put something on a truck or a plane. But the cities built on those early patterns persisted; they were a sunk cost, too. No one was going to move Buffalo, with its museums and universities and square miles of housing stock, just because the highway had bypassed the Erie Canal. (And now some of those original assets may be returning to prominence. The Erie Canal, for instance, has seen a marked upswing in business as the price of oil rises, because a gallon of diesel pulls a ton of cargo 59 miles by truck, but 514 miles in a barge.) Shanghai is 7,371 miles from New York. It's true that Chinese workers cost you a dollar an hour, but at some point the math shifts.Access to cheap energy made us rich, wrecked our climate, and made us the first people... more

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3 years ago
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Viral marketing in real life.

Last week I worked from Current HQ in San Francisco. Outside of the offices I noticed... more

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3 years ago
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CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture) as Relationship Engines

To hear Terra Bella farm manager Joe Sunderland tell it, what's happening on their farm is the most natural thing in the world. "People are naturally drawn to want to have community," he says. "You give them the opportunity to meet on common ground and the rest is not brainwork -- it's natural." At Terra Bella, located in San Francisco's East Bay town of Pleasanton, all the members come to the farm to pack and pick up their produce. People tend to come around the same time each week, so they run into the same people time and again. At some point they begin get to know one another. Some people bring their kids, and many people linger on the farm, chatting with other members. A farm play group is being established this year, where several parents will look after the kids while other parents (including the farmers) work on the farm.

The farm also has a bulletin board where members are welcome to post notices of community events or information about their businesses. "There's lots of great referrals. These are all like-minded people," says farmer Shawn Seufert. Members barter, too, with each other - massage for daycare, for example, and with the farm - like graphic design for produce. Terra Bella also barters with others in the community: vet services for tomatoes, and produce for baked goods.

Shawn and Joe attribute the growing community among their members to the particular structure of this CSA. Members bump elbows over boxes of cauliflower and salad greens. "It's easy to start a conversation when you're talking about food," Sunderland says. "Our members already have something in common. The food brings people together, but the CSA is just the starting point."

Across the country at A Place on Earth CSA in Turners Station, KY, farmers Carden and Courtney Willis are part of a similarly synergetic community. Here, the growth point for the community seems to be an attachment to the farm itself, and its care. Volunteers fill a few key roles, and a small group of working members each contribute a half-day of labor per week. Carden says they all look forward to their mornings on the farm, where they work and then share a meal together, week after week through the seasons. They are an unlikely group - including a retired Navy man, an interior designer and a nurse - brought together by their love for this farm, their willingness to participate in the labor food requires, and the fondness that has grown between them over time. Carden wrote about the group in a recent farm newsletter.

"Our relationship is entirely forged over this food at this place. Food is not yet a fact on the table but a work in progress. We all know the sometimes excruciating lengths we go to, and we all know the primal, pure triumph and joy of the exquisite specimen. Tuesday morning we work, and Tuesday mid-day we banquet. And just so much as the work can be anciently agonizing, the dining can be Epicurean. It is only right to love the eating of the food and the gathering at the table to the same degree that you lavish love on the food as it is growing. Courtney makes the vegetables sing the sweet story of their life with delectable dishes, Stan brings his trusty, tasty loaf of bread and someone may furnish a delightful dessert. Good honest work, delicious eating, laughter and companionship accompanying and easing digestion—the ritual is complete."

Carden sees that CSA may provide the footings on which alternative economies will be built. Their farm, too, barters. But perhaps more significantly, they have story after story of people offering their labor simply to help each other out. Last year, for example, the farm needed an eight foot deer fence installed around three acres. Picture two hundred 12 foot posts, each sunk three to four feet deep, strung with 2400 feet of 8 foot tall woven wire fence. Hard, heavy, awkward work, and pretty near impossible had their neighbors and members not turned out to help. Carden's description of the project made me think of the days when neighbors worked to bring in each others' harvest, bring up the kids, raise the barns. People's relationship to labor was different in those days. The sharing of work was an economic necessity, and lending a hand was what being part of the community meant. Nowadays most of us are more accustomed to exchanging our time and skill for money. Perhaps what CSA offers us - besides great produce -- is a chance to experience what it is like, as Carden puts it, to be "part of something that's not based on being on the clock."To hear Terra Bella farm manager Joe Sunderland tell it, what's happening on... more

JanforGore
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3 years ago
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NeighborGoods

NeighborGoods is the online community where you can save and earn money by sharing... more

TheodoreSouza
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3 years ago
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31-year-old female sex offender from Meridian placed on probation for 10 years

Rasho has been placed on 10-years of felony probation after she completed a six month... more

b2r
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3 years ago
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Walkability…Better Neighborhoods, Better Planet

Want to live the ultimate lifestyle of convenience, take off a few extra pounds, save... more

UrbanMechanic
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3 years ago
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Ditto: When you can't compete with your neighbor's Christmas lights, just do the next best thing

Keeping up with the Joneses isn't easy at the best of times, and Christmas is no... more

MotherForTruth
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3 years ago
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23 comments

Race in America: 'Progressive' cities

The 'progressive' towns constantly listed as our best role models also lack racial diversity, finds Aaron Renn. Why has no one called them on it?

Among the media and academia and within planning circles, there's a generally standing answer to the question of what cities are the best, the most progressive and best role models for small and midsize cities. The standard list includes Portland, Seattle, Austin, Minneapolis and Denver.

In particular, Portland is held up as a paradigm, with its urban growth boundary, extensive transit system, excellent cycling culture and a pro-density policy. These cities are frequently contrasted with those of the Rust Belt and South, which are found wanting, often even by locals, as "cool" urban places.

But look closely at these exemplars, and a curious fact emerges. If you take away the dominant Tier One cities like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles – places no one expects the average U.S. city to be able to imitate – you will find that the "progressive" cities aren't red or blue, but another color entirely: white.

In fact, not one of these "progressive" cities even reaches the national average for percentage of African-Americans in its core county. Perhaps not progressiveness but whiteness is the defining characteristic of the group.

The progressive paragon of Portland is the whitest on the list, with an African-American population less than half the national average. It is America's ultimate White City. The contrast with other, supposedly less advanced cities is stark.

It is not just a regional thing, either. Even look just within the state of Texas, where Austin is held up as a bastion of right thinking urbanism next to sprawlvilles like Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston.

While Austin is far more diverse than a place like Portland, it is still much whiter than other major Texas cities, comparable only to Fort Worth. And while its African-American population lags the national average, Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston both exceed it.

This raises troubling questions about these cities.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/points/stories/DN-renn_22edi.State.Edition1.1691580.html
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/bd/AustinTexasCongressView.jpgThe 'progressive' towns constantly listed as our best role models also lack... more

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3 years ago
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Virtual Neighborhood Watch: How Social Media is Making Cities Safer

Social media tools like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and even email, instant messaging,... more

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3 years ago
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A new crop of eco-warriors take to their streets

It is 8:30 a.m. on a Sunday. Along streets of grimy stucco bungalows with bougainvillea, American flags and "Beware of Dog" signs on chain-link fences, a couple of residents are hosing down lawns.

It ought to be quiet, but it's not.

Behind the garden walls of Astor Avenue, there's a chugging and a hissing and a clanking and a squeaking. Two yellow locomotives, hooked to cars piled high with metal containers, idle on the track of the Union Pacific. Their stacks spew gray plumes of smoke.

"We call this cancer alley," said Angelo Logan, who grew up on the city of Commerce street. "And we're fed up."

Logan, 42, is part of a new generation of urban, blue-collar environmentalists. The son of a janitor and the youngest of five children, he dropped out of school in 10th grade and went to work as a maintenance mechanic in an aerospace factory.

Now he is executive director of East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice, with a paid staff of four and 200 members who join for $5 a year. They recruit door-to-door in Commerce, Bell Gardens, Montebello and East Los Angeles, where more than three-quarters of residents are working-class Latinos.

East Yard operates from a storefront on Commerce's Atlantic Avenue, a street lined with cheap motels and fast-food joints. It has no celebrities on its board, no publicity staff churning out press releases, no in-house attorneys to go toe-to-toe with $500-an-hour corporate law firms.

But in California, where Latinos, African Americans and Asians now collectively outnumber non-Hispanic whites, political power is shifting. Here especially, but also across the country, mainstream foundations, which had long supported environmental groups led by white lawyers and policy wonks, have begun to channel grants to community organizations run by Latinos and blacks who see clean air and water as civil rights.

In the Southland, these environmental justice activists, as they are called, wage war in the dense corridor that runs from the massive ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach through neighborhoods that line the 710 Freeway -- Wilmington, Carson, Compton, Huntington Park, Commerce-- and on through Riverside and San Bernardino counties, with their vast distribution warehouses.

"There are no buffer zones," said Gilbert Estrada, a teacher who co-founded the East Yard group with Logan. "We are the buffer zones."

end of excerptIt is 8:30 a.m. on a Sunday. Along streets of grimy stucco bungalows with... more

JanforGore
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Would Jesus Take a Bailout? - WSJ covers Rev Billy's run for Mayor of NYC

Confronted with the once-in-a-century opportunity to remake the financial system, the... more

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4 years ago
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Fear and Loathing in Mr. Rodgers Neighborhood

Scary mad wishes of arson and play...

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4 years ago
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The Minister of Death

In a bizarre macabre account of divine intervention, Erik Larson amazingly encounters... more

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4 years ago
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