Building the better Main Street

Nothing seems more quintessentially American than Main Street, European towns and cities have their piazzas, fountain squares and former Medieval walls and towers. The America Main Street is the product of an open town, a location that never had to be walled in for its own protection, because very few battles in North America ever involved siege warfare. Even during America's colonial history, farmers usually did not live in town and commute to their fields. Once the Native Americas were subdued or push out of the frontier the farmers rushed in to fill the vacuum; they built their houses on the farm and only came to town when they had to. The American town became the outpost of commerce and more of a place for people to meet at than to live in.   

Main Street evolved out of the technologies of the industrial revolution and nearly died with the development of mass produced automobiles, paved roads and cheap gasoline. This made life in the suburbs possible for the middle class and created an opportunity for large retailers to build the shopping mall and big box stores away from Main Street. Lower prices, free parking and the fact that the middle class had moved out of town totally change the location of where people did their business.

So? Where is the most visited location in the United States?  

That's right -Main Street Disneyland. And every Disneyland Park has a Main Street. It does not matter what attractions you visit at any of the parks, eventually everyone is drawn to Main Street. That fact hasn't escaped the community planners at Disney.

Outside of Disney World in Orlando Florida is the town of Celebration.

The town of Celebration was conceived and build by Disney corp. Seen as return to small town values in a safe and walkable community. Some critics call it "The Stepford Wives" of planned communities but almost all of the 8,000 residents who live there, like it there. As one person said "nothing much bad happens in Celebration but then nothing much spontaneous happens there either".  

In Celebration the car is not king and parking is difficult to come by. The housing lots are purposely small and every house is built with a porch. One feature that universally comes up is how easy and safe it is to walk or bike in Celebration. Like any other planned community all the residents have to follow the rules of a homeowners association. Such associations regulate and restricted almost anything that can be seen from the sidewalk. This includes any outside decorations, the color of the curtains, wind chimes, political signs. I find this very restricting but for the people in Celebration they find it liberating they don't have to drive everywhere for everything. A little later on I want to get back to the idea of "walkable space".  

This is an picture from 1952 of a real small town in America. In past posts I mentioned that I live near two towns in Pennsylvania, Pottstown and Phonixville. Both towns were once blue collar work-a-day towns, dependent on heavy industry and manufacturing. About 30 years ago the steel mills in both towns closed and practically every other manufacturer packed up and left. As the cost of transportation went down many towns and industrial centers lost their economic advantage.

Both towns suffered tremendously but Phoenixville has recovered and Pottstown is still in a downward spiral. The two places are less than 10 miles (15 km) apart and if anything Pottstown is the larger community with more potential resources. Why the big difference?

I think it all come back to walkable space. One of the great cliches of the suburbs is that they are boring -but like all cliches it has some ironic truth to it. Many of my neighbors are busy all week, do the yard work and chores on Saturday and it's church and football on Sunday. Phoenixville has capitalized on people's need to be social. 

About twenty years ago Phoenixville tried to save it downtown shopping district on Bridge Street by promoting it as "Antique City" . There were around a dozen second hand shops that opened and they were a modest success.

At that same time and almost totally under the radar a non-profit group took over and began to renovate the Colonial movie house, making it an art house theater. 

Then Jane Tucker opened up the Steel City Coffee House. It wasn't just a cafe but a venue for live music.

It took time for the Colonial and Steel City to establish themselves but just after a new restaurant or two came to Bridge Street it was suddenly like a flood gate opened. In five years over two dozen new businesses  came to a four block section of Bridge Street and every second hand shop eventually closed up and moved away.

My theory is the most important segment of the market is twenty-something adults. Twenty-something adults are not saving up for their retirement, they're looking to be in a relationship. Any relationship starts of with three dates and twenty-something adults are willing to spend money on a date. If your town's Main Street has at least three nice places to go on a date, it will attract those young adults. And those twenty-something adults will attract everyone else because other age groups like being around young attractive and vibrant people.

Now look at other towns. What is on their Main Street? If it can be summed up with something like a hot dog vendor, a dollar store and a smoke shop -well then it's safe to assume this is a dying town. You're probably not interested in walking that street.

The future of small and medium towns in America is entertainment, arts and culture. It's providing a walkable space where people from the suburbs can go and experience things, instead of just killing time watching TV or shopping on-line. 

Guy Fawkes -the man of the hour

One of those holidays that really confuses me is Guy Fawkes Day though it also reaffirms my faith in human nature -that people are always looking for any excuse to take a day off and have a party.

Guy Fawkes was a Catholic in a country that in the 1600's was deathly afraid of it's sizable Catholic minority. The Anglican Church was the state religion that broke away from Papal control almost for the sole purpose of getting King Henry the VIII a divorce in 1534. It was really a battle of who had more control over England, the King or the Pope in Rome. There were other political considerations too but when King Henry confiscated all the property of the Catholic Church in England and redistributed a lot of it to his friends and allies, that meant there would be no simple reconciliation short of war.

Spain lost its chance in 1588 to invade and conquer England in the name of the Pope. The new Protestant nobility felt it was under siege and saw any Catholic as a security risk -much the same way as many Americans thought about their Muslims neighbors after 9-11. Under Elizabeth I there were a number of heavy-handed attempts to convert or eliminate Catholicism in England. One law was the Recusancy Act of 1593, which meant if you did not go to your local Anglican Church every Sunday you would be fined and jailed.

The Recusancy Act was one reason why Guy Fawkes was part of the Gunpowder Plot, an attempt to blow up Parliament in 1604. Out of the 13 conspirators Guy Fawkes is the one we remember because he was captured on November 5th guarding several tons of gunpowder in the basement of the Parliament building. Parliament voted this day should be celebrated "for their deliverance" . As part of the legacy of the event, a century and a half later American political philosophers look at the Gunpowder Plot as an example of what happens when the state and religion interfere with each other.

Another legacy of Guy Fawkes is how people recycle historical images. The Occupy Movement has made the Guy Fawkes mask a ubiquitous symbol of resistance. Even the Tea Party in America has embraced the image of Guy Fawkes, though the Tea Party has pretty much the opposite agenda of the Occupy Movement.

Catholics in England did not have full citizenship until the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829. This reform didn't come out of altruistic sentimentality. In the early 1800's England was entering the industrial age full force and suffering a brain drain of talent; many Catholic mechanics, engineers and skilled laborers were leaving England for the much more religiously tolerant United States. These expatriates helped jump start the industrial revolution on the other side of the Atlantic.

It's funny how today is Guy Fawkes Day and tomorrow is Election Day in United States. Election Day is not exactly a holiday here, God forbid that workers should have a day off to vote. Even in nation wide Federal elections voting is controlled by the states. The rules for who can vote, how they vote and if they need to show a picture ID varies from state to state.

Voting is one most important acts a citizen can participate in. The principal of "one man, one vote" makes the poorest equal to the richest and it demonstrates that the power of
political consensus is greater than the force of dictatorship.




This presidential election is has been very negative and nasty. I have neighbors ready to start throwing punches at each other. The rhetoric is shrill and people get threatened for posting anything that questions either major party or the narrative they are trying to present. It's politics in action and as frayed as the tempers are right now things will return to normal.

But then again isn't that part of what elections are all about? People don't always make rational decisions with there heads. People vote based on a sense of affiliation and shared values. One of paradoxes of human behavior is how many people will vote against their own economic interests to elect a candidate that they can emotionally relate to. 

In short whoever wins there will be plenty of sore losers questioning the legitimacy of the vote.

As a joke one friend has suggested making investments in guns and ammunition. He's not expecting an armed uprising -if anything like the election of 2008 nothing too much is likely to happen. But back in 2008 when Obama was elected a rumor went around that Obama planned to restrict gun rights and even confiscate guns from private citizens. Nothing was further from the truth but millions of gun owners stocked up on extra weapons and ammunition.

One example is a neighbor down the road from me. In 2008 he was very much against an Obama presidency. He felt the world was coming to an end and for him things were pretty bad. He had inherited his father's business, which was a sock factory that was going bankrupt. Wal-Mart had found a cheaper supplier in China and when I say cheaper I mean cheaper by lees than a couple of tenths of a cents per dozen socks delivered -the business is that cut throat. In the end my neighbor lost his house, sold most of his possessions but still scraped enough money to buy two AR-15's, two Chinese made AK-47's (the Chinese AK-47's are supposedly the easiest to illegally convert to full automatic) and two 9mm Glock pistols. For each gun he purchased 1,000 rounds. It's not rational but if Obama is elected to a second term there will a whole new wave of panic buying for an imaginary crisis.



So maybe I take a bit of advice from one of my favorite movies -Shaun of the Dead. Meet me down at the Winchester and I'm sure to ask you if you have a penny for the guy?


Update: So here it is three months later, no one could have imagined or foreseen the mass shooting in Sandy Hook Connecticut. The sale of guns and ammo have only accelerated. A survey last week had one in five respondents saying they believe Obama is a secret Muslim. I'm not sure what to make of that except it gives me a bad feeling the next four years will not be smooth, simple or easy.

Reports on last quarter's world economic growth looks bad enough to worry about an other recession.  


Other than buying into the survivalists advice of purchasing canned goods and shotguns I am hearing that investments in agriculture and Africa are paying regular dividends. Money will continue to flow into the United States, keeping interest rates extremely low. If any of these trends should rapidly reverse the world economy could go into a tailspin.

The really big question is economic growth and income inequality in the United States. If the American middle class is allowed to further shrink it will effect the patterns of development in other economies. Conservatives are in total denial that the American middle class was built on New Deal socialism. The ultimate goal, as one economist said, is to create a system of "industrial feudalism" with a very small middle class and a vast pool of wage earning serfs. If such a thing happens in America then any other nation that competes on the world market will be pressured to follow along.

At a local political rally one speaker summed up the goals of neo-conservative economics -not just to end all entitlement programs in America but to stamp out socialism in Europe or anywhere else in the world. Anything that challenges free enterprise is an evil that needs to be destroyed.

Think about it -what was once the power of kings will be pasted on to employers. What scares me is a keg of gunpowder can be mistaken as a solution when it's really a symptom of an age old problem. Even when Cain and Able had all the world to share -the story still ended badly.

I Like Ike

The 1950's were a time remembered for it's economic prosperity and it's struggle with social conformity. It was the only in the 20th century were the growth of wealth in the working class outpaced the top 1%.

Money is not just the representation of wealth but it the blood of an economy and like blood in the body it is meant to be in constant circulation and reach every extremity in the system. In the 1950's progressive taxes, regulations and labor unions redirected money back to the growing middle class and that actually had multiplying effect creating even more wealth. The businesses on Main Street also prospered along with Wall Street. 

Part of Eisenhower's success came from his background as a career Army officer. He firmly believed rank had its privileges -but every privilege came with a reciprocating responsibility. During World War 2  the Army Officer Corp was held to high standard of accountability, where any officer including generals were quickly relieved of command if they did achieve their mission's objective or if they recklessly endangered the soldiers in their unit. More than once Eisenhower acknowledged that the soldiers in the field is the backbone of the Army; and that officers managed and planned warfare but it's the common soldier who wins the battle. Eisenhower brought this philosophy to the White House.  

With the up coming presidential elections the above picture is a good illustration on some of the differences between Obama and Romney. Romney is a businessman and he had his campaign hats manufactured in China. From a business standpoint this is a wise move, if you save a few pennies per hat that adds up to a lot of money over the tens of thousands of hats given away.

Obama's background has been as a community activist and politician. In politics the first question is who are your supporters and friends. The Obama campaign made a clear decision to show it's support for American workers over the benefit of saving a few dollars.   

Every national election is a referendum on what should be the role of government. Should government be run as a ruthless business entity? Or should it be recognized that government is there to provide services that private capital can not or should not provide? Americans have historically rejected private armies and private police forces but right now we are in a dialogue arguing the merits of private schools over public schools. There is no argument that government should protect its citizens against acts of foreign terrorism and natural disasters but we're not so sure about helping each other during economic downturns. 

Maybe somewhere we have to accept the fact that managing a functioning and orderly society is a messy and   not always a cost effective effort.

As one historical irony was when King George the 3rd of England tried to run his dominion strictly as a business. In 1762 he made a fateful business decision to demand that the American colonists pay their share of the cost for the French and Indian War. The colonists balked at the bill and this was the beginning of a fight that lead to the American Revolutionary War.

                                 History has deep roots

What happens now will reverberate into the future. One of the most graphic examples is how every major battlefield of the 20th century still yields up all kinds of un-exploded bombs and shells.

Eisenhower's more egalitarian interpretation Republicanism created a backlash of ultra conservatism. In 1964 Barry Goldwater ran on a party platform that was hostile to civil rights and government intervention in commerce. One of his campaign slogans was "in your heart you know he's right" but the electorate retorted with "in your guts you know he's nuts". 

Barry Goldwater's defeat did not end the ultra conservative movement in America. It returned with Richard Nixon's Southern Strategy, Ronald Reagan's Supply Side Economics and the deregulation of the housing and lending industries in 2002 -which lead to our current economic recession that almost became a world wide depression. 

I know some of the overseas readers of this blog are tired of hearing about the upcoming election here but it does effect everybody -it is a global village.

Maybe in the end we have to recognize that extremism for any cause is the ultimate vice.

                                       In the mailbox

I got an email about my post on Batman yesterday. Rob felt that Batman and Robin were not gay. If I wanted to write about gay comic book characters I should check out Percy in Sargent Rock platoon.

This month viewership is up over 50% and is now read in over 25 countries. This week new viewers logged on from Malaysia, Sweden and Poland.

Batman -superhero and pop icon. Personally I have only a passing interest in comic book heroes but there are many people deeply steeped in the alternative world of pulp fiction. My one friend, Tom the collector of everything, had such a large collection of comic books that he rented from his parents his childhood bedroom  -that is until the weight of 80,000 comic books began to compromise the structural integrity of the house.

Another old compatriot in that circle was Rich. Rich's goal was to be a writer of pulp fiction and the last I heard he's been published multiple times but hasn't yet achieved the level of success to let him quit his day job. Every November Rich would help his friend Al set up a mini comic convention over in Upper Dublin PA. What this mini convention lacked in size, it made up in enthusiasm  Al was well known in the business with is roots going back to DC comics just after they changed their name from National Allied Publications.

In the 1930's many of the comic book companies where started by business men who made their money in pornography -or at least that's what I've been told. Comic books were a way to diversify and legitimize their profits. 

The first appearance of Batman was in May 1939 but November 1939 is a monumental month for both the Batman story and comic book evolution. The November issue of DC comics #33 the back story of Batman is revealed. The young Bruce Wayne traumatized by witnessing the murder of his parents at the hands of street mugger becomes the brooding caped crusader. Other characters already had established back stories but Batman's add an extra psychological element. Batman didn't fight crime because he was morally good like Superman but instead Batman was compulsively driven and motivated by darker personal struggles. This was going to effect how the story of every other superhero would be written.   

Batman wasn't always meant to be brooding and vengeful  The TV series during the mid 1960's was camp humor at it best. A time when painters like Roy Lictenstein made comic book images high art and everybody appreciated an occasional respite from the political turmoil of the times.

In 1940 Robin was introduced to the story line. Sales doubled. Over the years there were always questions about what kind of relationship Batman and Robin really had. It was one of those nagging questions that the Senate investigation on comic books and juvenile delinquency specifically asked as several Senators stumbled with the word homoerotic. The question was never answered but Robin and Batman seemed to be a little more at arms distance after 1955.

As one person put it "Batman is like the Samurai warrior". In Japan the Samurai is the toughest guy at the top of the food chain. After practicing everyday  to coldly dispatch their enemies with a razor sharp sword, the Samurai were expected to balance out their activities and do something delicate like flower arrangements.

So in the future will Batman become totally ironic or ever grow old?

For over 70 years the Batman saga morphed and changed with the times, then almost disappeared only to be resurrected by another generation of writers and movie makers.

Maybe we will always have superheroes because they fill a need that goes back to the Epic of Gilgemesh -where some one heroic and identifiable wins and they defy death ever time their story is retold.    

All Hallows Eve

Halloween has arrived. I think for today most people in the Philadelphia area are grateful that hurricane Sandy is gone. Some of my friends in New York City and North Jersey are taking the storm damage in stride. The kids stuck in one college dorm (the school to remain nameless) are planning a flash mob of zombies for today to celebrate both Halloween and the storm apocalypse.

The word from New York City is things are a mess but generally okay. New York is known as a city of wry humor. The bad news is the subways have been flooded and it might be up to a week before they're all working again -good news is many of the stations will no longer smell like urine,

Once upon a time Halloween was a much scarier holiday. For any of the purists out there I'd suggest a book of short stories by H. P. Lovecraft.

Like Mardi Gras and Carnival, Halloween is a big celebration before a long season of depredation. Tomorrow is November and the beginning of cold, short and miserably damp days. It's that unpleasant season where everything tastes like pumpkin and everyday is filled with the anxiety of Thanksgiving Dinner with the whole family or Christmas shopping.

One nice feature about Halloween it's a day when even an ugly guy has a chance for a date.





Part of Halloween will always be a children's holiday. It's difficult and maybe even morbid to explain to a child that all things in life are passing. Much the same as you can't tell a little child that the world does have real monsters in it, people who are criminally violent and sadistically unbalanced. So we tell little children tales about the Big Bad Wolf and teach them never open the door for strangers.







Tonight I do plan to go a party. There will be a psychic there. I'm told he's very good but pretty much a skeptic, probably because a I knew as so called psychic back in New Jersey. She was as fake as a three dollar bill -but very entertaining.

Happy Halloween. May today be everything you want it to be.

 
 

First a word before returning to our scheduled program .....

"Hey there baby" -I wish I could say that like Cassandra Wilson. It was wild night with hurricane Sandy, it seems we're all okay here but like I said before I'm a 100 miles (160 km) inland so we were saved from the worst of the storm. Once the roads are clear of fallen trees and flooded sections I plan to drive down to the Atlantic City Area. 

For friends and family back in New Jersey. At least Atlantic City has the advantage of averaging 3-5 feet above sea level instead of the ninth ward of New Orleans that averages 15 feet below sea level.

The Cult of Money

What I'd rather write about is being creative, living the good life and just making the most out of this time here together but one thing keeps coming up -money. There aren't many subjects that don't have a major economic element to them.

There are few things that always bothers me about money. It seems the more you have the cheaper you get. As one friend, who is a talented painter, lamented that he dislikes selling his work to well off patrons. Most of them look at his art as investment and rarely ever enjoy his work as art. He hates the constant haggling over prices but what he found ever worse was all the requests for free art to be sold at charity auctions and dinners. Not that he's against charity but he resents being asked to contribute his work for an event where clueless people pat each other on the back for being generous enough to eat, drink and snap-up a painting at deeply discounted price -for the benefit of "poor" people. 

Who are the "poor" people? Over the years I've known a few families that have money; and asking them about poverty is provocative question that tells you more about a person's viewpoint than real economics. What amazes me is level of ignorance that some people have about the lives of others -like if you own an $80 microwave oven from Wal-Mart, then you're not poor.  

One thing that I enjoy about New York City is it's place where rich and poor live close and at times even rub shoulders. As cities like Huston, the poor live on one side of town and the rich on the other with several neighborhoods in between that are economically stratified and equally segregated. At least on the surface money as become the "fair" way to measure the worth of a person -and the idea of equality a messy inconvenient thing.

A few of my childhood friends have done well for themselves. They can laugh and joke about their struggles, the hard work and lucky breaks. What scares me is their children, most them young adults with very soft hands and very hard hearts. These kids have seen very little outside of their private schools, ivy league colleges and tight circle of equally privileged peers. 

In one household where I am welcomed or maybe better said where I am welcomed by my friend Dan (not his real name ) and barely tolerated by his wife. Both have come from modest backgrounds, done well in business and have become locally prominent GOP leaders. Over coffee Dan's wife digressed into a little monologue on how entitlements are bankrupting the nation and how recipients of food stamps are the new welfare queens. That was very hard to listen to. I know people who needed food stamps and I think it just as important to protect citizens from destitution as it is to protect them from terrorism. The other reason why this was difficult to hear that crap was I knew Dan's wife had a past. She was married once before and her husband left her. While trying to make ends meet and raise a child as a single parent, she collected food stamps and went government funded job training classes that started her on a successful career path. Out of diplomacy I said nothing, it would have messed with her myth of the self-made woman.

Like any cult, the cult of money has its own mythology. Segregate the members and repeat the same stories over and over until it's taken in as Gospel truth. Segregation is very important because you don't want outside facts and experiences challenging the cult's core beliefs. Over the last 20 years I have seen a rapid acceleration of  the "gated community" mentality. It's compounded with the fear of a diminishing future that could only be saved by giving more money and special breaks to the "investing class" -instead of asking if the problems we have now is because we already give too much to the top 1%.

Out of all the possible irritation thoughts in history this one rates right up there with tulip bulb speculation in 17th century Holland, though it could have even more devastating consequences. The concentration of wealth does not create jobs unless it takes risks and creates new industries. In the past great pools of wealth usually create an atmosphere of risk aversion. Look at Medieval Europe, a thousand years of where 90% of the wealth was owned by 1% of the people (the people with royal tittles). In reality Medieval Europe was a pretty dark and brutish time where progress stood still, most people were slaves or serfs and ancient world of the past represent a better place than the present. It wasn't until Renaissance things began to really change, a period of time when wealth started to be created from the bottom of society instead of one royal family declaring war on another royal family. It was the development trade guilds that start a small middle class that lead to the Enlightenment a couple of centuries later. The royalty of  Europe was further hammered by the industrial revolution where the middle class iron monger became the dynamic generator wealth.

The middle class of America has lost faith in itself. Poverty is made more scary and punishing by ending entitlements and aid. And everyone but the top 1% is made to work harder and longer for less.

It has been said the nature abhors a vacuum -and power abhors an unfettered back. Money is power and the money elite are looking a lot like the royalty of Medieval Europe. In the American Revolutionary War, the founders of the United States threw off the aristocracy of English rule. Maybe it's time to curb the power of our own homegrown aristocracy -they don't have royal tittles but exert the same level of power over the average citizen.

Before the elections this November 6th -everyone should see this movie -The Yes Men Fix The World. If your political views are firmly set either right or left, this movie will only confirm your world view but if you have a doubt this movie will give you something to think about.