Albuquerque’s Trolley Folly

The City of Albuquerque has put together part of its request for federal money from the new Obama Administration in 2009.  One part of that request is $90 million for a magic trolley car running down Central Avenue (colloquially, and wrongly, called Albuquerque’s Main Street).  Discussion about this project made it onto the local city blog, Duke City Fix.  There was a strong and passionate debate given on both sides of the issue.  So strong in fact that the admin decided to close the forum (which was a good idea.)

I was talking about this with my fiancee.  We’re both against the idea of $90 million being spent on a trolley car that will not move a lot of people around town.  We really like mass transit, but what this city really needs are more buses, not a trolley.  There are a lot of poor people here in Albuquerque, and parts of town that would benefit from an increase in mass transit to the area.  $90 million could buy over 1100 buses (someone on Duke City Fix figured out), and even if all of this money was not spent on buses, there could be transit hubs and bus transfer areas located throughout the city to make bus transit easier.

My fiancee emailed me the following and wanted me to post it to give her two cents about what she called “the trolley folly.”  So here she is, in her own words:

Crickets!

(We break into your regularly scheduled PR and business news to give you… crickets!)

Good morning ,at the crack of 121 in the am.  I was finishing up reading a couple of blogs before bed and suddenly stopped to realize that, for the first time in a very long time, the sounds of crickets are dancing through the air.

Between the crickets chirping, and the cool breeze cutting the 80-degree heat out of the house, I’ve just realized that spring has firmly ensconced itself in Albuquerque.  Now let’s see how long it lasts before the 100-degree days hit this year. (“Gee there’s no such thing as global warming…” My ass!)

A Good Cause

The creative team over at Mudhouse Advertising will donate $1 (up to $10K) to Albuquerque Healthcare for the Homeless’s Art Center for every unique view of this:

So come on guys, if all of you watch then we’ll have helped contribute by a whole $3! 🙂

Happy Yule, y’all.

This is so wrong…

This is just not right…

I don’t know what to say. Current Bernalillo County sheriff, and candidate in the Republican primary for NM-01, Darren White is apparently possessed by some kind of bad faux-rock demon or something. I sense attacks ads from this. Maybe something in the form of a public service announcement – Mothers, don’t let your kids do something like this…

HT: ABQ Rising

I’m William de Worde, and I Approve this Message…

And the message I have to ask is…

Why is Jim Baca afraid of a little comment disagreeing with him?

Late last week, Baca – former KOAT TV 7 reporter, anchor, State Liquor Director, Mayor of Albuquerque, two-time Land Commissioner, and most recently failed State Land Commissioner candidate for re-election – went off on one of his rants about the oil and gas industry. His post started off as a nice little piece about some of the people he had Thanksgiving dinner with. But, this being Jim-Bo Baca, he had to veer off into an irrational rant about an editorial he read in the Albuquerque Journal. More specifically Jim-Bo was upset about how the Journal went on and on about the need to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Just listen to what Jim-Bo had to say.

“Everything today was really nice except for an editorial in the Albuquerque Journal saying we should drill in the Alaska Wildlife Refuge. How about we put a drilling rig in front of Journal Center and see if they still think it is okay? And then put a couple dozen more on every vacant lot in Journal Center. And then connect them all up with pipelines and roads. Well, I hope you get my point.”

Wow! He ended his piece a little hot under the collar! The Journal must have really gone to town about drilling in Alaska! They must have talked about destroying all of the land in Alaska for oil while having their way with all of the fuzzy headed polar bears roaming the Arctic.

Only, they didn’t.

Here’s what the Journal had to say about drilling in the Arctic (emphasis mine):

“It was so cold one winter, she froze to death.”

There are two homeless, or home-challenged, guys who came by our house every couple of weeks this summer to pick our weeds for $15 or $20.  My fiancee and I didn’t have a problem with this, they were willing to work and we were willing to pay for their services.

As these guys came by, we would start to learn about one of them.  He was the more talkative of the pair and I picked up bits and pieces over the summer.  He and his wife moved to Albuquerque from Roswell, he had been out of work for a while, they were living with his step-sister while he walked around the city looking for odd jobs, he had been a car detailer before he was jobless.  I have to give him snaps, he hadn’t been coming around looking for a cash handout.

The summer moved on, and his pal stopped coming by the house to work (although I still see him every few days panhandling on Lomas), but he kept coming by.  However, he’s been coming by more often, and not just to work, but to ask for a ride when he missed the bus (which he did this weekend) or to ask for an advance on work to be done later (which, to his credit, he remembers the next time he comes back – which he has done a few times).

I don’t usually mind giving him a little bit of money, because I consider myself very lucky to have a few bucks to give him.  I’m lucky enough to have a home, food in the cupboard, clothes in my closet, a fiancee I love very much and who loves me back, a sweet dog who has been with me through my separation and divorce, and my return to college and graduation.  All in all I’m a very lucky guy.  I realize that for the grace of God/Goddess/Buddha/Sam, the bad breaks could have hit me and I could be in his shoes.

He was making a B-line to our house today when I was biking home and we bumped into each other across the street from my place and he was telling me he didn’t have any cash, and had gotten a message from one of the car wash/detailing places he had applied for a job at.  They wanted him to come in to talk with them, and he was looking for some money for a haircut and shave – trust me, he needed it.  But I didn’t have any money to help him out this time.  After talking a few minutes he moved on and went to another house where he works at to see if they had work (or money).

I felt bad for the guy, and I hope he gets his money and gets his job, that would make things easier on him.

What does this have to do with the title of this post?

Well I’ll tell you…

The Bell Might Not Toll for Thee, Tribune

This report is in from the Santa Fe New Mexican – Doug Turner, CEO of DW Turner Strategic Communications and Tom Carroll, President of DW Turner – are making a bid to buy the Albuquerque Tribune.  If this is true, it would be a very interesting turn in the saga that has been the potential closing of the Albuquerque Tribune.  In full disclosure,  I have worked at DW Turner before, and have many friends currently working at the Tribune.  Doug and Tom are great people to work for, and they know how to run a dynamic company that is capable of changing in the ever fluctuating media landscape.

As I said in previous posts, anyone buying the Tribune would be faced with many possibilities and pitfalls – they would not have any income coming in from the Joint Operating Agreement, they would not have access to the Journal’s equipment or advertising and publishing staff, they would have to start from scratch.  That said, they would also be able to publish a morning paper, print on Sundays, switch design from a broadsheet design to a tabloid design and they could remain creative with their design and online content.  In fact, who knows what they could plan to do with the Tribune!  It could be something completely different than what any of us are thinking.
I’ve got to jet to bed – long days today and tomorrow – but I am looking forward to  the future of the Tribune and media in Albuquerque.  As I said earlier tonight on DCF, It’s going to be an exciting time!

I Hate Balloon Fiesta…

Damn, I was hoping to sleep in today -one of two days of vacation I am taking this week – only to have the dog go nuts at about 8 am.  She usually barks a little bit in the morning when the neighbors go to work or someone is walking a dog down the street.  But today she started going nuts. It was a non-stop cacophony of barks for about 10 minutes.  I staggered out of bed and looked outside.

No one walking a dog.

No neighbors slamming their front door to go to work.

What the heck was making her bark?

Then it hit me.  Early October, early in the morning.  It’s those damn balloonists again.

Every year they go overhead (regardless of where I am living) and Pickles begins to lose it. Barking her head off at the fortnight-long invasion of people with too much time on their hands floating overhead.

And that’s not to mention the traffic snarls and delays caused by people coming to the balloon fiesta.  At least I don’t work at the paper anymore.  The building is near the balloon fiesta grounds and when you would try to go outside and get dinner your ten minute commute turned into about 75 minutes of waiting to get onto the street, driving to get food and crawling back to work behind a line of cars filled with people pointing and saying ‘Oh look at all the preeeeeeeeeety balloons!”

Voting in the Big Q

As I blogged about earlier, Tuesday was election day in the Mighty Q’town.  It was an off-year election, so I didn’t expect to see many people out and about at the polls.  But I have to say I was really let down by the turnout.

10%

Not of the total ABQ population.

Of registered voters.

That’s depressing.  Even for Albuquerque.  That means that around 27 000 people took the time out of their day to go and vote.

And it’s not like there were any lines to hold people up.

 

It felt like I walked into one of those “Left Behind” right-wing books, especially since I was at a church at the time. (I never changed my voter registration when I moved in with my fiancee, so I had to drive across town to a church up next to Albuquerque Academy – the posh private school in ABQ – to go vote.) So there was the creepy alone-in-a-church feeling.  I expected a zombie or something frightening like that (a preacher maybe…) to jump out at me.

At first I figured there were probably a lot more people inside the church voting.  Maybe there were cars on the other side of the building I had missed when I parked.

Alas, it was not to be.

And There is No Love in Marty-ville tonight…

For the “Mighty Mayor” has struck out…

– “Smarty (not my nickname I tell you) at the Bat”

Today was election day once again in the mighty Q. We had four city councilor seats up for election – two incumbents were running, one woman was running unopposed, and one incumbent (Martin Heinrich) was moving on to run against Heather Wilson, so his seat was open. It was a free for all! The negative ads flowed like honey!

(And I always love the sound of attack ads in the morning, sounds like… victory… More on the flip)