Eh, let 'em change and drop those odor bombs - fact is, it certainly can't hurt the stench of the street most mornings anyway...

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REFLECTIONS OF A ROCK LOBSTER

Hate the gum thing. Not only is it disgusting, but those trees are probably major disease vectors. What is it with gum chewing and spitting in this country? I honestly don't see as much of it in other countries. Maybe I'm delusional...

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"I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves." - Ludwig Wittgenstein

not to mention how utterly stupid the act of chewing gum makes you appear


wait, i think i mentioned it

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SITUATION: MOISTURIZED
thor must be failing -

Ain't nothin' like the smell of fresh Fat Tuesday's grease and fruity drink in the mornin'!

China just made it illegal to spit due to the olympics...

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"And Lord, I pray that you would guard your own reputation, because they're going to think that their god is bigger than you, if that happens. So I pray that you will step forward and honor your own name with all that happens between now and Election Day."--Rev. Arnold Conrad

I think spitting and chewing gum is technically illegal in Singapore, too. Maybe people who spit their gum on the sidewalk or leave it stuck to a tree need to be caned a few times and the behavior pattern will start to shift.

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"I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves." - Ludwig Wittgenstein

Caning would do alot of good in this city...

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"And Lord, I pray that you would guard your own reputation, because they're going to think that their god is bigger than you, if that happens. So I pray that you will step forward and honor your own name with all that happens between now and Election Day."--Rev. Arnold Conrad

YO ALESIS!

Since you have your ear to the ground, what gives with the hap-hazard South Streets project?!

From what I read, the project was to proceed westward one block at a time - right now they have activity going on across several blocks at once!

Are they rushing the project to try to finish before summer tourism? Or is this just a wonderful example of several different contractors all working at their own pace and overlapping each other?

Enquirin' Minds Wanna Know!

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REFLECTIONS OF A ROCK LOBSTER

I'm a little irritated as well, so I called a guy who knows a guy-you know, real sofilly like.

As usual, the world comes down to PGW. They claim they didn't know about the project, although the city sent them several notices. Then, at the last moment they decided to upgrade all of the pipes on the street. The 3rd and 5th blocks are apparently complicated since the infrastructure is so bad that everything needs replaced.

In true PGW fashion, they said they could be done in something like 6 months....*%&#)@&* no! They were apparently served some major lashings, and now they said they will work 24hrs. a day(beginning next week I think?) to get it done within a suitable time frame. When they are done, the construction crews will come back and finish that street.

Overall, I'm not happy with the project at all. Alot of shenanigans have been occuring. As I predicted, they are not peacefully going at a block by block pace, as it is obvious that almost every block is suffering setbacks at the same time. As a business owner, I think I was fed a line of sh&t from the district-even if I didn't buy it from the start.

I'm also equally p&ssed from grapevine rumblings that the timeline of the project was shifted so that the south street district's board president wouldn't have his business interrupted in the summer-so now that they flipped the schedule, two of my businesses will be interrupted during the summer, whereas they wouldn't have been under the old timeline.

I am not aware of any shenanigans with regard to the scheduling in order to benefit anyone. As I understand it, the plan was always to start at one end....work their way to the other end and then come back.

As for the "one block at a time" line, the district was fed the same thing. I don't know whether it was intentionally unclear from the beginning or what. As it stands now, there are a number of things all going on at the same time. They are trenching the streets to run wiring for all the new lights as this is all tied in with the city's replacement of traffic signals (supposedly we will actually have timed lights someday in this city). They are doing that on Lombard now that I think about it. Then they are tearing up the concrete and installing new curbs. Then they are pouring the new concrete.

It seems more accurate to say that they are going 3 blocks at a time....one is getting torn up....one is getting new curbs...and the third is getting concrete. They do appear to be moving pretty quickly and they seem to be getting "walkways" installed for local businesses.....though I will defer on the effectiveness of this to local business owners.

In addition, once they get to the end (8th I think) they come back down to Front St and start all over again. Then they still have to mill (grind off) the street and re-pave it, PLUS install all the HP ramps at every corner. Something about not being able to do that until the streets are done in order to deal with the pitch and height of the street.

As for PGW, they came in at the last second, claimed that they knew nothing about the project and that they needed to COMPLETELY CLOSE the 300 block of south street and that the project would take 9-12 weeks! Fortunately, at a recent meeting with them and the city, the city engineer was kind enough to produce documentation that PGW had SIGNED OFF ON THE PROJECT!

As a result, PGW will start work NO LATER than 4/28 and will complete it by 6/1 unless they "run into problems" (which with PGW seems inevitable). They will be running double or triple crews (ie 24hrs). There will be no road closure as PGW will leave one lane open to traffic on the 300 blk. As a result, the contractors will skip doing the sidewalks on the 300 blk and proceed to the 400 blk and come back to the 300 blk when PGW is done f-ing everything up!