If you hear a siren make sure you and your kids have got your shoes on.

Oh, if I don’t like it I can ‘get out’ ? Fucking brilliant - well if you don’t like me complaining why don’t YOU just get out ? Everyone, who is unhappy about ANYthing can just GIT !! There’ll be no need for any kind of law or government or any state apparatus whatsoever - total anarchy, gangs raiding everything, shooting everyone who opposes them, fighting between themselves until just the most cunning and lucky ones settle into stalemates amidst their piles of fabulous trinkets. Yeh - and at any stage of this- if you don’t like it, you can just get out, and join various other silos of people who have just gotten out of other situations. To be honest, living amongst a load of people who’s whole identity is based around not linking things sounds terrible- I wouldn’t like that at all. So what would I do ? I’d just have to GET OUT again !! Ever onward, permanently unhappy with this or that little niggle - restlessly roaming the plains in fruitless quests for perfection until I withered and died.

Yeh, imagine the carnage if someone who was disturbed and angry was wandering around inside a school, going from room to room without a gun. Oh yeh. There wouldn’t be any.

I can imagine it’s a glimmer of noise and power that kids might feel they’ve got over the adult world of guns, murder and Police against which they are powerless and potential losers in a lottery they decided to play only by going to school as they are compelled. As a parent it’s a constant thought and I don’t honestly know if I am coping with it healthily or just being gradually ground down. One half of the country is actively making it easier for people to get guns and unfortunately a non-significant number of this population are disturbed, vindictive and/or irrational and so every day this group of people manages to murder other people. Without access to firearms this predictably present section of societies usually just manages to hurt themselves or a few others. Not here.

As an agnostic who was very skeptical about churches I really enjoyed attending the Venues - the pastor is a very wise and charming speaker who crafts the sermons perfectly for people who have been to churches in the past but found the dogma completely detached from the way to live a good life; his knowledge of scripture is fantastic- none of the values that I ever heard spoken about were anything other than entirely wholesome, humanist, universal and self-evident. There’s no spooky supernaturalism, just exposition on Biblical passages that demonstrate kindness and fellowship. As a skeptical humanist/agnostic/atheist I found only goodness and good faith and hope in The Venues, all their staff and the wonderfully diverse and friendly congregation. It opened my eyes to what a community-based organization could be, and how any church must be to survive the coming demographic apocalypse. Praise be!

Yes ! I feel I need to wander around when it’s misty wearing yellow tinted glasses and back rooms music in my ears.

Aw nuts : /

Altec on South Campbell opposite Krispy Kreme always seems to be a proper place with knowledgeable people who don’t want to rip you off. My machine wasn’t starting, so I took it in for a diagnosis- in 5 minutes the guy had got it to boot up, no charge. I immediately bought a keyboard. Would recommend them before Best Buy.

There’s also a place just round the corner on Republic Road opposite Chase between Republic road and James River, can’t recall the name, but it seemed quite well stocked and the guy - Steve Yates, was very friendly and seemed very professional.

Bring back street cars, extend the zone of people-friendly streets and neighborhoods indefinitely. It generates more revenue and people are happier. Go to Amsterdam and marvel at what it’s like to be a generation in the future.

Expect to see lots of ad hoc reviews for the underpasses etc. for $750 per light I was disappointed- no facilities, hassled by the cops. Would not recommend. 1 *

Kev is a fantastic guy - glad he got some props here :)

This happened yet again in our town because the people who design the infrastructure don’t give a flying fuck about anything other than the utmost convenience for people in cars and trucks. Every installation for people walking from one part of town to another is an after-thought. The number of times I’ve crossed there with my kid, on foot, inches from idiots hammering past - no protection from even a low speed incident. I saw this intersection earlier and saw pink lines and numbers had been sprayed on the roadway, doubtless indicating the long arc through which this poor guy flew. People don’t expect people to be walking near where they’re mindlessly charging along, glued to the phone or racing some other gargantuan compensatory super duty. Lighting is terrible - by Cherokee there is a pedestrian crossing which is all but invisible when it’s dark. At 530. Our city continues to sprawl in unwalkable enclaves, even if there is anything within walking distance you take your life in your hands unless you strap into your tank and burn a few pints of gasoline just to get a snickers and a Pepsi. It would be tempting, for rhetorical purposes to end this with ‘how many more people must die before we do something ?’ But that never works, with any lethal problem in this country, ever. People make money, other people die. Rinse and repeat.

You sound exactly like everyone else you hope you look like, Chad.

Because they're special flowers who won't or can't accept that there is risk involved in renting property to people. People who are entirely subject to the winds and whims of markets and recessions and downturns and crappy bosses and next to no security of employment or any assurances or mechanisms of keeping your head above water from one week to the next.
The landlords and hedge funders know how bleak and stacked against people it is out there, and they want to buffer themselves from it by gouging those people from the other side. Digging another tranche in the race to the bottom. More money for less security, from a shrinking pool of value and security. Grab, grab, grab, hand over fist, they'll take everything in sight, triple deposits, then sue to not repair damage that was there before you moved in. Rent up, and up, and up, service and quality, down, guarantees of safety and habitability, out the window, your dad's car towed away while he helps you move in. The whole thing is a shameful, rapacious scam, overseen by soulless deadeyed swines munching on the still-living corpses of the next round of people who've done nothing other than need a place to sleep or run from if there's a storm. Rot in hell, the whole lot of you, you'll have nothing soon enough and I'll laugh to see you picking around in the dumpster of the places you used to 'work at'.

Hogscald is a beautiful little spot!