Seattle's Pike Place Market Video

I think I've mentioned before how appalled and disgusted I was a few years back when the Fort Worth Star-Telegram was doing their extreme version of civic boosting by repeating over and over again the bizarre propaganda that a lame little food court type thing in downtown Fort Worth, called the Santa Fe Rail Market, was modeled after Seattle's Pike Place Market and public markets in Europe.

And that the Santa Fe Rail Market was the first public market in Texas.

This was to be the start of my realizing that the Star-Telegram was not a newspaper of the sort I'd been used to reading.

Not only is there a place very much like Pike Place Market nearby, called the Dallas Farmers Market, the failed Santa Fe Rail Market wasn't even the first public market in Fort Worth! An historical marker makes note of that fact at the building's location. The Star-Telegram has since mentioned this, but not their boo-boo, when that former public market was deemed a building of historical significance worth preserving.

I think the Star-Telegram thinks it can get away with some of its more ridiculous hyperbolizing because they figure most of their readers won't know any better. Which perplexed me regarding the Santa Fe Rail Market misrepresentations, because I figured at least a few Fort Worthers must have made it to Seattle and Pike Place at some point in time.

Those of you who were victims of the Santa Fe Rail Market false advertising and wasted gas going there to check it out. Like I did. And if you've not been to Pike Place, watch my video below and you'll get why I found comparing the thing in Fort Worth to an actual tourist attraction to be bad journalism at the very least. Someone should have been fired. I think her last name is Tinsley.

So, when I was up in the Seattle zone last month I wandered around with my video camera in Pike Place on a Thursday afternoon on August 7. When I was making the video I was making sarcastic remarks directed at Fort Worth, well, actually at those who falsely promoted the failed Santa Fe Rail Market. Saying things like "more people are here in Pike Place in 1 minute on one lazy summer day than were in the Santa Fe Rail Market during the entire time it was open." Likely the number was probably closer to half a minute.

I also said things like 'See why I was disgusted to read that that pathetic Fort Worth Rail Market was modeled after this?" And at one point I said something like "Fort Worth, see all these people? This is what a tourist attraction looks like." This was in reference to the Star-Telegram's once more breathless hyping that a sporting goods store, Cabela's, opening in Fort Worth, was going to be the Number One Tourist Attraction in Texas. A short time later another Cabela's opened down by Austin. And a short time after that Fort Worth's ruling junta figured out they'd been snookered again. But, they're back seeing clear once more, with their Trinity River Boondoggle, I mean, Vision.

Anyway, below is a YouTube video of a few minutes at Pike Place Market. I edited out my sarcastic remarks. Some of them were hard to hear due to the noise from so many people. I could have whispered remarks in the Santa Fe Rail Market and my video camera would have picked them up from 50 feet away. It was that dead.

Oh, one more thing, I wouldn't repeat these Star-Telegram embarrassments if they'd just once fess up to being a bit too exuberant with the hyping. They do drop some of the stupid stuff, sometimes, like the Star-Telegram no longer repeats that the Trinity River Boondoggle will make Fort Worth into the Vancouver of the South. Nope, not making that up. That paper can be that ridiculous.

The Sad Desperate Chesapeake Energy Gas Drilling Business

Fort Worth's responsible, high quality newspaper, FW Weekly, has a feature called On Second Thought where a reader can opine about any subject and if it is deemed reader worthy, FW Weekly prints it. This week's On Second Thought was some very good thinking about all the holes being drilled in the ground all over Fort Worth and surrounding towns.

This week's issue also has a very appalling article about the attempt to force creationism to be taught in Texas schools.

Below is this week's On Second Thought...

The Price of Cake
The only good urban gas well is one that doesn’t get drilled.

By GRAYSON HARPER

There’s something a bit sad and desperate about this gas drilling business. With utility bills mounting, the economy shuddering, and college costs rising so high that it seems only rich families can afford them, little wonder that so many in Fort Worth couldn’t wait to sign on the dotted line when the gas companies were waving the money around.

But now the reality is setting in: homes threatened with eminent domain, dangerous high-pressure gas lines about to be laid beneath our feet, thousands of gas wells — roughly seven pad sites per MAPSCO page — planned for our fair city.

A lot of folks who signed have been running to the city council crying, “Shocked, shocked!” as if they couldn’t have imagined beforehand the ruthless nature of the folks to whom they sold out.
I wonder what they were thinking when they embraced the gas companies in the first place. Of course Chesapeake and the others misled everyone. With so much money at stake, it’s hard to imagine them acting like Boy Scouts.

Of course they manipulate the truth. They withhold crucial information, such as how crazy it is to bury high-pressure pipelines carrying odorless wet gas near homes and schools. Even during a prolonged drought, they forget to mention the amount of clean water — millions of gallons — they will destroy. And they certainly don’t talk about the catastrophic explosions from blown high-pressure pipes and animals dropping dead after drinking water poisoned by failed injection wells.

And how about those injection wells? You think the gas boys are going to share with us the number of such wells in Texas where highly toxic production water is pumped deep underground? Of course not. The answer is more than 30,000, the most of any state in the union, but to say that would be to admit that, thanks to them and their cohorts in the oil sector, our fine state is now one big toxic dump. We have one injection well operating right here in the city limits. Chesapeake would like to drill up to 15 more in and around the city. One thing is certain: An awful lot of wastewater is going somewhere — maybe to a neighborhood near you!

Some of the folks who are complaining are hedging their bets. They’re all for getting out the minerals, “Just don’t come in my yard, not on my street, not if it means my house getting eminent-domained.” As an old friend of mine likes to say, “Everyone wants to go to heaven, they just don’t want to die.”

Will the citizen group known as CREDO — Coalition for a Reformed Drilling Ordinance — be able to change anything for the better? I hope so, but it seems to me the fix is in. Everyone is bought already, from the Texas Legislature to the Railroad Commission that oversees the drilling. Everyone on the Fort Worth City Council (with the noteworthy exception of Joel Burns) has taken contributions from the gas companies. Mayor Mike Moncrief gets royalty checks from Chesapeake, XTO, and others while routinely voting for new permits for them to drill. As the mayor himself said in a recent meeting, “Money talks, everything else walks.” He should know.

The record is clear and was well known before the first person signed away minerals — the duplicity of the industry, the catastrophic accidents, the lack of oversight, the brutal impact on public health and the environment, including air, water, plants, and wildlife. The fact is, you can’t get a “reformed drilling ordinance” because there’s no such thing as “reformed” or responsible gas drilling.

The only right thing to do would be to go back to square one: Pray over it. Ask the “Great Spirit,” or whoever’s in charge hereabouts, for forgiveness. Then regroup and start fighting on the basis that it’s simply dead wrong — unsafe, immoral, insane — to be drilling for gas within the city limits, because our immediate environment will likely end up polluted beyond recognition and our groundwater destroyed, all for the enrichment of a few who — after thoroughly trashing the joint — will move on.

Unless we fight the whole thing, those who worry about lowered property values, noise pollution, explosions, fires, and all kinds of health effects might want to move elsewhere.

This may turn out to be one of those cases where you can’t have your cake and eat it, too.

Grayson Harper is a Fort Worth-based writer and artist.

Peggy Noonan, Mike Murphy Mic On Sarah Palin Gaffe

You'd think with the recent Jesse Jackson misstep, when he spoke ill of Barack Obama when he didn't realize he was still being recorded, that those talking head people on news shows would be really careful about what they say anytime they are within listening distance of any microphone.

A few days ago a former advisor to John McCain named Mike Murphy and former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan were on some cable news show being interviewed by an anchor named Chuck Todd.

On the air they were talking about the Sarah Palin pick for VP. Murphy and Noonan were gung-ho about the pick. On the air.

And then when they cut to show a clip a technical boo-boo let their real feelings be known, live, to the listening viewers.

The anchor Todd said, "I also think the Palin pick is insulting to Kay Bailey Hutchison."

Mike Murphy said, "Still McCain can give a version of the Lieberman speech to do himself some good."

To which Peggy Noonan said, "It's over."

The anchor Todd then says, "Yeah, I mean is she really the most qualified woman they could have turned to?"

Noonan then says, "The most qualified? No! I think they went for this, excuse me, political bullshit about narratives."

Anchor Todd then agrees with, "Yeah, they went to a narrative."

Murphy then says, "I totally agree."

To which Peggy Noonan adds, "Every time the Republicans do that, because that's not where they live and it's not what they're good at, they blow it."

Then former McCain advisor Murphy responds with, "You know what's really the worst thing about it? The greatness of McCain is no cynicism, and this is cynical."

To which anchor Todd says, "This is cynical and as you called it, gimmicky."

Then the clip ended and they went back to praising the pick of Sarah Palin.

Hypocritical Karl Rove, Bill O'Reilly and Others....

Seattle Bus Tunnel

In 2009 Seattle will finally have a light rail train that will run from Sea-Tac airport to downtown Seattle. The train will track through the Seattle Bus Tunnel that was built back in the 1990s. It's now being called the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel.

Many visitors to Seattle don't realize a tunnel runs under downtown, at some points, deep under downtown. This would seem to be a tad unsettling in an area known to have earthquakes. Supposedly the bus tunnel is built to withstand an 8.0 quake. I'd rather be on top of the Space Needle for such an event though.

The Seattle Bus Tunnel makes it real easy to get around downtown. There are 5 huge stations, themed to their location, like the International District Station is Chinatown themed. The Pioneer Square station is Old Seattle themed. The University Street Station is sort of High Tech themed. Westlake Station is the biggest. There are entries from the Westlake Station to several department stores, like Nordstrom's flagship store and to Westlake Center, which is one of Seattle's vertical malls and is also the downtown terminus for the Monorail.

It is free to use the bus tunnel to get around downtown Seattle. In the video below, that I took a month ago, on August 7, you'll see how well used the Seattle Bus Tunnel is.

There is no similar transit system in downtown Fort Worth, nor is there a need for one, since there are no department stores, few attractions and few people, like tourists, on the streets with a need to get from one end of downtown to the other. Arlington has no public transit system. Recently Fort Worth's bus system, called The T, began offering Arlington people bus service to Fort Worth from a couple Arlington locations. Few are riding though.

In the past year Seattle has started up a new above ground streetcar line, called South Lake Union Transit. They named it that before they realized the acronym was SLUT. By the time it was realized that a different name might be a good idea it was too late, the locals had taken to calling it the SLUT train. That's a SLUT car you see in the pic.

South Lake Union is a boom zone on the north end of downtown Seattle. Lake Union is a natural lake, it isn't the result of anything like a Lake Union Vision Project. Someday Fort Worth may have a lake at the north end of its downtown, the result of the Trinity River Vision. Somehow I doubt if that lake ever floats a boat it'll end up being a boom zone like South Lake Union. South Lake Union has an actual visionary behind what's going on there in the form of Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen. Unfortunately, Fort Worth's billionaire benefactor is noted primarily for having bad taste in architecture with visions like naming a bunch of parking lots Sundance Square.

Meanwhile, Seattle has an actual public square at the heart of its downtown, thought they don't call it a square, it's called Westlake Center.

You'll see part of Westlake Center, both the 'square' and the vertical mall in the video below. And you'll ride with me through the Seattle Bus Tunnel to the Pioneer Square Station where we'll exit to someone singing about it being a beautiful world in Occidental Park.

Above I made mention of tourists. One thing that struck me this time up in Seattle is the huge increase in tourists from Europe and Asia. You'll see a lot of people from Japan in the bus with me in the video below.

Yikes! Barack Obama Senior Moment

I'm an equal opportunity fairness doctrine gaffe sharer. At least John McCain has that senior citizen excuse going for him. I don't know what Barack Obama's excuse might be.

Yikes! John McCain's Senior Moments

Deadly Home Invasion in Blue Mound

It was strange this morning to see a long article in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram about the killing spree that took place in my old hometown zone a couple days ago. I blogged about that yesterday.

I don't know exactly what made it seem strange. Maybe it was reading place names and locations, with which I was quite familiar, in a paper where I don't expect to read news from what used to be local to me.

I more expect to read stories about horrible crimes that take place in this zone. Like a home invasion that turned deadly in Blue Mound early Wednesday. Blue Mound is a suburb in the northwest part of the D/FW Metroplex. The guy you see in the photo, with his kid, Keith Hoehn, was secure in his home with his, Kellie, when suddenly a 300 pound man with a shotgun and a lesser-sized accomplice burst into their house.

With the shotgun pointed at his wife's face, told not to scream, but she did scream. For her husband. Who came to the rescue. The shotgun was then pointed at Hoehn's face, but the wife grabbed the muzzle and a struggle ensued.

As his wife kept holding the muzzle, Hoehn saw that the gun-holder was pulling the trigger, to no avail. Because the safety was on.

Then Kellie let go of the gun long enough to grab a candle and whacked the fat guy on the head. Then she took off after the accomplice who had a handgun.

At that point their son grabbed his little sister and hid in a closet.

The shotgun got loose, just like in a Western, Hoehn grabbed it. The fight moved outside. Hoehn took the safety off and shot successfully at the accomplice with the handgun, John Garland Pierson, 25 of Haltom City, another D/FW suburb.

Then he fired at the fat guy, who had originally had the shotgun, Dakota Scott Benoit, 2o, from Richland Hills, that's another suburb. After the first shot, the fat guy got up. So, Hoehn fired again. This time killing the home invader.

The surviving bad guy is in critical condition. Police believe the pair had invaded a Fort Worth home on Tuesday.

Their home invasions days are now over. What a strange career choice.

Viruses, Noxious Weeds and Swimming

It's September 4 and things are looking good in Durango World.

The wind has stopped blowing after 2 days of the constant movement of air. The A/C has been turned off for over 24 hours with the windows open. The wind shooed away the vexing pollution that had the skies here a bit murky. This morning the sky is a fine shade of blue.

Overnight the temperature got down to a chilling 65.

So, this morning, at 7am, I thought I'd try and see if it was too cold to swim. It was a bit bracing getting in the water, sort of like a Washington lake in summer. But I quickly got comfy and swam around for a long long time.

I'd not been feeling too well since my return from Washington. Ironically, when I left here for Washington I was miserable too, with a strange sore throat and cough that I blamed on the pollution and the Level Orange Ozone Alerts. I figured it'd quickly clear up once I was breathing the clean Washington air, which ironically was not all that clear. It took about 2 weeks in Washington before the sore throat went away.

Which puts me in mind of viruses. I'm thinking sometimes you can have yourself a virus that's making you miserable or impacting you in a negative way and not even realize that it's a foreign object penetrating your space that's got you feeling yucky.

Or like you don't quite know why your garden isn't quite the lush thing you wish it would be. And then one day you realize it was a noxious weed that you thought was a flower that was making your garden be all sickly.

Anyway, it's a good thing to be back feeling good. I've got a real good anti-virus program running now and some topnotch weed killer. I intend to keep the invading pests at bay. Except I did have a slight sugar ant invasion this morning in the kitchen. Quickly controlled.

Sarah Palin Convention Speech

It is way past my bedtime. But like I said earlier today, as God was my witness, I was determined to remain awake long enough to watch Sarah Palin give her acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention.

I have successfully completed that task.

I am now a Sarah Palin fan.

I'm fickle, very fickle, but unless there is a major screw up I'll likely vote for John and Sarah instead of Barack and Joe. If only Barack had picked someone more interesting than Joe. Like a Dem version of Sarah. If one exists. My little sister was available. But she doesn't have as interesting a family as Sarah. She has poodles instead of kids. And an obsession with overwatering tomatoes.

Several watchable speeches tonight. Mike Huckabee was good. Rudy Gulianni was good. It was all good. Cindy's lime green dress was something I've not seen on a First Lady before.

I'm ready now for a cute Vice-President. But right now it's bedtime. Opinions likely to alter with daylight.