On that note, how many Denver teams are struggling at the gate? The Avalanche are sitting at #9 on Forbes chart of most valuable NHL teams; Brocos are #11, Nuggets are middle of the pack at #19, the Rockies are #20 (bottom of the middle third of MLB but still highly profitable).

Also noticed that the Pacers are talking about a bailout as well from the CIB to help it stay afloat since attendance has tanked since the Artest brawl. Bill Simmons wrote last year that up to 10 NBA teams may be in serious trouble with the current system, and it almost guarantees a work stoppage in 2011.

I am also grateful for you including the FT article on Baltimore since i know that you usually like to focus only on the midwest.

The neighborhood featured [South East Baltimore] is actually where i live.I run a very small interior demolition company that does interior demolition on rowhouses that are being rehabbed.Since business is dead right now i have had my business card enlarged to postcard size and have put over two thousand of them under vacant house’s doors in the hope that when they ARE sold someone will call me.

Please keep in mind that i have kept out of the REALLY bad areas where there is no hope for revitalisation.Yet i have still been able to find over two thousand vacant houses.Many of them were in the area mentioned in the FT article.

Since all of them are rowhouses that are attached to other rowhouses which are occupied, they cant be torn down.Yet at the same time they cant be sold.Some have been boarded up for years and one wonders what will happen to them.

Years ago they had the \Dollar House\ program where they sold houses in Baltimore for a dollar to urban homesteaders.

I know that houses are cheap in Detroit right now.But the difference whith the \Dollar House\ program was that the city worked with the homeowner to fix up the houses.They gave people 1% home improvement loans .And provided advisors and architechts to help the homeowners with the rehabbing process.The program was also designed to keep out \flippers\ and speculators who would just buy houses to sit on them while they remained empty.There was a requirement for living in the house for a certain amount of time.

I wish that Baltimore and other cities would bring back that type of program.

Until then i have 4000 more busness cards to pass out and i should have no problem finding 4000 vacant houses in Baltimore.At least i will get a lot of walking done during this recession!

We have a large, very underused mall that was intended for gatherings and concerts. I almost touches public square. The problem is that there are few destinations surrounding the mall. If it is connected to the lake with some kind of bridge over the tracks and highway, we could pull more people north. And obviously, the med mart would help.

Public Square does have more than its share of thuggish looking high-school-aged kids, but building something isn’t going to get rid of them. Maybe an underground transit exchange behind tower city that could be heavily policed, or exchanges east and west of downtown to move some of the transit waiting out of the CBD.

Are comments aren’t apples to apples.

I like Midwest Miscellanies a lot too, but not in such gargantuan proportions, a point you’ve now addressed.

If I have to block out several hours to read one post and follow relevant links, odds are it’s not going to happen.

This study focuses on six key indicators of literacy: newspaper circulation, number of bookstores, library resources, periodical publishing resources, educational attainment, and Internet resources.

Newspaper circulation?? Newspaper circulation is, if anything, an inverse indicator of digital literacy. I’m plenty literate, but I take pride in not subscribing to any dead-tree newspapers.

Bookstores, sadly, are also a poor indicator in the age of the Kindle.

http://www.metropolismag.com/story/20091216/a-symbol-of-progress

HNY Jarrett

I was definitely backed up with material from the Christmas break. My plan to post these frequently enough to avoid too many more mega-link dumps.