daniel gray's shed of geekbooks

Montgomery Township Bends Over For Developers, Again

In a questionably timed meeting, Montgomery Township's Township Committee poured more gasoline on the Route 206/518 intersection tinderbox.

Why did this meeting run at 8:00 am on a Monday morning?

Political attempts to spin this decision as being positive and in the best interest of the community are positively laughable. The Princeton Packet reports that "The overlay gives the township greater square footage of non-residential tax ratables than the current zoning provides, but with less rush-hour traffic from commuting workers than would occur if the parcels were developed as office space."

Pardon the question, but exactly how much less rush hour traffic would this new plan produce? Surely those stores need workers. Surely they need customers. We can't expect them all to WALK to the pedestrian-friendly (cough) parking lot.

Lets stop sucking up to the developers. And lets stop repeating those questionable claims, without presenting solid evidence.

The Packet associated Mayor Wilson with the following spin "In addition, new roads under the municipality's Master Plan will be built as part of an overlay development, which will take some pressure off the Route 206-Route 518 intersection."

Hogwash. :)

It's absurd to expect that a smattering of asphalt spaghetti will help take the pressure off the 206/518 intersection. Between the opening of Stonebridge on Montgomery Avenue (just north of the intersection, off Route 206) and the greenlighted Sharbell development (behind the Village Shopper), the two new age-restricted developments stand to add more residents to the portion of Montgomery surrounding the intersection than the entire existing population of Rocky Hill.

The land surrounding the Route 206/518 intersection should not be developed. It should be put into preservation. It's time to stop bending over for the developers. It's time to fix the intersection for good.

When the Landmark development threatened to explode the population of Rocky Hill, decades ago, the village fought long and hard to preserve their way of life. And after all of these years, Rocky Hill is choked in traffic because of Montgomery's out-of-control development.

Montgomery politicos love to trumpet their land preservation victories. And all the while, as they pick off one piece of low hanging fruit after another (at the taxpayers' expense, of course), the intersection burns ...

How Bruce's Harmonica Came to Live at Our House

Here's my story (and I'm sticking to it):

Cleveland 8-14-2002

Agent 008 and I had successfully occupied two positions in the first row of seats, stage right, next to Clarence and Danny. Side view, yeah, but you couldn't be any closer to the stage, unless you were lucky enough to be in the front of the pit.

Of course, Agent 008 was having a rocking good time.

Towards the end of "Promised Land," Bruce was jamming on the harmonica solo stage right, just in front of us ... he's hamming it up BIG TIME for my little dude, and the little dude is giving it all back, times ten. Agent 008 gives Bruce a huge thumbs up.

Bruce looks me in the eye, points at my son, and with a bigass grin, whips the harmonica at *me*.

It was a low throw, and I missed it. Hey, I'm no freakin' Derek Jeter.

For a slow-motion moment, WE COULDN'T FIND THE HARMONICA.

Folks were AWESOME, scurrying to locate the harp. The roadies were crawling over the cases, and the fans in the front of the section were looking all over the place--then I glanced back underneath the seat behind me.

And there it was. Like a shiny sardine--all purple, green, and blue--glinting in the stage light.

I picked up the sardine and looked at it for the briefest, sweetest of moments. Thoughts ran through my head ... this thing has been sitting on the floor of the Gund Center in Cleveland, Ohio. Bruce has just blown everything in his upper respiratory system through it. There were germs all over the place. If I give this to the kid, he's gunna put it right to his mouth ...

And then I thought, "ah the heck with it."

I dutifully handed the harp over to the boy. The crowd went wild.

Agent 008 got high fives and back slaps for the rest of the night. He wasn't too crazy about having his hair tossled by women he didn't know (a show of affection reserved only for precious few family members), but all in all, he handled himself like a champ. At least he didn't get his cheeks pinched with the vice grip of death (like my relatives used to do to me).

A guy in the row next to us asked my son's age, and when I told him that my son is 8, he said, "whoa, that's cool." "Yeah," I replied with a wink, "he was only 6 when he saw Bruce at the Garden."

Another guy offered me $100 for the harmonica. With a straight face (at least I thought it was straight), I said, "add four zeros to that and I might think about it. I gotta have enough to retire on."

As we're walking out (on an ultimate high) from the Gund Center to the hotel, the boy immediately has to phone home. He blows a wild tune for mom into the cell, and teases "guess what I got, Mom!"

Agent 008 and I drove close to 1000 miles round trip in the hot rod (from the dry parched swamps of joisey) for the show, and man, are we glad we did.

M'boy played (or simply clutched--even when he fell asleep) the harmonica all the way home.

And I'm talking about SEVEN AND A HALF HOURS at high speed (and with the top down). :)

Needless to say, we still have the harmonica.

And it ain't behind glass or in a case. (It's a Hohner Marine Band "G". Haven't found a Promised Land harmonica tab yet ...)

The Wind's Whipping Down the Boardwalk

I confess. I scored tickets to the Sunday night Holiday show.

We're goin' ... but we're not bringing a camera. :) And Agent 008's gotta stay home, too. Tough luck, kid!

Wasn't so long ago, they didn't care whether you brought a camera.

Okay, so maybe it was long ago ...

Back in '78 or so, when I was still in high school, I borrowed the Graphic Arts department's 35mm camera and brought it to a show at the Philly Spectrum. (YES, THE SCHOOL'S FREAKIN' CAMERA.) We had good side stage seats that night (been lucky that way a bunch of times over the years) ...

The seats were on temporary bleachers ... and when the show started going crazy the bleachers were shaking like there was an earthquake goin' on ... so I'm trying to take photos and I'm getting bounced around all over the place ...

This big security guard (I mean, he was real big, bigger than Clarence) sees that I'm having a tough time. He motions to me to give him the camera so he can go right up to the stage and take some shots. I give him the camera without even thinking about it (like, uh, is this guy gunna take away THE SCHOOL'S CAMERA?) and he nonchalantly cruises over, takes his shots and brings me back the camera, filled with great stuff ...

it was one of those very very very cool moments.

I had some amazing, simply amazing, freaking GLOWING shots from that night, all black and white on tri-x pan film. Wouldn't ya know that I ended up loaning the negatives (yes, I am an idiot) to a friend of mine and I never got them back ...
:o

DVD Rental at Wal-Mart

Blockbuster and NetFlix, watch out ... Wal-Mart has entered the DVD rental arena.

Now, I have never been to a Wal-Mart in my entire life. Not even once. I happen to believe that Wal-Mart (and the big box stores like Home Depot and the like) are bad for America, for one basic reason ... they steamroll the small mom and pop stores. When the big boxes start popping up outside of town, the little family-owned business in town start shutting down.

This new DVD rental by mail thing is different ... it operates in a similar manner to NetFlix, entirely through the web and your snail mailbox. Pretty cool for Wal-Mart. Not so cool for your local video store. But hey, you were already using NetFlix, anyway, right?