I'm a lasagna boy!

Give yourself a better life.

8 Nov 2003 UPDATE:
A similar report landed on the New York Times, this time in Manhattan. An 8'x10' vault on a plot in the East Village may be available, for an estimated quarter-million dollars.

San Francisco slowly moved all cemeteries out of the city boundaries; now the long-buried turn-of-the-(last)-century élite may have their earthly revenge.

It was the impermanence of permanence that gave rise to Mountain View in the first place. From the mid-19th century onward, San Francisco real estate was so desirable that it was difficult even to find permanent room for the departed.

"The dead kept getting kicked out of the city," said Gray Brechin, a historian who wrote "Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthy Ruin" (University of California Press, 1999). As cemeteries were cleared for development, the well-to-do realized that nothing was secure. They chose Oakland for their eternal resting spot.

I have long wanted to write a story about the City of the Dead.

Burning autos give you so much more.

Saw a car burst into flames this morning.

Just north of the Marsh Road exit on 101, in the Number 4 lane southbound. At first a thin white smoke we sighted, about 3/4 mi ahead; as we drew closer (and were passed by a fire engine), the smoke turned to a thick, dark grey. The heat from the burning vehicle was intense even two lanes away.

The light at the end of the tunnel.

Today marks the final instalment of Randy Kennedy's excellent Tunnel Vision column.

A few years ago, MTv Press published Keith Lowe's deft novel with the same name. Lowe tells the story of a young trainspotter-in-denial who, on the eve of his honeymoon, makes a silly bet with a fellow punter: his honeymoon tickets (on the Eurostar, natch) for the punter's collection of tickets. The terms: the groom must ride the Tube, through every station. Such a thing has never been done before!

I choo-choo-choose you!

Drove out to the open studios at Hunters Point, once a naval base and the largest drydock on the West Coast and now a thriving artist's community.

Plans for redevelopment are underway, despite the presence of various toxic chemicals in the ground and the adjacent decrepit power plant.

Wondering whether a Superfund site can be Superfun? The Golden Gate Railroad Museum sure is! With the aid of a rambling raconteur who "caught the bug from her son", we explored the 4-6-2 steam locomotive, Union Pacific Number 2472.

UPDATE: The New York Times have an excellent editorial on the almost-exhausted trust money for Superfund.

Afterwards I continued my search for tortilla chips with a sojourn out to the outer outer parts of Ocean View, where Botana makes its new home. Happily fed, drove thither to a remarkably clear view from the heights of Twin Peaks. I can't think that I've ever seen so clearly from the top of that hill, and certainly never at night.

October 28, 2003

Superfund Undermined

The industry-financed trust fund that helps underwrite one of the country's most valued environmental programs, the Superfund, will soon run out of money. It will be a milestone of sorts, and a sad one. Unless Congress renews the fund, which pays for cleaning up toxic waste dumps, taxpayers will have to foot the bill instead of the companies that caused the messes in the first place. An important principle will have gone down the drain, and public health may suffer as a result.

Superfund was enacted under President Jimmy Carter in 1980 to clean up thousands of contaminated waste sites. The program's core principle was that polluters should pay. The program enforced that principle in two ways. First, in cases where the company responsible for a mess could be clearly identified, that company paid to clean it up. Of the 800 or so cleanups since the program began, about two-thirds have been paid for by the companies responsible, at an overall cost of about $20 billion. A majority of the sites awaiting cleanup will also be dealt with in this fashion.

There is, however, a second category: sites whose ownership has changed many times over the years, or whose owners have gone bankrupt. For these sites, Superfund's architects created an "orphan" fund, to be financed by excise taxes on the oil and chemical industries and by a tiny environmental income tax levied on most other corporations. These taxes expired in 1995, when Congressional Republicans refused to renew them. President Bush has not asked for their reinstatement, the first president not to do so. The orphan fund is down to its last few million dollars and is likely to run dry next year. It will then be entirely dependent on general revenues.

The administration says it does not matter who pays to clean up the orphan sites. But it does. Instead of having a steady source of guaranteed income, the fund will have to compete with every other program at a time when federal dollars are increasingly scarce. And because polluting industries no longer have to contribute, the orphan fund loses whatever value it has had as a deterrent to bad behavior by industry and as an incentive to develop more benign chemicals and manufacturing processes.

There is little chance that the administration will ask Congress to restore the special taxes, which have averaged about $1.5 billion a year spread across many companies. Congress will thus have to press forward on its own.

A small group of senators, including Hillary Clinton of New York and Jon Corzine and Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, have joined James Jeffords of Vermont in offering a bill that would reinstate the fees. They deserve broad support. Without the fund, Americans will be asked to pay twice for the mistakes of others — with their taxes, and their health.

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Es tanzt der ZNS.

Germany has run into trouble with the implementation of their satellite-based toll-collection system.

Smash-and-grab for crack.

Poor Winnie. While parked on Scott St., someone smashed the small side window in order to steal my two-vials-of-crack cheap car stereo.

After phoning around for replacement glass, the twist is that the car (from 1984) is considered "20 years old" and thus the glass is no longer made. Toyota can fabricate it and install it on Monday.

Public utility.

While Mayor-For-A-Day Chris Daly sneakily appointed two commissioners to the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, Mayor Lame Duck Willie Brown was gallivanting in Tibet.
One of the appointments (which legal sources think will stick) is Robin Chiang, the San Francisco-based architect who designed the Islais Creek MUNI depot, and who consults for the SF Airport.

In other utility and regulatory news, I'm really excited for Nov. 24: Number Portability! After years of paying monthly fees (on both mobile and land lines!), ye American conusmer finally has the option of switching land-line numbers to mobile carriers, and of moving from carrier to carrier while retaining a telephone number. It's been a long time coming.

And next week my neighbourhood is finally getting composting bins! After a two-year wait, the Lower Haight is becoming part of the federally-mandated recycling program. Alleluia.

In the skin of a lion.

According to San Francisco busybodies Matier & Ross, construction on the beautiful new Carquinez "Al Zampa" Bridge is heading into overtime in order to open before Gray Davis leaves the office of Governor.

In other Caltrans news, the new eastern span of the Bay Bridge may not be complete until 2009:

American steel companies accuse Caltrans of delaying the project and changing the bidding process to give foreign steel companies an edge. Construction costs have tripled to an estimated $3 billion.
"We've been listening to the contractors -- listening to what they can and cannot do," said Bijan Sartipi, Caltrans District Director. "They've come up with some innovative ways, and in turn, we've changed some of our practices."
American companies say U.S. steel should be used for the Bay Bridge construction, instead of cheaper foreign steel.
Two-thirds of the planned work remains unfinished.

Cereal, pen, and ink.

Rob Rogers' amusing take on Pittsburgh is Da Burgh to the core. I'm glad that he found better things to do than stick Cheerios up his nose.

UPDATE: Other cartoonists are getting into trouble in their treatment of Da Burgh. Me, I've long found "Get Fuzzy" to be teetering on the edge of funny. I want to laugh, but then I realise, "Oh, this isn't actually comical." Worse now that the Chronicle is now fiddycent, right where we were three years ago.

More diesel laughter.

Seattle has ordered more than 200 hybrid diesel buses to replace their "aging" Breda buses.

Although the press release glowingly reports on the increased fuel efficiency, decreased odor, and on-road performance, it doesn't mention the engine noise. And engine noise is what caused the San Francisco MUNI's latest buses to earn the nickname "Screaming Banshee". Although we now ruefully bear the 90 dB whine of the Haight St. buses, it was a rude awakening two years ago when the new fleet went into service. Complaints to MUNI, who weakly pushed back at their contractor, Neoplan, to meet the specified 83 dB engine noise level. No palpable reduction took place, and the whiny roar of the buses has joined the squeak grinding of the N-Judah in the MUNI audio bestiary.

Diesel make you laugh.

An older MUNI diesel has stalled at the intersection of Haight and Scott: number 8828, on the 6 Parnassus. All of the other buses running on Haight St. routes today are either electric with their antennae down, or diesel; I wonder if there's something amiss with the overhead lines?

UPDATE:
Turns out that poor little bus 8828 ran out of diesel. The chagrined driver didn't want to talk about it.

In training for the doughnut decathalon.

Arshad drew my attention to an informal and ongoing doughnut-eating contest at our old haunt, Voodoo Doughnuts.

If not an art form, Voodoo Doughnut has at least turned doughnut eating into a sport.

I never realised that doughnut eating had entered the competitive arena of, say, oyster eating. People really take pride in putting back ridiculous quantities of often-terrible food; I recall the time I was cycling through Wisconsin and one of the friendly hammerheads I was riding with suggested we stop at a pub for lunch. I ended up taking a tshirt away with me from State St. Brats in Madison for having consumed the "Big-Ass Burger" in under 30 minutes (they sat me at the bar with a huge photo timer and a bunch of people watched. In admiration? In disgust?) I have since learned never to eat food requiring me to sign a disclaimer.

The most popular finger?

Thanks to memepool, I saw this classical rendition of Sir Mix-A-Lot's classic ditty. Our heroine used to boogie down the newsprint to the sounds of the mixmaster. I don't think she would approve of the official web site, though: it loads all at once, taking half a minute over a residential cable link.

Of course, without some background in dactylic hexameter and other forms of Greek metre, this wouldn't be as enjoyable.

The New York Times reports on a legal precedent in Texas:

Is it legal to give someone the middle finger? Yes, says the Texas Court of Appeals, Third District, which ruled for a man who had appealed his conviction for making the gesture to a couple in a car. The court majority, in its opinion, decided that flipping "the bird" did not rise to the level of "disorderly conduct" unless it can be shown "to incite an immediate breach of the peace."

"That the gesture may be thrust upon unsuspecting or sensitive viewers falls short of the type of conduct in a public place that would incite those present to violence," Judge Jan P. Patterson wrote for the majority."

Which do you think is the most popular finger?

Wolfgang, you cheap bastard.

The lead paragraph of a music review appearing in today's Chronicle disparages Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart:

"We think of Mozart as the prototypical musical wunderkind, but compared with Felix Mendelssohn, little Wolfgang was a piker. "

This irritates me. It's the lead in an above-the-fold front-page article of a major metropolitan newspaper, and more than 10% of the words (non-grammatically necessary) are misused. Specifically, piker, which is an American slang term meaning "a risk-taker, gambler; a stingy person". The synonyms are uniformly negative. Merriam-Webster goes so far as to suggest TIGHTWAD as the first synonym and linked definition.

I wrote a letter to the editor (and author). I'm well on my way to roaming the city with a MUNI transfer in hand, plastic bag full of books under my arm.

FOLLOW-UP:

received email from the author, to wit:

I quote from Webster's 11th Collegiate:

one who does things in a small way

"Slacker" would've served my purpose too, I suppose. But the locution I used is a common and venerable one in drawing a comparison unfavorable to a particular party (in this case Mozart): Compared to X, Y is/was a piker.

Thanks for reading my words so closely, though.

Xperimental Jet Set.

This morning's New York Times reports that the Port Authority will spend $90 million to study the feasibility of rail links between Kennedy and Newark airports, and will commit as much as $1 billion to construct the link itself.

"The Port Authority also agreed to spend $90 million to study the feasibility of rail links between Lower Manhattan and both Kennedy and Newark Liberty International Airports, and to commit up to $500 million for the construction of each project if they are deemed feasible."

Bus and subway links serve JFK; the MTA has bus service to LaGuardia; several private livery services operate to EWR.

The New York Times also ran a brief history of transit disasters in the area's public transit system.

New York City's Worst Transit Disasters

October 16, 2003
By TINA KELLEY

The worst accident on a Staten Island ferry was the
explosion of a boiler on the Westfield II, which killed 125
passengers as the boat departed South Ferry on July 30,
1871.

Yesterday's ferry accident appeared to be one of the
deadliest accidents in the city's transportation system.

In 1918, 97 people were killed in a subway accident, and in
1991, five people were killed and more than 200 injured in
a subway crash at Union Square Station caused by a drunken
motorman.

The motorman admitted that he had been drinking all day and
was sentenced to up to 15 years in prison for manslaughter.

Eight months earlier, on Dec. 28, 1990, two people were
killed and 188 were injured in an electrical fire in the
subway tunnel near Clark Street in Brooklyn Heights.

On Aug. 24, 1928, a derailment in Times Square killed 16.

The worst subway disaster in the city's history occurred on
Nov. 1, 1918, when a derailment near the Malbone Street
station in Brooklyn killed 97 people and injured more than
250. The driver was a train dispatcher filling in for
striking motormen.

Until the terrorist attack of Sept. 11, 2001, the single
worst disaster in the city's history was the wreck of the
General Slocum, an excursion vessel that caught fire in
1904, killing at least 1,021 people.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/16/nyregion/16DISA.html

Angry about calm.

The slow traffic / slow lifestyle movement isn't winning friends in handsome hamlets on the peninsula: this story in the Chronicle talks about neighbourhood reactions to various traffic-calming devices built into residential districts in Menlo Park, Palo Alto, and the Lower Haight.

Of course:

"To head off controversy, San Francisco traffic officials have turned to democracy in testing of seven new traffic circles in the Haight two months ago,
polling neighbors who live within a block of each circle. "

Isle of Skye.

Belatedly on the heels of Am I Hot Or Not? comes this foo or not generator.

Still not as much fun as going to the Edinburgh Castle.

It could be closer than you think.

Running errands earlier this morning, I stopped in the record store on a lark. A colourful display marked "Classic Goth" caught my eye, and I laughed aloud at the name. But I stopped laughing when I noticed some of the on-sale titles: Bauhaus' Mask; Love & Rockets' Express: remastered and with the excellent bonus tracks, including a cover of Syd Barrett's Lucifer Sam. Hey, Bauhaus had already covered T. Rex's "Telegram Sam", and this song logically followed.

After hearing "Double Dare" at the jukebox at the Edinburgh Castle on Weds., I've had bauhaus and related on my mind. It's all in my mind.

In addition to the L&R, of which I have a vinyl copy gathering dust, I got a copy of the new Killing Joke album with Mr Dave Grohl, and a copy of Rough Trade's Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This One Before anthology, with young bucks covering old toons by the likes of Cardiff's favourite brawlers, The Young Marble Giants and The Fall (no hyperlink; who'd put together a web site for these punters?). And Elizabeth Fraser singing Robert Wyatt.

Distributed commuting.

"some people in the city are trying to share something else, a thing many Americans regard as the apotheosis of private property" (or is history the apotheois? A thorny intellectual question!)

This article on sharing cars talks about providing infrastructure and changing attitudes in New York City. Can't park the shared cars on the street as easily, but can make them available in very high-density areas.

There are similar programs in San Francisco and Denver; the New York vendor, Zipcar, also operates in Boston and Washington D.C.. Some of the San Francisco cars park in a garage only two blocks away from me, which makes it extremely convenient; I don't fixate on the very American form of independence having a car allows me, since I have a car every now and again, but haven't joined CarShare. Why?

Also in today's New York Times, an encomium of the Yankees' organist Eddie Layton cites an interesting condition of his hire in the 1960s:

"Mr. Layton, who grew up in Philadelphia and has never driven a car, said he did not want to take late-night subway rides. The official offered him limousine service to and from the games and Mr. Layton accepted."

October 10, 2003

New Car Rental Idea Depends on Courtesy of Strangers

By RANDY KENNEDY

New Yorkers may not like it, but they are, by necessity, great sharers.

They share tables in restaurants, benches in parks, inches on sidewalks and air in the subway. In a living arrangement most of the country would probably find far too Marxist — the co-op — they even share responsibility for apartment buildings.

Now, some people in the city are trying to share something else, a thing many Americans regard as the apotheosis of private property: the car. Over the last year and a half, Zipcar, a company based in Boston, has been stocking parking garages around Manhattan, Brooklyn and Hoboken with brand-new cars and persuading people to rent them in what amounts to an automotive co-op.

In many ways, the idea is just Hertz with an urban oil change. Instead of having to rent a car for a day, you can take one out for as little as an hour, and you do not have to go to the rental agency to pick up a car; it comes to you. Volkswagen Golfs, Mini Coopers and other eye-catching cars are parked strategically all over several dense residential neighborhoods like the Upper West Side, Greenwich Village and Park Slope.

But, in other ways, Zipcar lies in a strange land somewhere between capitalism and group therapy. It asks its drivers to assume responsibilities that traditional rental companies assume for a price: clean up after yourself. Fill up the car when it needs it. (There's no excuse: a free gas credit card is tucked into the visor.) Don't take your slobbery dog along. Don't smoke. And, remember, be punctual because another driver will often be waiting at the garage to jump into the car as soon as you jump out, like your little brother getting his turn in the family wagon.

The company's avuncular Web site, www.zipcar.com, counsels, "Always keep the next member in mind when you leave the car and exercise the golden rule: do unto others as you would have others do unto you."

The company's chief executive, Scott Griffith, is even more emphatically neighborly. He describes the company as less about transactions than about creating a village of customers with a strong sense of community spirit. "You're a part of the sum of the whole," he said.

He hopes that all those parts will add up to a tidy sum in New York, a city his company sees as its perfect fit: filled with people who do not own cars but still need them from time to time. Right now, the company calculates that half a million qualified drivers live within a five-minute walk from the 54 Zipcars scattered throughout the city and Hoboken.

But can Zipcar persuade New Yorkers to share them and be nice about it?

So far, about 2,000 people use the cars in New York, compared with 3,000 in Washington and 5,000 in Boston, where Zipcar was founded three years ago.

But some members say the nice part might take a little longer here.

"I was sort of looking forward to that community spirit," said Matt Mendelow, 33, a software engineer. "But it hasn't really worked out that well for me. I've frequently gotten a car that doesn't have any gas in it."

But Mr. Mendelow, who lives on the Upper West Side and joined Zipcar a little more than a year ago, said he plans to remain a member because he finds the cars convenient and is proud of being part of an idea that many cities would find strange. "In L.A.," he said, "this would be like heresy."

New York is also a tougher town for many other reasons. Insurance rates are higher. Zipcar does not park its cars on the street, as it can in many places in Boston and Washington. And often, New York garages, with their fortresslike systems, seem not to understand the concept at all.

Recently, this reporter wanted to take a Volkswagen Golf out in Brooklyn, and abided by the Web site's instructions to call the garage an hour before the reservation was to begin, a requirement that does tend to dampen the feeling of impulsiveness the company wants to convey. Still, the call was made.

No answer.

On second try, after several rings, a man picked up the phone. He was told that a customer was coming to pick up the Zipcar.

"The what?"

"Zipcar."

"Yeah, O.K., whatever."

The car did, however, turn out to be in the garage, and after a little lethargic shuffling, it was produced. (One early New York member, Chris Abramides from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, had a much worse garage problem the first time he tried to take out a car: he became embroiled in a phone argument about the company's unpaid parking bills. The company says that it has worked through those problems.)

For the reporter, a nice four-hour, 16-mile tool around Brooklyn cost $70.90, with tax, which might sound steep, but compare it with $144.20 for a 24-hour Saturday rental from Avis in Manhattan. (Avis has no Brooklyn locations.)

Unlike co-op apartment buildings, Zipcar is not exclusive in the least. Anyone who is over 21 with a license and a decent driving record can join. The membership fee is $30 a month, or $75 a year; rental rates vary from $8 to $16 an hour, plus mileage fees. There are daily rates for longer trips. Members reserve cars online and use an electronic card to get into the car, where the key is tethered near the ignition. The car will not start for someone without the card.

Also unlike co-ops, Zipcars do not involve contentious board meetings, though these are somewhat replicated by Web chats in which Zipcar members debate the finer points of car communality.

One burning question recently was "To snitch or not to snitch?" In a forum, one member reported having twice seen fellow members break the no-pets rule. But he added, "I am not sure I am comfortable with being a snitch." An official from the company reassured him that dropping a dime would not necessarily get another member in trouble.

But there are fines and charges for bad behavior, like returning late. As Mr. Griffith puts it, "If you break the rules of engagement, then there will be a little bit of pain."

But the company tries hard to find other ways to encourage thoughtfulness. For one thing, it has decided to give all its cars names, like Floyd, Consuelo and Billy-Bob, and trendier ones like Mojito and Manolo. Mr. Griffith said he thought this was kind of funny. But he added, "It also reinforces in an almost psychological way that it's something you should try to take care of."

The company also sponsors get-togethers, encouraging its members to relax, have a drink, get to know one another, maybe even become friends, in a way that it is hard to imagine regular Avis renters doing.

Many New York Zipcar members say they cannot quite imagine themselves doing so either.

"I must confess I have never been to one," said Mr. Mendelow, of the film nights and happy hours that the company puts together. "I'm not sure what I would discuss with the people when I got there."

Angeline Huang, a law student, said that she had never been to an event and that, though she plans to continue renting the cars, she remained somewhat confused about the concept. "It is a little weird," she said, only half jokingly. "Is it a company or is it a commune?"

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company | Home | Privacy Policy | Search | Corrections | Help | Back to Top

Ferraris for everyone!

In an analysis of issues facing Houston's mayor, the author notes "The first seven and a half miles of the $340 million light-rail line along Main Street from downtown to Reliant Stadium are to be completed by New Year's Day. Metro, the regional transportation authority, is seeking approval from voters in November for a local transit tax to finance a 22-mile addition at a cost of $640 million. The antirail and prohighway forces have been running commercials contending it would be cheaper to buy every commuter a Ferrari."

More short-sightedness comes from residents in the Mission, who worry that increasing the number of people in their neighbourhood through a new housing development will cut down the number of available parking spaces. The San Francisco Chronicle quotes a woman whose household has at least two cars; instead of lobbying for better public transit routes, increased bus frequencies, she's complaining that "her 20-year-old daughter, who now owns a car of her own, often has to park blocks away from the family's Outer Mission District home".

Car ownership should be more heavily taxes; gasoline costs should reflect the true and future-amortized cost of car usage. Although California is digging itself into a deeper hole one way or another -- either legitimizing non-resident driving, or failing to increase vehicle taxes.

Everyone should ride the bus, train, walk, and bike. And civic infrastructure should make this easier; communities and corporations should offer incentives for people to keep commutes short and on public transit; and people might revel in the quality of life in a community where they live and work.

October 9, 2003

LETTER FROM HOUSTON

Snarls of Traffic and Politics Amid Freestyle Design

By RALPH BLUMENTHAL

HOUSTON

"No Handguns Allowed in Meeting" cautions a sign outside the City Council's Art Deco chamber here. Maybe it is just as well, with Houstonians on edge from monster traffic jams, budget woes, bitterly partisan politics, police scandals and the sting of being called too ugly for company.

(First the guns: the Texas Legislature decided this year to allow people to carry a licensed pistol into any public building that is not a school, courthouse or polling place. Houston's answer was to give out red badges marking armed visitors as carriers of, uh, concealed weapons and barring them from the City Council chamber.)

The city's anxiety is being fanned from several directions. There is a heated mayoral race, as Mayor Lee P. Brown nears the end of his three permissible two-year terms. As hard-hat armies rush to complete Houston's first light-rail line in time for Super Bowl XXXVIII at Reliant Stadium in February, traffic snarls from a torn-up downtown and a sharply accelerated highway expansion program have tempers flaring, with traffic reports detailing the carnage every rush hour.

And, oh, there is mold growing on the plastic roof of Minute Maid (formerly Enron) Park, home of the National League's almost playoff team, the Astros.

Most troubling, many say, are the questions now clouding potentially hundreds of prosecutions, including death penalty cases, based on flawed work at the Houston police laboratory, which was shut down last December. Houston's longtime police chief, C. O. Bradford, resigned last month in what he called a planned retirement, but not before Mayor Brown awarded him a $1,054 yearly raise, which pumped up his pension. Enraged City Council members tried fruitlessly to block it. Mayor Brown said he was just keeping a promise to the chief, who had done "a good job." As for the revelations about the laboratory, the mayor said, "I was very disappointed."

On top of all that, there is the issue of civic insecurity. Houstonians have always been a bit defensive about their brash oil boomtown carved from the bayous of East Texas, and now they are grappling with an existential question: Is their city too ugly?

A leading Houston architect and civic planner, Daniel B. Barnum, posed the question recently on the op-ed page of The Houston Chronicle. He reported that the city had been ruled out as a contender for the 2012 Summer Olympics by a member of the selection committee who told a booster, "We can't bring the world to all this ugliness."

Mr. Barnum, a member of the advisory Midtown Management District, did not quibble. With the Super Bowl less than half a year away, "we are finally waking up to fact that much of our city is in fact ugly," he wrote. "Why does it take a Super Bowl to wake us from our slumber? Can't we see the ugliness around us every day? Are we forever condemned to being this way?"

Mr. Barnum said later that he was particularly referring to the welter of commercial signs along U.S. 59 the route into the city from George Bush Intercontinental Airport. "We ought to be embarrassed," Mr. Barnum said in an interview. "It's awful. I don't know any other city where that kind of introduction awaits you."

His remarks elicited a storm of reaction, much of it positive, but some of it hostile. Mayor Brown, for one, took exception. "I wouldn't accept that Houstonians don't care the way the city looks," the mayor said. What about all the abundant greenery? he asked. The clean streets, the landmark downtown buildings?

One perennial flash point is traffic, as recounted in a new book, "Houston Freeways," by Erik Slotboom, a computer specialist and a longtime student of the road system. The problems may have been brewing for a long time, as Mr. Slotboom says, but never before, it seems, has so much work been going on all at once.

The first seven and a half miles of the $340 million light-rail line along Main Street from downtown to Reliant Stadium are to be completed by New Year's Day. Metro, the regional transportation authority, is seeking approval from voters in November for a local transit tax to finance a 22-mile addition at a cost of $640 million. The antirail and prohighway forces have been running commercials contending it would be cheaper to buy every commuter a Ferrari.

The project's fate has become entangled in the mayor's race. One of the three candidates, Orlando Sanchez, a Republican and former councilman who almost beat Mayor Brown in 2001, has made opposing the rail line a keystone of his campaign.

Mr. Sanchez's two opponents are Democrats who support the rail plan, Sylvester Turner, a member of the Texas House of Representatives who almost became the first African-American to be elected mayor, six years before Mr. Brown did in 1997, and Bill White, a former Texas Democratic Party chairman, who is white.

In the latest twist, Mr. White charged the Turner campaign with trying to undercut him by slipping another candidate named Bill White onto the ballot, thus splitting his vote. Mr. Turner denied involvement.

Although Mayor Brown has yet to announce an endorsement — he says he has eliminated Mr. Sanchez — none of the candidates have a good word to say about City Hall's handling of the road mess and the traffic lights, which are maddeningly unsynchronized. Mr. Brown insists that the work was carefully planned.

"We have to complete it in a given time or lose federal funds," he said. "I chose to do it in 4 years instead of 10 or 12. Is that a mistake? No."

Many drivers would differ. Growing numbers of Houstonians are voting with their feet, or wheels, giving up on nightmare drives to work to move downtown. Every vacant plot there seems to be sprouting new houses, mostly cutesy, suburbanesque garden apartments that give the willies to architectural critics like Stephen Fox, an adjunct lecturer at Rice University and a celebrated leader of walking tours. Looking at one complex of what he called "pretend lofts," Mr. Fox said, "The sudden unreality of this little mirage of urban life becomes apparent." But such builders, he said, were doing "appallingly well."

Yet the urban housing boom, which ties into Mayor Brown's goal to raise the percentage of home ownership to 50 percent or more from 45 percent now, has produced its triumphs, Mr. Fox said. He showed a visitor the growing clusters of innovative metal houses by noted architects like Larry Davis and sleek townhouses by a young Vietnamese immigrant, Chung Nguyen, in Montrose and other historic neighborhoods now stirring with new urban life.

One innovative homesteader in the booming West End, Frank Zeni, an artist and architect, has erected a temple-like residence using metal pipes for columns and other scrounged materials. "I have reinvented the house," he declared.

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company | Home | Privacy Policy | Search | Corrections | Help | Back to Top

American Cyc-o.

The roundabouts are really irritating. I was walking through the intersection of Scott and Page this evening, and two cars didn't even slow down as they drove around the temporary traffic circle. I hucked a copy of American Psycho at the second car, a BMW. The smack of the paperback hitting the lacquered car was satisfying, but the car still didn't slow down. At all. I cracked the spine of the book, which I'd just found on the sidewalk.

The polls are now closed!

The town crier just rode by, bellowing "The polls are now closed" at the top of his lungs. I'm sitting on the stoop, drinking the dregs of a case of Miller High Life (The Champagne of Beers, available $8.99 from the New Santa Clara Market on the corner) with Aram, who's on the phone for a legal hearing. At 8 o'clock in the pip emma.

Everyone's trying to claim the short short spot in front of the house; some idiot parked poorly, and took up two good spots with one ugly Subaru.

And some clown driving a pimped-out late-model Camaro convertible parked across the sidewalk, blocking pedestrian right-of-way. After about half an hour, a kid suddenly charged at the car and rolled capably across the hood. The annoying car alarm went off, and the enraged car driver had to interrupt his Scott St. booty call to turn off the alarm.

I'm a great big nincompoop.

Headed over to the 510 today and checked out the action at Scharffen Berger chocolates with mum, dad, Aram, and the Birthday Girl MD MD.

Saw the astonishing melangeur, and marvelled that these chocolate makers are so confident in their ingredients and methods that they open their factory to everyone.

And the bike you rode in on.

Kai chose as his favourite pic of the week. It's mine too.

... monkey wrench to work one's clockwork.

The new clock-face at the toll plaza of the Golden Gate Bridge has illuminated numbers, but no illuminated hands. Faced with a budget dilemma, the Authority decided to go with glow-in-the-dark numbers rather than hands.

40 seconds? But I want it now!

I ate some deep-fried Oreos a few months ago, at Charlie Blair's Grill in Santa Clara, CA. I wandered in to the Grill looking for a burger, since everyone else wanted to get Thai food at some restaurant that a friend-of-a-friend recommended, and I just wanted a nice honest grilled piece of meat. Charlie Blair's was across the street from the shopping plaza with the third-hand Thai, and I stopped in and asked for some wings. As I was about to order the burger, I noticed a sign on the register that read "Try our deep-fried Oreos!" I asked the collegiate-looking young man behind the counter for one, and he said, "We only sell them by the half-dozen." Emboldended, I took the plunge.
I walked over to the nearby house where we were meeting with our various foodstuffs -- for an outdoors screening of the Michael Caine version of The Italian Job -- and tried one out on the way. I arrived covered with powdered sugar and wearing a big smile: they were delicious.
Everyone at the screening wanted a piece of the Oreos -- battered in funnel-cake mix and then briefly flash-fried. I dashed back to Charlie Blair's and ordered a dozen, but the counter quarterback said that they only had six left. I took 'em, and on the way out met Charlie Blair hisself: a 300+ pound Bostonian who could barely shift from his seat in front of the big-screen TV in order to shake my hand.

There's a wire story about the deep-fried action at the Texas State Fair.

DALLAS (Reuters) - Welcome to the State Fair of Texas -- a magical land where calorie counters cower for cover and almost every conceivable food product can end up deep fried.

Fried potatoes and catfish are old hat to Texans at what is billed as the largest state fair in the United States. What they long for is a new offering for the vats of hot grease to go along with fair favorites such as fried pickles, fried okra, fried corn on the cob and fried cheesecake.

This year, 14 new food items were introduced to the fair and eight of them are fried. New to the fair, held in a land that is home to chicken fried steak, are items such as fried Oreo cookies, fried candy bars, and fried cheese curds.

"Honey, I would fry pretty much anything because that is what the people like," said Olivia Acuna, who works at a booth that sells fried Snickers bars.

The candy bar is dipped in a batter, fried for about 30 seconds and served hot on a plate that quickly becomes saturated in oil. A calorie count was not immediately available.

Ron Black, the fair's vice president for food service said people spend an estimated $15 million on food at the state fair. The fair opened last Friday and runs for three weeks. It typically attracts about 3.5 million people.

Last year, fried Twinkies were a huge hit, and this year, the new food darling could be fried onion on a stick.

Some other fried favorites include fried tamales, fried turkey legs, and ice cream that is lumped into a ball, covered in breakfast cereal crumbs and dipped quickly in hot oil. Dieters can ask to have the ice cream served without chocolate syrup and whipped cream if they want a lighter version.

The most celebrated fried item at the state fair is the corny dog, which is know as a corn dog in the rest of the United States. Both items are hot dogs on sticks breaded with a cornmeal coating and deep fried.

Skip Fletcher, the head of the company called Fletcher's that has been selling corny dogs at the fair for over 60 years, said he uses peanut oil to fry the food in order to cut down on cholesterol.

Fletcher was a beaming judge on Sunday for the first corny dog eating competition at the fair. It was won by Rich LeFevre, who downed 12 dogs in 10 minutes.

LeFevre, an International Federation of Competitive Eating chili consumption champion who has also downed 25-1/2 hot dogs at the celebrated contest on New York's Coney Island, said the fried corny dog was a tough foe for the heavy eater.

"Corny dogs are wonderful, but it's hard to eat of a lot of them," he said.