I say this alot: You must be present to win.

Even with all of the blogs covering urban things and urban plans and suburban strip malls and things to do and lifestyle centers and blah blah blah. Wait, sorry. Even with all of this coverage of, ahem, schtuff, the best thing you can do to discover what is happening in your downtown and core neighborhoods is get out and enjoy them. Ride your bike. Buy a bike. Walk around.

I did, this morning, and I ate at the newly opened News Cafe. Great food. Cheese omlette for just under $3. I added onions and shrooms. You can get cruddy omlettes in this town and this is not one. They had free coffee today. Yes free. On top of that they had a jazz documentary on the teevee. Great jazz compliments free coffee. I mean come on! I can't find a site for it yet, so go link up in person. News Cafe is right next to the very nice and totally under-reported Poppy Loves Smoke. Which is right next to Ligit recording studio, which is next to the London Bridge Pub. Arguably the longest continually tapped pub downtown. Like Poppy Loves Smoke, News Cafe is a hidden gem.

You can read all day about what crap is moving into what mall, but no one really covers (except the good guys) new cafes in little downtown historic buildings. THis is changing. Like the media landscape, no? BTW, update on the media breakfast will break right after the Times Union profile of Paul and I, for obvious reasons. Do we need more shopping malls? Do we need more trees cut down? Are there any buildings that can be reused? Before your chidren have children that slap up stuccoed gap crap will be bulldozered for the latest in lifestyle. Not downtown (hopefully).


I mean, stand at the corner of Ocean and Adams. You have the Carnegie library, the Haydon Burns Library, Central Fire Station, and the Unite Cigar Building. What a corner! Then (at your own risk) step out to the new "popular" corner of gate and town center street (or whatever its called), if you aren't killed by the traffic or its exhaust. Look at what we've done to all those trees. And why dear mother earth must every condo have dozens of illegal chloroplast signs lined up and down the traffic jam? I don't even think the native american that cried would cry. I think he'd start scalping. I digress. Stay positive. Lets head back downtown.

This building, for instance, was one of the United Cigar Store buildings built in the boom year of 1926. In 2026 we should really have a huge downtown party. Maybe we can have 26 in '26. Try to get 26,000 people living downtown or something.

These shops may go the way of moon colony. But they only stand a chance if you turn off american idol and check them out for yourself. Please discuss.

Reporting from Downtown.

Labels: and if you don't know now you know, downtown DNA