CNN's "1,000 Best Neighborhoods of All Time": we've got three!

A typical rickets-free Kendall Park residence in 1902 -- the kind that dazzled CNN!

CNN has recently published its list of the 1,000 Best Neighborhoods Of All Time. And who should be appear on the list three times? Our very own Armitage Heights!

Armitage Heights (2007), Armitage Heights (1970) and Kendall Park (1902) were all picked by a panel of experts from a list of hundreds of thousands of neighborhoods throughout the entirety of world history, based on livability, safety, cost of living, infrastructure and cultural amenities -- and we didn't do too badly at all! Present-day Armitage Heights ranked at a respectable #688, right in front of Mount Auburn/Brattle Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts (1770), and right behind the E-Ninnu Temple District in Lagash, Sumer (2050 BCE). Between the Tories of Cambridge and the high priests of Sumeria, this is pretty outstanding company! The panel cited our "great public transit, historic architecture, and thrilling cultural scene" as distinguishing traits. We have the added distinction of being the only neighborhood in the state to make the list.

Kendall Park (1902) fared even better, placing all the way up at #159! The committee was wowed by the neighborhood's "legendary central square" (young people might be scratching their heads as to where exactly this is located -- it's now the site of the equally legendary Ellison Cooper Volberg Public Housing Towers) and "beautiful Italianate buildings." The panel also noted that "the unusually low instances of influenza, rickets and lockjaw in the area's natives made this the late autumn getaway destination for well-to-do vacationers from all over early-20th Century America." It's worth pointing out the Kendall Park still retains very low instances of rickets, and a great many of the beautiful brick row houses are still standing!

The 1970 Armitage Heights held up the end of the list at #933, and the article noted that "despite the radical criminality, high unemployment and decaying infrastructure of the time, there were many outstanding hippie sculpture parks and an attractive air of danger-tinged mod-ish free-spiritedness to the place, best captured in Kimball Burin's well-known 1972 non-fiction book Moloch of Stanton Ave."

The best neighborhood of all time, of course, was voted XIe arrondissement of Paris (1911), with the Upper East Side of New York City (1961) running a close second.

Next year, let's see if we can displace the Sumerians next year and inch up closer to the top!

Let's have a pleasant, orderly court-ordered re-vote.

Supporters of Republican candidate Barry G. Johannsen and Green candidate Andrea Gilanshah tussle in an anti-Dr. Thomas Jefferson Harding protest in Armitage Square on Sunday.

Well, as I am sure you've heard, last week's election had a few mishaps -- the presence of robotic Libertarian pro-Ron Paul spambots in the voting machine electronic grid, the illegal candidacy of fugitive Viet Cong ex-patriate Dr. Thomas Jefferson, and the farcical, one-note candidacy of local writer, activist and jerk Kimball F. Burin.

The entire slate of candidates, in fact, filed for a court injunction to have last Wednesday's election results nullified -- a move that the 10th Circuit court upheld in a ruling early this morning.

Reublican Party candidate Barry G. Johannsen objected on the grounds that the illegal presence of Ron Paul on the ballot drew Republican votes from him. He was also infuriated by the illegal presence on the ballot of Dr. Harding, whom he still fiercly maintains is directly responsible for the death of his mother, Marla Manda Johannsen during her recent, ill-advised bounty-hunting journey to Vietnam. He also vowed to follow in his mother's footsteps to Vietnam to find and extradite Dr. Harding should he not win the re-vote.

Green Party candidate Andrea Gilanshah also objected to the presence of Dr. Harding, and believe he may have drawn away valuable votes from the 50 or so old Jewish socialists still living in pockets of Armitage Hill that might have made for a more narrow margin.

Kimball F. Burin, running under the made-up banner of the "Anti-Bedwetters Democratic Union," made some wildly unfounded accusations to the Free-Press last week to the effect that his campaign was personally sabotaged by myself and my assistant Marisha, and also claimed to have photos of the two of us dressed in (his words) "bondage gear" sneaking around his headquarters on Stanton Avenue which he will post to his website this week. This is too ridiculous to even contemplate responding to seriously.

Ron Paul's presidential campaign released a statement late last week denying any responsibility for any "spambots." However, the shadowy Facebook group "HAXX0RZ 4 RON PAUL WINING EVERY ELECTION!!!11!!!" may have played some role in the strong spambot-aided showing by Rep. Paul. An investigation is underway. Libertarian spambots have no place in our local elections.

The re-vote will be held tomorrow, November 13. For information about where to vote, please contatct the Pierce County Board of Elections at (436) 774-VOTE, or visit their website at http://elections.pierce.mish.hu.us/.

Election results!

Well, the hard work is all over, and I want to thank everyone that voted for me in yesterday's election. You'll note I didn't mention much about the election on my blog here, but I want very much to keep politics out of here, and focus on the things that transcend politics -- non-partisan issues like my recent Christmas Island Economic Sustainability Plan. The sorts of things we can all agree on as a neighborhood, regardless of party affiliation.

Nonetheless, here are the results of the 3rd Ward city council election, as certified by the Herald-Star and KWHA 5 television.

All of my opponents are honorable, intelligent men and women, and I am proud to have had such distinguished opponents in this race. When I say this, however, I do not include novelist and gadabout Kimball Burin, whose dull, endless tirades against me (under the auspices of a fictitious, inaccruately-named and generally insulting "Anti-Bedwetter's Democratic Union") are an embarrassment to his otherwise sterling legacy of hard-hitting drunken New Journalism. Nor do I include fugitive malcontent Dr. Thomas Jefferson Harding, who remains a dangerous, crazed idealogue that we are still working very hard to extradite and should probably not be permitted to appear on a ballot legally -- the fact that he ran in absentia representing the Vietnamese Communist Party is pure spite, and also probably not legal.

Ron Paul is a good man, too, I suppose, if you're into his sort of thing (I have endorsed Bill Richardson myself!). Apparently, though, he only earned half a percentage point owing to the influence of overzealous Libertarian computer spambots that somehow worked their way onto the electronic grid. I will probably need to appoint a commission to look into that.

I invite all citizens of the 3rd Ward to join me in the hard work that remains to be done in the next five years -- excepting, of course, members of the Vietnamese Communist Party and the Anti-Bedwetter's Democratic Union.


Sherman LARSON
(Democrat)
54%


Barry G. JOHANNSEN
(Republican)
35%


Andrea GILANSHAH
(Green)
6%


Kimball F. BURIN
(Anti-Bedwetters Democratic Union)
3%


Bronwynn Hyperioum EISENBERG
(Wiccan Socialist)
1%


Dr. Thomas Jefferson HARDING
(Đang Cong san Viet Nam)
0.5% (in absentia)


Ron PAUL
(Republican Misc.)
0.5%

"Scary" Halloween costumes!

I'd like to take a moment to acknowledge the high volume of wacky Halloween costume pictures that we've gotten emailed to us here in the office -- it seems like an awful lot of you were dressing up as me this year for Fright Night festivities! Below are some of the best ones! My pick for winner is little Madison Monaghan-Gibney of Kendall Park below! My assistant Marisha says the best resemblance is Adam Beyersdorf of Wihinapa (with his "hippie" wife Allison below).




Well done, everyone!

Marisha thought that some of these photos were just people in suits after work, but it's clear to me from the hair coloring and posture that they're "doing Sherman." I feel proud to be a part of people's lives in this way.

For obvious reasons, I chose not to include any photos of "me" that involved blood, Monopoly money, arrow-through-the-head props, East German commandant uniforms, marijuana references, shredded-up copies of the U.S. Constitution and/or all of these items at once (very clever, Bud Hobday of Armitage Hill).

Upcoming ArtBuddies events schedule, November and December.

Law and Order's Ric Ocasek (left) meets Cars frontman Richard Belzer (right), at the Mishipeshu Center for the Arts.

Don't miss Mishipeshu Public Radio presents the ArtBuddies series at the Mishipeshu Center for the Arts! Every few weeks, MPR will be bringing together two great minds of our time and turning them loose to talk about whatever they want -- no gimmicks, no scripts, no limits, just fascinating conversation between some of the most interesting people in the arts today. These sessions will be moderated by Brad Lebree, contributor to such beloved public radio porgrams programs as SpinBack, Crosstalk, AfterWord, Lebensraum, The Alvin Blomgren Show, Vox Humana, Ecelectricity, Alvin Blomgren Presents The Buzz Treatment With Brad Lebree, Bookstorm, The Linkup, The Big Time, Sunday Voices, Sunday Voices: Saturday Edition, The Emphasizer, Audio Box, Station Break, Here Comes the Comptroller and the highly anticipated upcoming news and feature series Buzz Beat With Brad Lebree and Nancy Chakravarty.

11/3: Phillip Glass and Rick Dees
11/17: Peter Criss and Gore Vidal
11/27: Richard Belzer and Ric Ocasek
12/14: Joe Satriani and Joanna Newsom
12/21: Christopher Hitchens and Fab Five Freddy

Fall arts and culture round-up: visual arts preview!

Armitage Heights Center for Contemporary Art: MySpace Facebook Guantanamo: New Work by Hanson Freeman Carney

Mishipeshu Institute of Art: Arbus /Frazetta (October 20, 2007 - March 3, 2008) .

Stanton Avenue Arts: Maeda Bedosky: New Paintings on Corporate Letterhead (November 3, 2007 - February 2, 2008) .

Hanley Contemporary: Mas Feces (November 7, 2007 - December 19, 2007).

5299 Space: Building Code Violations (October 12, 2007 - ongoing) (note: the 5299 Space remains closed for building code violations)

Little Wilmington Arts Center: New Botanical Watercolors by George Thorogood and the Destroyers (October 18, 2007 - January 24, 2008) [pictured above]; Cambridge x Dover x Chincoteague: Six New Delmarva Artists (November 11, 2007-January 3, 2008).

Baby Dolls Heads: New Baby Doll Head Collages by Suzanne S. Carmichael (November 14, 2007 - December 2, 2007).

Christmas Island must be retained, part one.

Indie-pop sensations -- and possibly soon-to-be-former Armitage Heights residents -- Christmas Island.

Well, I've been back in the neighborhood for about a week now following my experiences in Ireland and Dubai. It's been quite a journey. For the first few days back, I was having severe involuntary convulsions that resembled lay-ups, and I kept referring to Marisha as "Coach Red."

I'm feeling much better now, however, and it's time to get back to doing the work of this neighborhood.

There are a lot of very important issues coming up in the coming months -- land use policy in the Armitage Avenue corridor, the Zoning Appeal Commission's quarterly report on tax-funded mixed-use encounter pools, programmatic changes regarding the Committee on Zeppelin & Airship Policy, and community reinvestment in the Freemasonry District, but there is one issue facing our community that dwarves all of these for our area's future well-being, and that is indie-pop band Christmas Island's recent decision to relocate to Brooklyn.

I had my assistant Marisha draw up a chart in Excel this morning, and I think it's very instructive:



It's no coincidence that the year a neighborhood band got it's first 9.0+ rating on Pitchfork (Teenage Law Student's It's Hard To Figure What A German With An Enormous Moustache Does For A Living in 2003) was the same year that our local percent increase in real GDP growth rates were in the top quintile nationally for at least a decade. Christmas Island's last EP garnered a 7.8 rating. Is there any doubt the LP they are presently recording for Sub Pop Records will be at least a 9.0? And is there any doubt what economic factors will be positively affected? Good record reviews mean credibility, and in today's new econony, credibility is economic prosperity.

I am going to be proposing a plan to the city council in the next several weeks to make the case for keeping Christmas Island as permanent residents of our beautiful city. Stay tuned for the details!