This post appeared in a previous blog and is here for posterity’s sake.

The boat.HSE – a model.
After five or so years, one should really get over loss, but sometimes the first cut is the deepest; I am talking, of course, of the first project I had ever secured and then lost due to a variety of reasons. The long process of wooing a client and then securing the project for the University of Cincinnati’s Women Rowing Team, was very much like a dance. Then growing the project from a simple “pole barn” to a full design project, with site selection, master planning, and then design was an education itself; learning how to survive while the university bureaucracy ground down, securing payment for two poor architecture students, was a completely different education.
So it comes great sadness that my baby, which I still have feelings of ownership, is now at the center of Title IX legal proceedings. Members of the women’s rowing team are accusing the university of not equally supporting women’s athletics. I wish I could be surprised it would come to this, but the bureaucracy at a major university is amazingly difficult to deal with. On the mater of equality, I have no way to judge, being away from the project nigh on five years.
Even so, the university was recently trumpeting a new boathouse which was given $1 million seed money for my – and my fellow designer’s – boathouse design.
Someday (and probably soon) I will have to sit down and write all of this out, it would be an excellent case study for beginning designers and business people.
Later
Here’ a Cincinnati Enquirer about the suit:

Monday, the team filed suit against the university, saying UC has spent millions on men’s sports while not providing the women’s rowing team so much as a boathouse. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court, alleges that UC is in violation of Title IX laws, which prohibit gender discrimination in educational programs that receive federal assistance.
…
A bit of history: Originally, the university had plans to build a $3 million boathouse in Wilder, Ky., on the banks of the Licking River. Construction was slated to begin in February 2004 and end eight months later. A donor pledged $1 million to the project. But the boathouse ran into snags for both design and financial reasons, UC spokesman Greg Hand said. Replacement sites or designs have not materialized.

Even later…
Well, who though the News Record was good for nothing::

Perhaps the largest issue in the lawsuit is a proposed boathouse in Wilder, Ky., which was never built.
In December 2000, UC Board of Trustee member Candace Kendle gave $1,032,281, the largest single amount donated, to the construction of the new boathouse UC promised to build, according documents obtained by the The News Record.

As they say in DC, you are not off the track.

This post appeared in a previous blog and is here for posterity’s sake.

Ghost Bike 2, originally uploaded by trevorlittle.com
This summer has been a particularly rough time for New York City commuters who choose to ride their bike to work, with a record number of commuters dying due to careless drivers.
In memorial to those who have died an art group, Visual Resistance, has started the Ghost Bike project, taking old bicycles and painting them all white and affixing a plaque in memorial to the fallen.
I’ve seen them pop up more and more across Brooklyn and Manhattan, and they are quite a striking memorial and agit-prop. And perusing Flickr, it seems like this project is world-wide.
See more photos on Flickr and other projects by Visual Resistance.

This post appeared in a previous blog and is here for posterity’s sake.

Macy’s Day Parade Balloons, originally uploaded by plemeljr
We went to check out the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons being blown up last night. And was pleasantly surprised that the crowds were magnitudes less than the last time I saw the balloons, two years ago.
Check out some photos from last night and all of my Thanksgiving Day, 2005 photos.
Happy Thanksgiving!

This post appeared in a previous blog and is here for posterity’s sake.

If anyone wants to see the world through the eyes of a retailer or realtor, this article about Brooklyn Real Estate is an interesting insight into the world where design – and people – are second (and third) thoughts.
Take this paragraph for example – one of the more asinine observations about Brooklyn:

Yet for such a large consumer market, Brooklyn remains under-retailed. If Brooklyn were a city unto itself, it would be the fourth largest in America. The borough has more people than Houston, yet few big shopping centers — including Forest City’s Atlantic Terminal, Related Cos.’ Gateway Center, Fulton Mall and Vornado Realty Trust’s Kings Plaza. According to Cushman & Wakefield, the average amount of retail space per person in Brooklyn is about 6 square feet, compared with 20 square feet nationwide.

Luckily, one paragraph later, someone intelligent speaks up:

“The small stores are usually where the demand is in the city of New York,” says Havens. “For every Whole Foods store, there are usually about 10,000 bodegas.” Shopping streets in hip neighborhoods like Williamsburg are filled with music stores, coffee shops, restaurants and Internet cafes. National retailers such as Subway and Verizon are also present. Typical store size is usually around 5,000 to 10,000 square feet.

You know, trying to compare Brooklyn and the greater New York City area to any other place in the states is just an idiotic thing to do. The combination of geography, culture, urban life, and je ne sai quois of New York City makes it simply unique. So complaining about a lack of lifeless suburban big-box retail in Brooklyn is just plain dumb. And, I for one, gladly make the bargain of having to shop at multiple smaller stores instead of one large mega-store because the quality of life here is vastly better due to the lack of all things which make big box retail viable.