Revolving Radio

Over two years ago NPH lamented the death of a quality radio station where he lives. 97.3 The Planet had its format switched, due to low ratings, from an indie rock type to an all-out rocker type, even though they left The Planet up online. They changed the stations name from "The Planet" to "Max FM" and took the tagline, "Everything That Rocks."

More like sucks rocks.

Well, now its changing again. Parent company Union Broadcasting is switching it to an FM sports talk station, enlisting ESPN Radio as its purveyor. This will make the third sports station that Union owns in the Kansas City market, as they also run Hot Talk 1510 (another ESPN affiliate) and 810 WHB on the am dial, a station that has a great local following and has even started its own restaurant.

NPH likes this. Union is a locally owned media company that has been very successful, and if their fm station isn't going to work as a music station, then we'd rather it broadcast something that it knows how to do well.

Interestingly, the station's Wikipedia entry already has this as written history, even though it just happened two days ago. I wonder if a Union Broadcasting employee wrote that . . .

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Another NPH First

This spring NPH will vote in his first mayoral election. Ever. We've never cast a ballot for mayor in any of the cities we've lived in, simply because we've never actually lived someplace when that place was electing a mayor. NPH will keep his readers thoroughly apprised of the campaign events, signs, phone calls, and fliers as we encounter them.

Walking down Main street in midtown this morning, we walked past Joe Joe's Italian Eatery, where a huddled group of people were gathered, and where a KCTV 5 news crew was standing around outside. As we walked past the building, we looked back over our shoulder to see a massive sign reading, "Do you shop at Costco? Thank Jim Glover. Glover for Mayor." So there you go. Kansas City Councilman Jim Glover is running for Mayor, and he's launching his campaign on the compelling premise that the he's the man who brought us Costco. What NPH had stumbled upon was the ribbon cutting ceremony for his new campaign headquarters.

Pardon NPH for not being riveted.

There's a Home Depot on the same lot as the Costco. Is Glover not taking credit for it? Surely the urban retail complex that Glover advocated and helped to realize has helped the city (it's on a plot that NPH used to walk past all the time back in the day, when it was just an abandoned lot). But putting the retail chain Costco in your campaign slogo? That's just lame. And the picture on his website looks like an ad for the store, not a picture of a compelling candidate.

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Good Stuff, I Mean Good Local Stuff

While NPH's wife is out the country, some good friends are keeping him company and allowing him to spend exorbitant amounts of time on their couch, eating their food, watching their bigscreen, and playing with their baby.

On Tuesday night, as dinner cooked, we took a jaunt to the local hardware store to copy some keys. We couldn't resist the temptation to duck inside the bookstore next to the hardware store, one that we'd both driven past several times but never, as yet, patronized. Why'd we wait so long?

At the Half Price book store in Westport NPH picked up a cheap used copy of a cd that another local blogger had recommended and a $10 Random House edition of W.H. Auden's Longer Poems (including "For The Time Being"). But the real event was finding a copy of Douglas Rushkoff's Coercion and, well, coercing our friend to buy it. We were looking for Get Back in The Box, but couldn't find it, so NPH was tickled to find Coercion. It's the first Rushkoff book we ever read, and it remains required media literacy reading to his mind.

That a copy of it is now in the hands of our brilliant friend can only mean good things for the world.

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Light Rail

In November NPH punched "yes" on his ballot when asked if his city ought to build a massive light rail line. We had been asked this question in this city at least twice before and answered the same both times: yes. But the "no's" always seem to outnumber the "yes's" where we live, and so the question kept having to be asked.

This time it was asked like this:

SHALL THE FOLLOWING BE APPROVED?

In order to provide for the people of Kansas City a pioneering urban rail passenger system, constituting the foundation of a future regional transit system, offering not only increased energy-efficiency, comfort, mobility, transportation savings, and convenience, but also a greener, cleaner, safer environment, a stronger economy, and a means to help America reduce its dependence on imported oil; shall the City of Kansas City, Missouri extend the current three-eighths (3/8) cent transportation sales tax, due to expire on March 31, 2009, for 25 years, beginning April 1, 2009 and ending March 31, 2034, with said tax to be used solely to fund the construction, operation, maintenance, and beautification of the following transportation improvements under the auspices of the Kansas City, Missouri City Council:

This time, to everyone's surprise, the "yes's" carried the day. An unusually large light rail starter line was approved by the citizenry, with an assumption of federal matching funds that is questionable at best and a city administration positively annoyed by the occurance. Right away there was talk that the city would have to overrule the voter's choice because the plan is unrealistic (the city has since backed away from that talk).

Well, things are going to start moving on this thing, and NPH is tickled. There's something in this blogger's soul that delights in being a part of something as dreamy and in-the-clouds as this, if only for the reason that the prevailing pragmatism of our age has bred a certain skepticism and sluggishness that we feel compelled to avoid. We understand the very real possibility that this thing never gets off the ground, or that it gets off the ground and then comes to a screeching halt. But for now, we're glowing in the fact that the yes's finally beat the no's, and we're reading this light rail blog regularly to keep up with the train.

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This Thing Could Blow Up in Our Face

NPH lives in a Heartland urban center that has been flailing for years. Not only have the city's residence had to watch downtown languish in irrelevance while our neighbors to the east and west enjoy "revitalization" of their downtowns, but there has been little hope for improvement throughout. Major proposals were carried by crackpots who voters simply couldn't get with, and those proposals that actually did get planned often ended up dying on the vine.

But today downtown is buzzing with construction. H&R Block and the KC Star have built new complexes, a new arena is being constructed with hopes for an NBA or NHL tenant (the WNBA is much more likely), and the KC Power and Light District, a massive retail complex that hopes to draw shoppers from all over the region, is also underway. Add to that the endless rows of "urban lofts" and condominiums that are popping up everywhere, and you've got a certified boom.

But NPH is a little worried. First, any downtown reivatilization carries with it a process of gentrification, as cool middle class white people move to be closer to the cool bars, thereby displacing many of the poor, non-white people who live there already. Obviously it's much more complicated than that, and it is precisely our awareness of the complication that makes us nervous. We're afraid, ultimately, that revitalization happens along fairly predictable lines of racially homogenous, college-educated folks who can afford the new rents and nightly bar tabs.

But also there is the concern about this particular city and the long record of failures it boasts. That record is highlighted in a Kansas City Business Journal article this week that points out that the KC Power & Light District is projecting a very slim margin for error. NPH will let readers take in the article for themselves and voice only this concern. If we've learned anything living in this city, it's that Murphy's Law has legal effect here, so that anything possible that could go wrong will. Especially when it comes to major planned projects.

Five years from now the "revitalization" that the city is currently enjoying could turn out to be a trainwreck of wealthy developers and hubristic city leaders. Or it could be a beacon of creativity and commerce to make the region gawk.

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Three Cheers for Clear Thinking

NPH is relieved at the sanity that is surfacing now that the dust has started to settled from our home town team's trade over the weekend, in which we acquired the guy there on the left and got rid of a taco-snarfing pitcher.

For example, Clark Fosler at the Royals Authority blog says this:

My take, is simply that this was another shot across the bow of the entire organization. Just a year ago, former GM Allard Baird pretty much labeled relievers Mike MacDougal, Burgos and Sisco as untouchable and building block for the future. Today, all three are gone. The message: potential and ‘plus projections’ are great, but you better be able to perform and you better have a mentality focused squarely on winning. Oh, and by the way, you are just relievers.

And a reader calling him/herself "Howserfan" at Royals Review points out that

This move shows the importance GMDM [General Manager Dayton Moore] places on two things difficult to measure and therefore often dismissed even by attentive baseball fans.

Namely, defense and attitude.

GMDM's first principle is that you have to get 27 outs a game to win. You can win [or lose] with one run, or three, or ten but you must get 27 outs to win a regulation game.

His second principle seems to be that attitude & character matter. Without it, players are unlikely to help build a winner long-term.

Just about all of the moves so far have been about getting more outs or getting players with better charcter/work habits.

Imagine, a leader in an organization making decisions based on work habits and attitude. When you're a small-market operation, you simply can't afford the weighing down effect of star players' bad attitudes; you have to try to be the little engine that could. And for that to happen, everybody's got to be "all aboard."

Ooh, NPH apologizes for that.

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Early Christmas Gift

NPH had started a ridiculous post last week raving about some of our friends, then scrapped the thing as akward. But when people give you gifts like this, how can you keep from telling the world of their greatness?

Oh, the gift is the mug, not the dashingly good looks (those are God-given).

A big hearty thanks from NPH to his and the wife's killer friends everywhere, especially, today, those responsible for our new, extra large, coffee recepticle.

NPH gets all warm and fuzzy at Christmas.

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Oh The Things We Know

On Saturday, NPH's hometown baseball team traded a big lefty relief pitcher with lots of upside for a backup first baseman. Initial reporting of the trade was befuddled, loudly wondering what Royals GM Dayton Moore could be thinking. The player they got, it was pointed out, could be got anywhere in the minor leagues in any year, while the player they gave only comes along once in a great while, even if his performance last year was a marked regression from the year before. One writer deemed the move "less than impressive" and concluded that Moore was a "Bad GM" who got caught on a "bad day."

Such is still the majority opinion. And yesterday the GM of the team with whom Moore made the deal pooh-pooh's his new pitcher's poor last season and said,"There's a mechanical issue or two that hopefully by now, by going down to winter ball, he's gotten himself straightened out." Got that? It's a mechanical issue.

Only, the mechanics seem to have more to do with tacos than they do fastballs or sliders. It seems that Mr. Upside was cut by his winter ball team for eating tacos on the stadium concourse during the first inning of a game. Here's the text of an email that one baseball writer received a couple of weeks ago"

"Check this out: [the player Moore traded], the 6'9" kid from Eastern Washington who pitches for [NPH's home team], was just cut by Mazatlan. He was pitching well enough, however the team director saw [him]munching on a couple of tacos in the stadium concourse...during the first inning of a game. Apparently, heshowed up in the dugout sometime in the second, but his fate was sealed."

NPH always assumes, when the ink starts to fly about a trade, that the GM knows more than the writers do. And more than simply un-worried about Moore's latest move, we're positively thrilled by it. It may have added five ticks to the win column by itself.

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