thoughts on monday's louie free show

Tonight I went to the website of local talk show host and vegan extraordinare Louie Free, whose studios were recently moved from the "double-wide on the east side" to a space downtown in the old Phar-Mor Building, now named 20 Federal Place. The new studio faces federal street, allowing the public to look onto Louie and his guests throughout the week.

Lisa Simpson: Oh, the earth is the best! That's why I'm a vegetarian.
Jesse: Heh. Well, that's a start.
Lisa Simpson, well, I was thinking of going vegan.

Jesse: I'm a level 5 vegan -- I won't eat anything that casts a shadow.


The lineup for Monday's show looked interesting, with interviews with Bernard Marinelli, owner of the Core nightclub downtown; Betram de Souza, lead editorial writer for the Vindicator; and Father Ed Noga, pastor of the beautiful St. Patrick's Catholic Church on the southside.






You can listen to the show here, archived on louie's website. Seriously, it's maybe my favorite louie show I've heard since he's been broadcasting . . . nice information, as well as discussion throughout. Because the lineup, I actually did something I've never done while listening to a radio show:

I took notes.

- - -

The first interview featured Mr. Marinelli speaking primarily on the status of entertainment downtown, how erroneous perceptions of the city affect his business interests, and the necessity for additional effort from city officials to engage and assist downtown business owners. These downtown business owners, are in effect like frontiersmen, the first to see opportunity in a difficult environment as they attempt to make their roots more permanent.

Here's a few suggestions that came to mind as I was listening to Bernard speak:

- When I pick up a ticket from the Chevy Center, usually there is an advertisement for gettix.net or something like that, but why can't there be things on the back of the ticket like coupons for downtown drink specials, reduced cover charges, and general advertisements for the various downtown businesses? Develop further cross-promotional activities.
- Hire an additional person within the Department of Economic Development that has existing ties and experience promoting to the sub 35 years of age demographic. Sometime you need youth to speak to the youth.
- Explore new ideas, like ipod dj nights, on certain nights of the week.
- Before the time when a cover is charged, have lessons in topics such as breakdancing and salsa dancing. I wanna learn how to do a ninja freeze.
- Encourage musicians to hang out downtown, perhaps with financial incentives, to encourage street life and pull people from the Chevy Center.

- - -

Soon afterwards, one caller made an interesting statement about how successive generations of local people have rejected the downtown. His astute comment was that due to their remembrance of the downtown as a thriving place filled with theaters, mass transit, and restaurants in the 50s and 60s, watching its deep slide from the 70s through the 90s has left a permanent mark on the minds of those generations.

To me it was interesting because many people I know frame the current re-development of the downtown in a generational context, in that it takes some generations to die or move away in order for progressive generations to push forward.

I don't really support this view, nor do I want to support this view. Maybe I believe that an older dog has value, and it can additionally learn new tricks.

The generational comment is fascinating though, as I grew up in the generation that never experienced the glory days, never rode on the Wildcat at Idora Park, never went shopping in the Uptown, and never saw miles upon miles of steel mills belch their smoke into the air. I was a teenager in the mid/late 90s when the ONLY places to go downtown were Cedar's and the Draught House, and that's where we hung out. The rest of the downtown was like an empty playground for us to explore, with all the equipment still there but nobody enjoying it. And within the last three years, there has been great improvement downtown, but there is still much to do.

The simple fact is, for our generation, the current state of downtown is the best we have ever seen it.

But due to experiencing other cities in our country and around the world, we see its potential on what it could be - not what it once was.

- - -

Later in the show (about 2/5th into the mp3 file) Mr. de Souza and Fr. Noga contributed to a discussion spread across many threads:

Issues such as social inequity across the region, the analogy of the mahoning valley as one house with many rooms, the fears of annexation based on lack of information and unwillingness to come to the table, the need for an emerging african-american middle class in the region, uniting across different faiths for community activism, joint economic development districts, cutbacks in regional bus service, media stations partnering together to sponsor downtown events, challenges for the inner-city school district, expansion of the metro library system, the italian fest coming back downtown, redefining old institutions, getting workers to stay downtown after 5pm, and the success of zero tolerance.

lots of stuff . . . lots of stuff to chew on.

- - -

Speaking of chewing, at one point louie expressed his frustration with not knowing what communion tastes like.

Here's the Shout Youngstown suggestion: when christmas comes around louie, order some oplatki from any local catholic church. Oplatki are pieces of bread, about the size of a greeting card, compressed with religious scenes for the holiday season. The taste EXACTLY the same as communion.


You can break them up, place em in a bowl, and even dip them in vegan cheese. That way, the communion won't serve the same purpose of a Tostido.

- - -

seriously though, monday was a really good show. Bloggers from throughout northeast ohio and residents of the valley from both the city and suburb can learn a lot about the pertinent local issues by listening to this recording.

the pillars of a community

The Defend Youngstown blog posted a great interview today with Anthony Kobak, Chief Planner of the City of Youngstown and one of the driving forces during the Youngstown 2010 planning process. You can find the interview here.

Defend Youngstown's work brings a human face to some of the pillars in the region. His interviews reinforce the notion that government is, well, just a bunch of people at the core, and not some abstract object.

- - -

Since my posting yesterday about the Toffler speech inside Stambaugh Auditorium, I have had a few requests about additional info on the building and its wonderful pillars.

The Indiana limestone, oak, and marble structure was inspired by the Pantheon in Paris, and was designed by Helmle and Corbett Architects from New York City. Its opening concert was held on December 6th, 1926 and featured the humorist Will Rodgers.

Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and recently Jerry Seinfeld have all performed in this historic building. Its rooms throughout the structure are available for rent, and is a great place for a wedding reception. In fact, here are a few photos of the place when I was one of the groomsmen for a good friend who had his wedding there:

tofflers' take

Here is a quick recap of Alvin and Heidi Toffler's visit to Youngstown on March 8th.

Their first scheduled appearance was in the Zona Auditorium at the Butler Institute of American Art. In recent months, there have been a series of community meetings on innovation called TH3, or Third Thursdays at Three. The running joke throughout the day was that the Toffler TH3 event took place on the First Thursday at 1pm. or something like that.


Because of the Butler's proximity to campus, many in the audience were academics. I had the ability to meet for the first time two other NEO bloggers immediately after the event, Tim and Gloria Ferris, whose faces I had never seen, but whose voices have been a driving force on the Meet the Bloggers podcasts.

Since many other bloggers and news outlets have concentrated on the Tofflers' background and books, I'm just going to skip directly to the possible solutions to aid the local economy that were provided later in the evening.

- - -

Bathed in the light of the setting sun, Stambaugh Auditorium was the host for the evening lecture.


Opened in 1926, Stambaugh Auditorium's distinctive pillars on both the outside and inside of the building are quite stunning. A very nice crowd came to listen to the Tofflers' words.



Towards the end of the speech Alvin Toffler provided a few recommendations, although he stated he was no "snake oil" salesman with all the answers. Here are a few:

1 - Create a regional DARPA-like organization linking the innovative capacity throughout Northeastern Ohio and Western Pennsylvania. To my understanding, DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) is a component of the Department of Defense, instructed to focus in a very goal-oriented manner on specific research and development projects for the military. Instead of a top down model of waiting for research to bear fruit, DARPA's bottom up model tries to solve all the smaller problems, which adds up to solving the big challenge.

In many people's minds, DARPA = a unique way to perform transformative research.

I like this idea a lot, especially the first time I read it within the recommendations of the Rising Above the Gathering Storm national competitiveness report by the National Academies, although Toffler's angle is from a regional perspective. btw, the final print version of the NAS report was released this week, after existing for quite a while in pre-publication form.

2 - Have an "Institute of Innovation" which celebrates the world's innovations and assists the local tourism business. I immediately thought of the Inventors Hall of Fame in Akron.

How is that working out, by the way?

3 - Provide startup funds and retraining to recently laid-off employees with the hopes that they would become entrepreneurs.

4 - Have local television stations create programs, maybe 15 minutes in length, highlighting successful entrepreneurs in the community, and showing others in the region that their business dreams are possible. I liked this idea. Sometimes I feel local media only skims the surface of what is going on entrepreneur-wise in the region.

A good regional newspaper to emulate is local economic development beat of The Oklahoman from Oklahoma City.

5 - Ask the unions to be partners in innovation.

6 - Create design centers to attract people.

7 - Provide a $100 laptop to every student in the region, like they are preparing to do for third-world countries through MIT Media Labs.

8 - Appoint a diplomatic core from Youngstown, with bases in Washington, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland to engage others, promote business and collect information.




- - -

In this same building, next monday March 26th - Steven Levitt, co-author of Freakonomics will be giving a presentation which is FREE to the public at 7:30pm.

a beautiful thought on sunday morning

Found this on the "Meditations in an Emergency" blog


Last night at the Stage was just the most wonderful experience. There were so many people there, so much talent and creativity and expression, and so much of it just really really good . . .

. . . Youngstown has so much talent it makes me not sick but deliriously appreciative of being here and being a part of making this city into something good. My mom came to the Stage with me last night, and before and after the show we walked around in the downtown together. She hadn’t been there in years, and commented on how there were actually people walking the streets again, and storefronts with actual stores open inside them, and how things just felt so much different, more like what she remembered from decades ago . . .

. . . in my lifetime I’ve never seen Youngstown so alive and full of a hopeful wind blowing through it, I’ve never seen so many people coming together before to take the city back into their hands and make it into home again.

Youngstown’s a place with a lot of potential because it is so undefined, and I can see it as a place that people of the right spirit and inclination to create will come to because of that in the future.

Artists of all sorts, after all, want a blank canvas. And this city has more than enough room to make room for new life.

from one theater to another theater

Two weekends ago, a meeting was held at the Ohio One Building (nice art deco interior) by the Friends of Youngstown Theaters, a new grassroots non-profit group attmepting to preserve and promote the arts in the downtown. The main subject of that night's meeting was the possible renovation of the currently empty Liberty/Paramount Theater on Federal Street.


This building opened as the Liberty Theater in 1918, and was renamed the Paramount Theater in the late 1920s. You can see a nice picture here in all of its glory, from back in the day. The marquee is particularly beautiful.

In April 2006, the partnership of Paul Warshauer of Grand Venues in Illinois and Lou Frangos of USA Parking in Cleveland purchased the building for $79,900. An article from May 2006 which chronicles the purchase and future aspirations for the theater can be accessed here.

Earlier in the day before the recent meeting, the building was opened and a few pictures were taken of the interior, as shown below. Another site with photos of the building (from a few years ago) can be found here.



During the meeting Paul Warshauer (pictured below) presented his dream for the building, as well as preliminary estimates of renovation efforts and possible future sources of funding.



Let's focus on a few of the numbers:

The idea, as proposed at the meeting was to utilize the basement, the main floor for theater, and the upper floors for two small modern theaters (editor's note: hopefully with a bar serving alcohol in the back). The first photo of these easel has for all of these components the square footage, renovation cost per square foot, and total cost. So for the individual floors, this would come out to:

9,750 sq. ft. $573,250 - Basement
9,300 sq. ft. $2,785,000 - Street Level Theater
1,950 sq. ft. $585,000 - Mezzanine
4,250 sq. ft. $1,225,000 - Upper Cinemas A&B

Thus the total estimate for the project is a total of 26,950 sq ft of renovated space, at an average of $216 a sq ft, for a total of $5,829,500.

So this brings up a question . . .

really the 5,829,500 dollar question:

Who might pony up the cash for this project?


Well, as presented, here are some numbers:

20% - Federal Historic Tax Credits = $ 1,165,900
15% - Ohio Historic Tax Credits = $ 874,425
10% - The LLC of the owners = $ 582,950
5% - "Direct Grants" = $ 291,475

50% - Dontations from public, YSU, naming rights,corporate sponsors, etc. = $ 2,914,750

You can look at the picture for further information. I'm making no judgement on this one, just reporting the news.

- - -

Then ran across the street to the DeYor Performing Arts Center, housing Powers Auditorium, the Adler Arts Academy, the new Ford Recital Hall with its exquisite acoustics, and Overtures Restaurant.

The Powers Auditorium was about to meet the wrecking ball to become a parking lot back in 1968, but it was saved and became the home for the Youngstown Symphony (unlike way too many structures downtown that actually became parking lots - yea, more parking). It was renamed the Powers Auditorium from the Warner Theater, as the movie moguls the Warner Bros. grew up in Youngstown.

It serves as a great project of rehabilitation, and how new construction can bookend existing historical structures. I wonder what the leaders who endorsed its destruction would think of the complex now, and how this influences today's voices pushing for further demolition . . .

Regardless, here are some pictures of the interior, as I scampered up the steps to see the comedian Lewis Black.




Well, Mr Black graced us in Youngstown. He brought with him a copy of the Tribune-Chronicle for discussion, citing it as the local paper of record. The audience shouted him down that it was the paper of nearby Warren, and not Youngstown, and here is his reaction from the nosebleeds:



And as usual, Lewis ranted on a variety of subjects:



But that night was far from being over.

However, this entry is getting too long.

And so, a future story will be dedicated to what else happened that night on the streets of Youngstown . . .

corned beef at 5:30am

Ahh St. Patrick's Day in Ytown . . .

more people go to the bars on this day than church on Easter.

Here's a picture from in front of the Open Hearth restaurant on Steel Street: [west side ytown]



I got a nice corned beef n' bagel sammich from Kravitz' last week.



see you tomorrow at 5:30am.

how I ruined my toffler book

Readers:

From time to time, I would like to extend to you the wisdom that many many years on this earth has doth provided me.

So I give you . . . Janko's ninth law:

never keep fresh fruit loose in your backpack as one travels by horse.

- - -

I learned this last summer as I was galloping across western wyoming with friends and two things in my shoulder pack: an apple and the book "Revolutionary Wealth" by Alvin and Heidi Toffler.

The landscape was beautiful . . .




. . . but after an hour into my trip, my pack began to feel like a damp towel, seeping moisture into my t-shirt.

And in the end . . . carnage.

The apple, now primarily applesauce, did a number to Toffler's text:


- - -

Why mention this story?

Well, Alvin Toffler will be speaking about this same book, "Revolutionary Wealth", this thursday March 8th at Stambaugh Auditorium at 7:30pm.

attendance is FREE, and parking is plentiful and FREE.

Toffler's book in a nutshell, looks at the history of wealth and speculates on the future of wealth, in the context of a rapidly-changing information-based economy. He is one of most widely read authors on the planet over the last 40 years, his most famous book being "Future Shock" written in the 1970s.

He has consulted multiple countries, economists, and public officials over the years, and working with Congressman Ryan's office and YSU’s Paul J. and Marguerite K. Thomas Colloquium on Free Enterprise, he will be speaking in the city of Youngstown.

please join us.

me and my disfigured book will be there.

- - -

For those coming from Northeast Ohio and Western Pennsylvania,

Stambaugh Auditorium is located at:
1000 Fifth Avenue
Youngstown, Ohio 44504

www.stambaughauditorium.com
www.stambaughonline.com
wikipedia Stambaugh Auditorium

parking is behind the building, opposite from 5th Avenue, and often people park along Wick Park and the neighborhoods just north of the university for events there.

- - -

side note: happy 100th post to Shout Youngstown. hopefully the next 100 posts will be as fun as the first 100.

youngstown incubator, meet MySpace

A new website has entered the social networking sphere...

Click here to see the MySpace page of the business incubator, launched today.


If you would like to have the Youngstown Business Incubator for a "friend", please do so through your personal MySpace page. Check the site often for future blogs and information:

www.myspace.com/ytownbusinessincubator

art museum/hardware store in the city

Star Supply in the Mahoning Commons just west of downtown is not just a place to get 1,726 feet of copper wire and keys made for 90 cents, but it's also a mixture of industrial art, pop art, and post-modern scuplture.

The slingshot car that greets you in the main parking lot is priceless.










Almost every sign inside the store is hand-painted. Not only can you find great deals here, but the surrounding artwork is an inspiration as well.

Star Supply is located at:
875 Mahoning Avenue
Yo. O., 44502
p: 330.746.2969
f: 330.746.3345