The Urban Blog

2007: The Year In Review At The Urban Blog

It's time for The Urban Blog's annual year in review.  2007 was quite a year.  It's all below the cut.

Public Transportation In the Lake Tahoe Region

Julie Brown of the Sierra Sun does a little experiment to find out if she can live her life for a week using exclusively the bus to get around.  She fails, but it makes for an interesting report.

The report spends plenty of time on one of the messages this space has been trying to make for a while - quite possibly the largest impediment to more people riding the bus is the lack of schedule frequency.  Even the people involved in running the transit services in the Tahoe region admit to it as the reason they don't ride.

Reno: The Park Lane Project, Part 2.

Readers might remember that I've tossed out a few ideas for the Park Lane Mall project during my time writing here, including even making graphics for it.

I have made some more graphics based on some new thinking and am sharing them here.  I am hoping to get some input from the community.  We'll hopefully go into it in the comments.

Review: Cobra Skulls "Sitting Army"

I don't count protest pop-punk in my normal category of listening, but of course, I find a lot of rock 'n roll from Reno in my searching for music.  How lucky for me that Cobra Skulls was right there, in my face, and were good pretty much from day 1.

I first found Cobra Skulls through the Humaniterrorist label, one of Reno's crazy counterculture gems to be sure.  This year has been the year it's been easy to get albums full of music from Reno from the Internet with no trouble, and so their latest effort, "Sitting Army" made it on to my hard drive and portable shortly after it was released.  (iTunes has it.)

What a fun ride.  The album begins with a DK-like song admonishing Southern California to stay where it is, then takes a well-heeled romp through topics ranging from religious dominance to abortion to the Ted Haggard scandal, before settling in to some other numbers including one about getting up and taking action, before totally surprising with a very bluegrass number about the guitar-bass.  By now I need to stop and take a breath, because the second half of the album takes us through how not to do a local music scene, societal mind control, how Che Guevara's revolution no longer inspires faith (in Spanish, no less), why graveyards are no good, why you should never use the same song on more than one lover, and finally, why we shouldn't go waging war all around the world in the name of peace.

The way I tend to describe this album, in short, is that it only gets better.  The first song has a great message if you're from Reno and all but really isn't that great in terms of the music.  By the end of the album however (which only takes about 30 minutes to reach), you realize what you just experienced and then you're hooked.

So, in sum, if some left-wing pop-punk music about irritating stuff is just what you need to get you through a dark and potentially tragically dry winter, I recommend getting yourself a copy post-haste.

Reno Council Approves Boulevard South Project

This isn't news per se - the Reno City Council meeting where the South Boulevard Project was approved was a week ago - but not being able to attend in person, I was also unable to comment on the proceedings until I could watch them - and the video came out today.  This is an interesting, multi-faceted issue:  some things to like and some things not to like, and one or two surprises.

Of many projects on the horizon, perhaps none so transformative.

November 28, 2007.  What a day the city council was having that day.  They opened proceedings for the day at 10:00 am, and sometime in the 7 o'clock PM hour arrived at the convention center to take up the matter of Boulevard South, among other things.  The convention center had been booked for that meeting instead of the usual setting of city hall due to the sheer number of citizens expected to attend and speak on the issue.  They had already voted to move 10 million dollars around to get a cover built over two blocks of the ReTRAC trench, stat, in an atmosphere of hope and excitement.  It seemed unlikely, to this outsider, that they would find the same welcome at the convention center that night.