100 years ago, Salemites had a chance to see proto-drag performer Julian Eltinge live on stage at The Grand.
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| Julian Eltinge, publicity still (New York Public Library) |
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| September 30th, 1923 |
Previously there had been some discussion in the papers of him and his performances, but not a great deal of it. The first may have been this piece from New York in 1914.
Earlier this month at a Cherriots Board meeting, they saw some drawings for the future South Salem Transit Center. Early workshopping had settled on a concept they called the "diamond" plan.
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| Overall site plan concept (click to enlarge) |
The driveway entries are off of Wiltsey road, and the small office building is in the northwest corner of diamond.
It's supposed to be a "mobility hub." What about bikes?
The bike parking appears to be clustered at the office building, 8 racks under an awning and 12 racks exposed. There might be some bike lockers there also.
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| Detail on deployment of bike racks (red and yellow notes added) |
And how do you get to them?
Back in 2014 when the movie "Aftermass" was playing one night here, a reader suggested Critical Mass had been active in Salem for a while in 1993-94.
With fliers circulating for what might be a revival of Critical Mass starting this Friday, it was interesting to see about finding evidence for that earlier activity.
A preliminary search through newspapers did not find any local coverage, so if it was happening, it must not have been very big or very disruptive.
This editorial from 1995 on Critical Mass in Corvallis would have been certain to mention any Salem instance from two or three years before, but it is silent on that.
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| June 26th, 1995 |
In hindsight the editorial is also not very promising on "working quietly with government and motorists"! The "faster and easier" solutions have not materialized and Salem has not been successful on getting "more people out of their cars."
There was very occasional later coverage of Critical Mass in other cities, picked up from wire pieces and not localized to mention anything in Salem.
The Policy Committee for our Metropolitan Planning Organization, SKATS, meets today, Tuesday the 26th.
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| Project site hasn't been updated lately |
The main item of interest on the agenda is an update on the Cordon/Kuebler Corridor Study. Unfortunately, there's still no public review draft on the Cordon plan published, nor any materials in the meeting packet. So there's much to say yet.
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| The reason the City was advertising for a planner |
Much less important, but interesting to note, was detail that the former City transportation planner with a focus on biking and walking projects had joined what might be the City's favorite consulting firm for transportation projects, one that would reliably deliver "mild" rather than "spicy."
Just some short bits for the week.
Tuesday: How to Ride a Bus: Mobility Fair for Seniors
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| Mobility Fair for Seniors |
Thursday: Flood Plain Open House
In conversation about the overlay zones, a person suggested 12th street was better for mixed-use projects than Commercial Street. A trend in thinking about flooding is reducing development in flood plains, and there is one on and around 12th Street at Pringle Creek and Clark Creek. This is another reason we should encourage infill on higher elevation sites. Shunting infill to flood plains in order to insulate from change wealthier residents on the hills is not prudent.
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| Housing and density in flood plains? (excerpt) |
The Open House on Thursday the 28th isn't necessarily going to touch on this directly, but as we think about trees and creeks, we have to start accepting more height and density where we do build in order to preserve trees and creeks. Building up means more trees and riparian zones.
Council meets on Monday, and they will hear an information item, a big update, on the process to designate Climate Friendly Areas, which the City prefers to brand "Walkable Mixed-Use Areas."
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| A little bird says...are we listening? Lower ballfield, Bush Park earlier this summer |
The City has unfortunately chosen a pathway that DLCD apparently approves (this is very weird!), but which is a bit phony, by design or by accident, and yields an actual Potemkin village, a paper success that will have insufficient correspondence to reality.
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| Map with Staff Report Text from Tech Memo #1 (see below) |
A knowledgeable former State land use expert says of the process:
Very similar points are made here in three posts over the spring and summer:the results are deeply disturbing: Salem is likely to fall way short....A big reason is that the city is vastly over-estimating the amount of housing that might be built downtown and in the other three areas that it is considering as CFAs....But the best example is downtown: the city study asserts that there is "zoned capacity" for about 20,000 housing units downtown - implying that is an achievable amount of housing in the next 20-25 years, even though there are only about 1000 housing units in downtown now, and that current adopted plans forecast only about 2,000-3000 units would be built over this time. In short, it's highly misleading and left as is, will leave the city way short of meeting the state's 30% target....
The clear objective of the state rules is to get 30% of *all* housing in CFAs by 2050. Salem's study - whether it follows the rules or not - leaves us hugely short of that goal. My guess is that it gets us to maybe 5-10% of all housing in CFAs. To get anywhere near close to 30%, we'd need to build *all* new housing in CFAs; something that clearly isn't going to happen under existing plans that target 80% or more of new housing to outlying car-dependent neighborhoods.
1000 Friends anticipated all this back in January.
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| 1000 Friends letter Jan. 11th, 2023 |
In a letter to city planners here and in several other cities (curiously not included in the agenda packet here for Monday) they cautioned against dramatic overestimation and "unrealistic assumptions."
Overestimation is exactly what the City's current approach employs.
In late October of 1922 the Italian Fascists marched on Rome and took over shortly thereafter.
Nearly a year later, a Salemite had visited Italy and on his return published his report on the Fascist movement.
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| September 18th, 1923 |
100 years ago on September 18th, he was rather complimentary.
To be sure the victory of the fascisti is new and strange and is criticised by many. So far it seems to be a one man government, which is always dangerous. But personally, we believe it is the entering wedge for a betterment of government, not only in Italy but in the world generally. A nation has suddenly arisen from its sleep and has proclaimed a faith in principles which are the foundation of all real civilization. Christianity, patriotism, loyalty to state. Liberty in its true sense recognizing the rights and duties of all classes of society, unity of all for the good of the country, obedience to established authority, social morality — these are the things that bolshevism would consign to the oblivion of the junk pile, and in the case of Italy, bolshevism. which is apparently honey-combing every civilized country of the world, has received its first set-back.
The writer was the pastor at St. Joseph's.
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| Feb. 17th, 1922 |
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| August 28th, 1923 |
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| September 3rd, 1946 |
He may not have been terribly out of step with popular opinion.
Though they haven't broken ground yet, plans remain conceptual still, and the prospect of tariffs and deportations with anti-immigrant s...
