Is the mayor really that not OK?

Cindy, I'd like to build a fort in the Bank of America Building on the Fulton Mall. Wanna join me? What are the laws about squatting anyway?

There's nobody there. Why can't we just claim it and move in? Oh yeah health codes and all that other civilized stuff.

But, we're ALL cool people here at Fresno Famous. And if we were living on the Fulton Mall there would be cool restaurants and shops there too.

I'm very pleased to see more reconstruction happening on Kern Street and and on Van Ness (The old Hilton - remember the Skyroom?) I just wish it was all happening faster. These old buildings are where the downtown community of the future will live. This is nuts and bolts stuff not flashy and shiny stuff. Get it done ASAP.
Grandiose plans can wait while we take care of mundane stuff.

Besides if we are successful the grandiose becomes more likely and the Fresno skyline will change.

Oh and I'm jamming with Tom Walzem (the Neptunes) and anyone else who shows up tomorrow at noon at Milano's on the Fulton Mall near Long's.
Also I'm at the Full Circle Brewing Co in Chinatown tomorrow night at 8 PM. This is also an open jam.

This thread alone is a perfect example why people can not seem to agree on what downtown Fresno needs. We all do agree that it needs revitalizing. But just how? It seems people who have been there can't even agree on that river in Texas. Real or man-made? Popular with locals or only for tourists? hmmmmmmm. Everyone's opinion is their reality. My point? well, at least we're talking.

I agree with the folks that say; let's take these millions and use it to support local businesses, of the homegrown nature and get the place hopping. We need restaurants of course, and I love the idea of different ethnic foods. We need stores that carry not only fancy-smancy shoes, but items by local artists, clothing that isn't just for 21 year olds, music....LOTS of music and places to walk safely.

Steve...I loved playing on the ditch bank and building forts with you in the field next to Manchester. We WERE safe. Much safer than most kids are today just going to school. sigh. cindymaeschoonmaker. good to see you my friend.

was rolling through the mall the other evening (funeral run,) and went past several fountains.

-They're CLEAN!.

(this immed. made me think of Joe Moore, in my mind he's responsible for clean fountains in the city of Fresno, among other things,)

-but, dude, seriously, they looked great, they were running, they were like, freakin' sparkling, and there was like, no need for a pink mint in any of them,

---how clean?

One guy who had a tire blow out? we were able to use the water of one of the fountains to hold the tube in, (you know, find the bubbles,) dry the tube and put a patch on, like right then and there, (yeppir, bike surgery on the mall with tons of clean water just sitting there...)

So yes, a bicycle wheel was baptized in a fountain at the Fulton Mall. (probably not the first time.)

To be honest, (now we'er talking 5 to 6p,) it looked sorta pretty there, some of the stores were still open
-not a lot of people,)
and 'Milano,' has a really cool bone-shaker (high-wheel,) bike in one of the windows.

--Nicest I've seen the mall look in like, two years.

-Eric
East Sierra Madre: Gateway to Aetna on one side, and a shopping cart to get you over the wall (so you can go to Ross') on the other.

I do not believe that the river is still be considered. It appears that a district of fountains is the current thought.

Craig
Fresno: Garden City under the Sierra Nevadas

Is the riverwalk still an issue? My only question is where is the water suppose to come from? Is there any sort of plan to divert the water from Fancher Creek to make it run Downtown?

Living in Texas all my life, I can attest that the river in San Antonio is for all intents and purposes man-made. Yes it is real river... real disgusting if you fall into it. It has been completely concreted in and revamped fro commercial use. It is the largest single draw in the state, and no - people do not go to San Antonio primarily to see the (1 hour walk through) Alamo, they go because the Riverwalk is simply spectacular. Living in Dallas - Ft Worth, we have been trying to get the mayors of our cities to wake up to the fact that we are losing millions in revenue to SA simply because they were so creative with their vision early-on and have turned it into what it is today. We have nothing but a big ball in the sky and a stockyard. What your mayor is trying to do is briliant. It would turn Fresno, already the fastest growing metropolitan area in CA, into a super tourist area. And you are wrong about one thing... locals do go to the Riverwalk. There are numerous festivals all year round as they have a climate similar to, but not near as nice as, Fresno. I know. I go all the time and every time I go we head downtown with many of our local friends who live in SA. They never seem to tire of it. Simply put, the riverwalk is the biggest draw in Texas, period. Just build it and they will come...

Yeah I did that on a bicycle, particularly with pickup trucks. All of the canals I played it as a child have already been paved over.

skitching is when you hang onto the back of a car, truck, or bus and get pulled like a water skier on a snow/ice covered road. (In traffic.)

Sliding on the grass on carboard? probably is not dangerous.
The Ag Waste, to be honest, depending on the degree of fibres or dust involved, -but still that's not a dangerous substance.
-Asbestos was later found to be extremely hazardous, (they just didn't know at the time that it was... initially it was thought to be 'wunderstuff.'

Again, I think it would be excellent if there was some sort of waterpark or public body of water designed for recreation and safe swimming, --that would be extremely cool. (It takes specific design -and credible staff/trained professionals to run the thing, -but it would be great.)

The whole thing about swimming in a canal, (be it high-flow release, or simply during near slack-water,) Is something that I think people really need to look at.

You speak of it being 'illegal then too,' -but your parents made sure you had good training...

Now seriously, think about that.
-First off it clearly sets the premise '...Yeah, it's the law BUT, if you're better trained the laws don't really matter.' (NOT)
-Yeah, it's illegal and therefore you shouldn't do it.
-(It's like saying '...well, I'm a professional racecar driver, so I can bury the needle on my street car driving down Blackstone because I've had the training.
-No...
-First off, the training you've had (still,) does not provide the safe environment that is required, it still puts others at risk, what you are driving is not designed to to that fast, (either,) --It's simply somebody who has a little more knowledge and experience -who now thinks the rules don't apply to them anymore... (That's it.)

Second?
Why is it illegal?
It's illegal because it's extremely dangerous and quite likely that you will get your silly ass killed. (They probably have laws against riding a motorized skateboard down the freeway doing 70mph as well... It's not because they want to spoil the fun, it's because people sometimes either don't think everything out clearly, -or are so wrapped up in doing something that they become idiots to the rest of the possibilities. (..yah, Earl, you can do 70 on that thing, but do you really want or need to?)

Ono, at least you are admitting to 'we'd use a waterpark if we had it, but we didn't have it.'
-That's some sort of hope...
I mean, if one was built, than yes, maybe others would be like, '...wow, cool, now we can go swimming or float along on tubes, it's safe, we don't have to risk drowning in the undertow and boils of the sluices, it's a win-win deal... cool, I'm in...'
THAT I like.

What's driving me nuts on this issue, (and yeah, I wrote about it on MindHub a while back too,)
Were the answers given as to why the canals (in the high-population areas,) should not have fences around them, or (to be comepletely safe,) buried altogether.

The answers that people gave all fit into the following catagory:
-Folks didn't want it because it would spoil their view and place to walk (to have to look at a fence.)
-It was not their problem to have to look after somebody else, or somebody elses kid, (that it was the parents and the kid who chose to jeopardize themself, and they needed to learn to accept the responsibility,)
-And then (literally,) story after story of how people always played in the ditchbanks, what fun is was, how they rode horses down there, swam, (etc. etc.) and how they don't want to deprive their kids of the same fun.
--The real kicker also were the accusations that I was more in favor of fencing something off, rather than educating people to stay away from the canals...

At the core of all of those answers?
The complete absence of anyone saying 'gee, you know you're right, this is a dangerous situation, we don't want anymore people killed, we just lost another kid, something needs to be done.'
--Instead it's a steady flow of (personal,) reasons why it's not a public concern, and why (personal,) memories and good times (nostalgia,) overrule common sense.

I feel very strongly that if this was a high profile drowning, (say, a rich white kid from a well to do family, a child of a community pillar or celeb. of some sort? -There would have been an outcry.

Most recently (unless there has been another one since the little girl who just drowned,) this was a person of color who drowned 'downtown.'
--And the most powerful people of Fresno are oblivious to downtown, it's becoming glaring that people of different social, ethnic, and financial spheres in the area are NOT seen as equally valued, And the main thing that people are taught to think about in this area,
-are themselves, and if it's not a problem for them, it's not a problem.

So, yeah, did I just play the 'race card,' on this?
It certainly is something to consider... and looking at it objectively?
Yeah, me a big white guy from the East Coast just played the race card and feels that if someone 'viewed as more important,' had drowned, -the responses would be profoundly different.

(Although, I don't know... I had someone once explain that the reason for the multi-million dollar underpass (beneath the train tracks at City College,) was
'..because two kids were to stupid to know that you don't cross over train tracks in front of a train, they got themselves run over, and next thing you know, we have this expensive ditch in the ground because of their stupidity...'
--This individual, was not in my estimation someone who looked upon others as being of value to begin with, and saw those who do dumb things as being 'worthy of their stupid choices.' Not much of the milk of human kindness to be found there.)

So yeah, of course, the answers and stances are mostly going to be:
'...Well, I played in them as a kid, and so did my friends, and we're still here, so it's not such a big deal...'

There are some great aspects to the culture and mindset of this area.
This particular passion for self-centeredness is not one of them.

Maybe a good idea would be:
-Fine, build some sort of save water park downtown,
-and then bury the most dangerous canal sections, and seriously fence the (slightly less, though that's a falacy) ones as a tradeoff.

You exchange drownings for safety.
(Will others complain about it? Of course they will. So what.)

Kids want to play outside. There were no parks in central Fresno, so we played in the ditch. This is the same reason eastern kids play in the streets.
If there was a better place to play we would've been there. Since there wasn't we played with what we had.

By the way playing in the canals was illegal then too. But my parents made sure I had lots of swimming lessons.

"Skitching"!! Is that what that's called? wow I did that at the Memorial Auditorium on the grass on the N street side Also I slid down a pile of old ag waste (almond shell?? or ??) at farm south of here.

When my mom was younger, she and her brothers and sisters used to take pieces of cardboard and slide down these huge hills next to their house.
-The hills were made of asbestos piles. (They used to just blow the stuff out into the street.)

Back east? They have this think called 'skitching.' Skitching is where, after a heavy snowfall,(or an icestorm,) you run up to a car at a stoplight, and as it goes (busses also work for this,) you hang onto the back bumper and get towed along on the street with your shoes acting sort of as short skis.

Oh yeah, --and in a lot of cities kids still hang onto the back of busses and ride on the bumper, --or ride on the tops of subway cars.

My friend Blake wrote this comment in my blog about how 'nostalgia,' is not what I'm seeing when the issue of 'ditchbanks,' comes up.
--and then I read such beauts as '...in Jr. HighSchool we used to surf against the heavy flow of a canal by using a rope, a water ski, or an inner tube...'

Now, Nobody in their right mind is going to read the situation of my mom and her brothers and sisters sliding down the asbestos hills in South Bound Brook NJ, and not be freaked out... (Manville, the next town over, as well as several worksites had to have the first four feet scraped off, and buried to just make it habitalble.)
--but that was the 40's and 50's and they didn't know better.

-The skitching and bus and subway surfing?
I suppose somebody could complain about how that's now illegal and depriving others of 'fun,' and 'making new memories,' too.

I just don't think people get it.
I really don't.

I was told that a group of highschool or college kids had a couple of them die not too long ago doing just that method of 'surfing,' in the canal that was mentioned, not too many years ago.

Look, I don't want to ruin anybody's golden memories, (and I did crazy and stupid and dangerous stuff when I was younger too,) but sometimes people got hurt, sometimes paralyzed, and sometimes killed.
We dodged a bullet, others did not, and still don't --yet we think it's great to play with guns on this issue.

If some sort of public wading pool or safe kind of rafting area could be constructed, great...
make it some sort of waterpark with guards on it... THAT would be cool.

But folks are talking about exceedingly dangerous behavior in very dangerous bodies of water, ---that they were never supposed to be near to begin with, and it's like a freakin' cross between Mark Twain and Disney...

The temps are going back into the hundreds again.

Not long from now, somebody is going to get too hot, go in a canal, and drown, (or they'll fall in accidentally and drown.)
--And the comments will be:
'...darn shame, somebody should have taken better care of their kid...'
followed with:
'...yeah, I remember playing at and in the canal...'
(probably in the same breath.)

I could live here for a hundred years,(which I will not,)
I've never witnessed such a lax attitude towards public safety, and such a disregard for present and future danger, followed by '...we did it and didn't die, why deprive others??'

Absolutely Confounding.

I first became enamoured of ditches at the age of six or seven in Bakerfield Ca. Catching pollywogs and digging forts were the main past times. We moved to Fresno and I went to Manchester Elementary which had the coolest ditch behind the school. I brought home ditch water and looked at it with my friends under my moms' microscope and watched all of the micro-organisms swim around.
In Junior High, we skied against a heavy release using a rope and an innertube or a waterski just west of Millbrook south of McKinley and, when it calmed down, floated on inner tubes from the Mayfair district to Manchester.

Can we get this experience to our kids with a downtown river surrounded by high class retail? If possible it could be a ton of fun. Ditchbank Okietown as a tourist attraction.
Frankly almost anything can work if you have a large enough residential population. We need to make it possible for young people of child bearing age to buy into the downtown and move there. Business follows the population.

How much would Reza have made if he had built 3 or 4 floors instead of 2? How long would it have taken to sell out?

look for the Circus Bogus video clips I'm going to upload online... since i final got the VHS tapes over to DVD.

they were a great band!

Craig
Fresno: Garden City under the Sierra Nevadas

I love San Antonio's River Walk, however, isn't an overly popular destination for the locals...it's filled with lots of tourists remembering the Alamo...
we don't have an Alamo.

Well there you go. I'd prefer a good old fashioned ditch, though. Like the one that I by, to get to Kratt school. I was told soooo many times to stay out of the ditch. On my first day of kindergarten, my mother spied on me, and you guessed it, I was in the ditch catching pollywogs! She chilled and I played in the ditch from then on.

Craig
Fresno: Garden City under the Sierra Nevadas

Craig, I'm not sold on the downtown river idea BUT, you always talk about authentic and we wouldn't be living here if it wasn't for the canal system, so a canal running through downtown would actually be 'authentic'.
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http://www.dorktown.net

You make some really good points. But, San Antonio's river is actually real. I have seen it. It is quite an amazing piece of their revitalization success. They were going to close it and leave it underground, until Mayor Cisneros took charge and turned it into an asset again.

I would argue for authentic ways to revitalize. Things that represent who we are, where we've come from, the best of our creativity in arts, music, food.

Craig
Fresno: Garden City under the Sierra Nevadas

RE: "Your newest project to lunge at is a river. I defy you to show us one fake river that has revitalized a downtown in the U.S. I can show you hundreds, if not thousands that have revitalized without a fake river. Yet you want to spend $1.1 million for an Environmental Impact Report?"

I know of one city that did do this and it created a wonderful downtown exp. San Antonio, TX. If you don't believe me, visit there. They call it the "River Walk". The river itself would not bring people or business to down town Fresno, but it would provide the idea to developers for a fresh start. Unless developers are willing to spend the money and resources down town, then nothing will happen. We need Entertainment/Unique attractions, Food, Jobs, and living.

Did someone get the impression 'los was going to do something? Frankly, I've been expecting more of the same. To be fair, it's not all his fault. It's not like Fresno is a bastion of active citizenry. He's working just hard enough to keep from getting fired, as is most everyone else.

You're correct. I came out of a very liberal progressive church environment and they didn't like drinking, gambling, wild partying and everything else that usually comes with an entertainment area.

Think Las Vegas as the ultimate places for such activities. We would never be able rise to their level (Fall to their Level?)

Useless overcatagorization of Conservative Christians aside?

-I believe the mayor has an acting studio in the N.E. of Fresno.
(So, he is interested in developing the acting arts, just, you know, up where it's... it's...
-well, it's the sort of area where Woodward Park Shakespeare Fest is held...

unlike that other park (which already HAS a water attraction...)

You would think a professional entertainer (he is an actor after all) would be interested in building an entertainment district (complete with an Alan Autry Theatre).
But he is a conservative Christian and there is all of that booze and sin associated with entertainment.

I just want customers for downtown music venues who can walk home instead of drive or get one of many Hotel rooms.

All talk no action

you are right on about Carlos 'Alan Autry' Brown, doing very little for downtown, Carlos is only good at pissing Tax money away.