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| You guys like pizza. |
Thanks for reading NA Confidential, where we enjoy burrowing beneath the boilerplate headlines to offer unique local perspectives. These June numbers testify to a keen interest in New Albany stories, perhaps because they’re being chronically under-served elsewhere.
The list begins with five “honorable mention” posts, before concluding with the Top Ten, escalating to No. 1. Stats are derived from Google’s internal numbers listings.
JUNE’S FIVE HONORABLE MENTION
401
From the Indiana Chamber of Commerce through Bob Hall and Jeff Gahan, “The Problem With Indiana Is Indianans.”
If you see Wendy Dant Chesser at an oligarch’s flesh-presser … it may be wise not to mention your choice of reading material.
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403
Covering and uncovering trip hazards at Elm and 10th without bothering to fix the problem? Why, that’s #gahansafe!
This week on Thursday prior to the onset of rain, I was walking and noticed that after two weeks, the pylons still hadn’t been moved back to their positions guarding trip hazards that the city refuses to mitigate over a period of years, and so I replaced them. To whom should I send my civic mindedness invoice? I’m guessing the addressee isn’t Warren Nash, who no doubt will yawn and return to the task of re-electing a mayor with no aptitude for detail amid grandiose TIF-laden boondoggles.
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407
30 years ago today … experiencing Sopron, Hungary.
Bizarrely, after the fall of Communism the city of Sopron became a center of Hungarian dental tourism, with one of the highest per capita concentration of dentists in the world. As example, in the early 2000s a crown in Sopron cost 25% that of neighboring Austria, leaving more discretionary income for visiting patients to indulge with food and drink.
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412
Putsch: The agenda of Gahan’s handpicked public housing flunkies remains, “Do as we say, not as we do.”
Welcome to another installment of “Clear Out the Poor People to Make Way for Luxury,” in which beguiling sycophant Irving Joshua somehow mentions the words “conflict of interest” without a laugh track. But as Mayor Jeff Gahan once said, “Nobody reads the paper.”
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416
Scraping rock bottom: Jeff Gahan brings his cult of personality to Kroger shopping carts. But who paid for these political ads?
In other words, Mayor Gahan encourages you to shop at just one supermarket chain to the exclusion of others — unless the city is paying for his re-election ad placements at Wally World, too.
What’t next, Big Lots?
JUNE’S TOP TEN
419
Grid Control, Vol. 3: TARC’s taking your curbside church parking, says City Hall.
The question: “Why are the curbs in front of the churches painted yellow?”
This answer: Blame it on the buses, not the denomination.
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430
Grid Control, Vol. 7: What will the Board of Works do to rectify HWC’s striping errors on the north side of Spring Street, apart from microwaving another round of sausage biscuits?
It still blows me away that the single largest public works project in and around downtown New Albany in decades is happening in front of our house as I type and I (and everyone else) has to wait until they literally paint the lines on the street to know what it’s going to be. Everyone in city government involved in the plan – administration, council, board of public works, planning department, engineering – should be ashamed of themselves …
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551
Grid Control, Vol. 1: You people drive so freaking horribly that someone’s going to die at Spring and 10th.
Yesterday I watched the driver of a semi rig roar through the bend at a guesstimated speed of 40 mph. He almost brushed the curb. Meanwhile, the police tell me they never ticket truck drivers — like this rig parked on the sidewalk by Elm Street.
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719
All available info points to a Hitching Post Tavern renovation after the fire, so all the best to them.
This is good news, because advocating for the future of independent local businesses means rooting for all of them, not just the ones on your personal rotation of patronage.
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807
“10 Steps to Fix a City,” including axing anyone on staff who believes the fixes are unworkable.
Imagine you attend a meeting of City Council, the Redevelopment Commission or the Board of Public Works and Safety, and as you’re sitting there, expecting the same ol’ same ol’, an elected representative or appointed official begins explaining what he or she read at Strong Towns.
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948
A tale of two riverfront murals, and more. Or less.
The graffiti wall actually encourages the viewer to think about artistic expression, while the other one is a vehicle (pun intended) for the “unofficial” civic anchor seal, which nonetheless now appears on every street sign and Gahan for Life mailer, and was shoved down a city’s collective throat by barely literate time servers who believe dogs playing poker constitute the acme of artistic expression.
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1,025
Grid Control, Vol. 5: Egg on HWC Engineering’s well-compensated face as it botches Spring Street’s westbound bike buffer cross hatching.
The cross hatching is “aimed” the wrong way on the north side of Spring. The lines should be giving at least the subliminal signal that you should keep your west-moving car to the left of the buffer, but as painted, they imply that you should veer right. Not only that, but as we observed previously, the parking spaces on the north side of Spring are consistently 6 to 8 inches less deep from curb to line, enhancing the prospect of cyclists being “doored.”
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1,189
Something’s happening at 129 W. Market, where Wolf Supermarket used to be, and we know one of the principals.
Recently there have been signs of construction activity at 129 W. Market Street, which old-timers know as the former Wolf Supermarket (closed circa 1993; Gary Wolf died in 2011). I checked on Elevate, and the building’s owner is Cielito Lindo Properties LLC.
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1,213
The pace of buildout has increased at Hull & Highwater, and soon it will be July.
For those just tuning in (where have you been, anyway?), here’s a glimpse of the future at 324 E. Main, formerly WE Studio, according to Hull & Highwater’s page at Fb.
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1,405
Here’s an update on District 22 Pizzeria, opening any day now in downtown New Albany.
I ran into Matt McMahan yesterday at the post office, and later he sent these photos of District 22 Pizzeria, his new project, located next to Big Four Burgers + Beer NA.
