The Mainstream Sports Media has a go at the state of ultimate frisbee. Every ultimate player has questioned the increasingly competitive nature of the game and the feared dilution of the spirit.
Ultimate Frisbee sheds hippie roots, attracts athletes [SI.com]
TPMCafe.com just launched, and it’s going to be huge. Sen. John Edwards is guest-blogging this week, and they have like a billion high-profile bloggers and policy analysts to digest.
TPMCafe.com [TPMCafe]
Fergies are ultraleather and awesome; they are the juggling bags that I want and like Furbies, Robosapiens, and Tickle-me Elmos, they remain elusive. They will be mine.
Fergies Closed Till Aug. 1 [Fergies Props]
Woah I completely missed this [HBO] — The Wire Renewed for Fourth Season. This is undoubtedly the best show on television.
Sarah Close, Kate’s best friend and roommate, just finished study in Zanzibar and is now traveling the African plains. She’ll be working this summer in Kigoma, Tanzania. She has a blog here, and here photos are here. Sarah describes her journey as such: “I’ve made it this far w/ no major mishaps and a significant amount of luck and good accidents.” Rock on, Sarah.
There’s a new article in the Columbia Flier with some more information about General Growth Properties, Inc., the company that now owns Columbia, and their urban development plan. My emotions ran as I read shockingly bad ideas tangle with surprisingly good ones. Good ones first.
Apparently, a relationship with the county, Howard County, is particularly important to any kind of development, whether it be road signs to large leases of land to zoning. Currently, a Howard County Council Democrat, David Rakes, characterizes the relationship this way:
“They showed us they’re more cooperative than Rouse…they’re doing it the right way now.”
Because I can interpret cryptic, nuanced jargin, this statement leads me to believe that GG is being more cooperative that Rouse and that they’re doing the right things to get the county’s approval on things. Further, David Rakes (whom I’ll never criticize because he’s also the Chairman of the County Liquor Board), indicates that he reckons “most of what we saw will be built.”
This story gets interesting when we talk about something tangible, like Merriweather. Here’s some great news:
“Also, Rouse had wanted to sell Merriweather only to a buyer who would promise to downsize and enclose the concert venue, but now General Growth said it’s willing to retain Merriweather and keep it open as an outdoor amphitheater.”
Rouse Co. had always inexplicably pandered to the extremely local base of house-owners who willingly purchased their digs so close to a large concert-venue. GG, probably mostly for the economic value of having big numbers of fans come to see mainstream acts (Santana, Green Day, and Oasis are coming this summer). But it’s good to see corporate interests align with the majority of Columbia-residents who love having a major venue in town. Peculiarly enough, parking and traffic on concert nights are never bad–if you’re a Columbia resident.
What’s basically frustrating about GG and even the three-fifths liberal HCC is the blind acceptance of the spiraling growth of urban Columbia. Here’s what the council thinks the most serious issues are from GG’s plans, via Ken Ulman, my personal County Councilman:
“[the] biggest concerns are parking and traffic, which General Growth officials said they would address at a second public meeting next month.”
The concerns of the Howard County Council, while somewhat aligned with general concerns of residents anywhere on traffic issues, do not represent the pejorative fears of Columbia residents on the overdevelopment of the city center and the destruction of the little green left in Columbia.
More generally, why is continued growth, obviously the purpose of the mall-developer GG’s buyout of Rouse Co., the committed goal of the greater Howard County Council? It seems we’ve all gotten behind the repulsion of condominiums of height 18 stories or higher seem a bit too radical, but the push for Columbia to become a cultural hub, for GG to throw more than 1,000 condos in and around the mall, and inevitably, to develop the 51.7 acres around Merriweather–where are the reigns and which residents are in support? We need stewardship in Columbia, and if not there, then in the County’s planning board. No More Condos!–especially ones by the mall.
Growth tied to market [Columbia Flier]
This is a good bit of reporting by The Baltimore Sun’s staff. Josh Marshall picks the story up.
My neighbour’s team had a remarkable run of a season rife with upsets, and despite losing to Severna Park in the Maryland AAA state-final, at least the family got some sweet press-coverage:
“One Wilde Lake fan, Nancy Burkard, known as ‘Grandma B’, took the blame for the loss. It seems her daughter, Stella Fanzone, whose son, Carmen, played shortstop, prepared the players’ meatball subs before each game this season. Yesterday however, Mrs. Burkard made the subs.”‘I made them different from my daughter and they probably ate too many,’ she joked.”
Carmen Fanzone, Subs, and AAA baseball. [Baltimore Sun]
This weekend was just dandy. We made it to Christchurch and cooked late-night Sour-Cream-Chicken-Noodles, my favorite meal ever to come from a best friend from France, and had a great time catching up with Emma, Grace, and Robin (our Christchurch posse who stuck us up over Mid-Semester Break). We hit up the supposedly ‘scenic‘ drive to Banks Peninsula on saturday, which I drunkenly described later as ‘kinda like a cauliflower stamped into dirt, you know, from above’. Arakoa is where the French settled in NZ, only to give it later to the British, and then only to be embarrassed when a real frenchie comes around and starts speaking french to anyone and everyone. When he didn’t pass off the supposed ‘Chocolate Croissant’ as utter shit, we then decided to beat up crabs, skip stones, and rock juggle for a good part of the afternoon. This was mucho fulfilling.
With good intentions, fire in our hearts, and wits in our brains, we drove upwards to Summit Road and Heritage Park to see the sun dappling like ‘woah’. We drove back to CHCH to fill our bellies with caesar salad and frozen pizzas before a wild night on Chch Proper. The Crusader victory, however, was not really big–the voluminous bar so fascinated with the game practically golf-clapped the killer victory of the City and the Country. We hit the Strip, the main aisle of bars packed with christchurch kids of legal age, with so much force that even the five-dollar bus ride back was eventful.
The early-morning ‘mini’ Christchurch Ultimate Frisbee tournament was so much fun. I represented Dunedin with Nebraska, a newbie to ultimate, and we played just great. Got to play with Kim van Berkel, the NZ ‘Best Male Player’ of 2004 (check out his bids here and here), who was the co-captain of our ‘team b’ team. He’s mightily impressive. Check out this gallery, search hard, and you’ll find a picture of my gut, rear, and a ’sky’ over a Chch woman. The tourney was great: Polly was an awesome captain and handler enough to allow the two Dunedinites to play, I got to guard against wily Sammy’s famous hucks, and play with a great local 16-year old handler named Byron. Froody Times.
The drive back was uneventful besides from the four solid hours that we spent telling stories and insulting jokes. Afterwards, we were very impressed at how the short the trip became.
chch-weekend photo set [flickr]
