Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Main Street

Main Street will be redone in the next few years. There has been far too little attention and interest in what might be done.

Ideas range from the practical cement and curb to closing down the street to all vehicles except buses, cabs, and emergency vehicles (much like Madison's State St.).

One of the most exciting events downtown happened last fall during the Gallery Walk. The Running of the Goats, the student drinkfest, was called off but the gendarmes didn't get the message. The gendarmes were out in force ($$$) walking in pairs ($$$) and had blockaded ($$$) Main Street from the New Moon Cafe to Church St. Note that groups of students had scheduled bar-hopping events before which coincided with the Gallery Walk and there had been no problems.

The students canceled, the gendarmes spent a lot of taxpayer's $$$ needlessly, but the fun part was the street was blocked off. There was expertly done street theater happening downtown. My companion noted that a fellow on very high stilts and a very elaborate costume was far too good to be an amateur. She said it was as good as Cirque du Soleil. I agreed. The next day's Northwestern proved that right. It was Cirque du Soleil doing an impromptu show for the Gallery Walk.

We don't need all the $$$ gendarmes $$$ downtown, but YES: Close Main Street for the Gallery Walk.

Peace.

1 comment:

Isherwood said...

Hello Gary,
I know you follow Oshkosh media and issues closely, I don't know if you also participate in the Northwestern online forums, so many of those who do use pseudonyms. If you had been in the forums, you may (I suspect not) but you may have been in one of the rooms and perhaps noticed my own name there.

Forum moderator Alex Hummel had some sort of seizure and removed my comment an account without warning. I had talked about roundabout intersections in "his" pothole area. He freaked. I was able to find the entire page in the Google cache and was surprised to see that earlier that morning, before Herr Hummel got out Maxwell's Silver Hammer that News Editor Ann G-K had made a remark to me that was friendly, that was a positive response to what I had said.
Hummel had her remark removed as well.

I find this behavior rather strange and feel it bodes ill for other forum pariticpants, and for Ms. G-K's work place peace as well. In the Rock-paper-scissors contest of the ONW inner sanctum, I suspect Hummel beats Kriz.

An unduly rambling and nonsensical account of this saga is found here

http://isherwoodscamera.blogspot.com
or just backtrack my image/name

Thank you for allowing me to use your space here to share this oddity.