Oh, SmAlbany!

Why Jennings won't debate: Everyone and their left wing brother is up in arms that Mayor Jennings is refusing to debate his opponents - Alice Green and Joe Sullivan- before the general election November 8th. Even the TU cartoonist got in the act over the weekend, illustrating Sullivan and Green debating on TV while Jennings sits home and laughs. All this means is that it's a good time for Oh, SmAlbany! to return to Political Science 101. Why exactly is the mayor refusing to debate?

Ultimately, it has a lot more to do with his position and resources in the election than anything about him personally. Although his opponents would have you believe the mayor is "scared" to debate the issues or "doesn't believe in the democratic process," this is hardly the case. Debates are certainly nice forums for citizens to learn about candidates and issues, but they are also key political moments for campaigns. If a debate is more helpful than hurtful for your campaign, you want it. If it isn't, you don't. Very simple, very machiavelian. Five points:

Point #1 - Frontrunners hate debates / chasers love debates - If you watched The West Wing last night, this was abundently clear. Congressman Santos, trailing by 9 points in the polls, was begging for a debate, but his political handlers knew that Senator Vinnick had no interest in debating, since he was already ahead. As Vinnick's handler says, "They need to debate 10 times more than we do." The bottom line is that if you are ahead in a campaign, you want to minimize "big moments," where you can either squander your lead with a dumb mistake or your opponent can gain ground with a brilliant manuever. Debates are inherently "big moments." Therefore, people in the lead hate them and people who are behind beg for them. Jennings is in the lead. His opponents are far behind.

Point #2 - Well-funded campaigns hate debates / poor campaings love debates - Debates are the best advertising at the cheapest cost - you get the full attention of interested voters at absolutely no cost, and you get to say whatever you want. This means your message will be up to date. Jennings has plenty of money and can run all the paid ads he wants. His opponents are cash-poor and would love some free airtime. Therefore, Jennings doesn't want to debate and his opponents do.

Point #3 - Mainstream candidates hate debates / marginal candidates love debates - a debate has a strange leveling power in the minds of low-information voters. If a low-information voter sees three candidates in a debate, he/she accepts that these are the "legitimate" candidates in the election. This is why the major parties try so hard to keep third party candidates - like Perot in '92 and Nader in '00 - out of the debates. It denies them the legitimacy that comes with being a "big boy" in the debate. If you can't keep your marginal opponents out of the debate, you simply try not to debate them. Like it or not, Alice Green and Joe Sullivan are marginal candidates. Thus, Jennings doesn't want to debate them.

Point #4 - Incumbents hate debates / Challengers love debates - When there is an incumbent running for office, debates generally center around his/her policies. Since challengers are not managing policy themselves, they often have little record to critique. This usually means that debates end up being asymetric affairs, with challengers able to attack the incumbents record and the incumbent left to either defend his record or attack the challengers experience. Except in the best of situations, this works to the advantage of the challenger. Challengers also tend to be less "legitimate" than incumbents, and thus gain ground under point #3. Thus, Jennings doesn't want to debate and his opponents do.

Point #5 - Not debating can hurt you, but only in high visibility, close campaings - Ducking debates against serious opponents, for instance if you were running for president of the United States, would seriously hurt your polling numbers. But voters tend to not be well aware of the day-to-day news of mayoral campaigns, so they don't usually punish debate duckers. Ducking a debate against a marginal candidate is often less problematic than against a serious candidate in a close race, because voters expect debates in close races. Thus, Jennings doesn't mind missing the debate.

As you can see, Jennings has no reason to debate. His opponents have every reason to demand one. They will, and he won't. Case closed. Jennings is a hack, but right now he's just being a smart politician. His opponents will try to goad him into a debate using every rhetorical device in the book, but they know he won't fall for it. They need the debate, he doesn't.

Debates are wonderful traditions in democratic communities. They inform voters, allowing for the airing of issues, and let voters see politicians interact with each other. But for campaigns, they are either vital chances to gain ground or briar patches to be avoided at all costs. And they are treated as such by the candidates, through pure political calculations about the benefits and drawbacks that attending the debate has for their chances in the race. No more, no less. It has nothing to do with anything personal about the candidates. Joe Sullivan and Alice Green would be stonewalling just the same if they were in Jennings position. They might come up with better excuses - Jennings is laughably claiming he's "too busy" - but they would decline just the same. But that's the sad reality of debates. To understand them through the lens of the democratic ideal is just that - idealist. Enough already.

P.S. - It can be the case that everyone wants a debate. This happens often in wide-open races when no one is really sure what is going to happen, like the Soares/Clyne/Cusick race for county DA last fall (the general election, not the primary). Soares was the frontrunner, but needed the debate to silence his doubters. Clyne and Cusick both needed to make up ground. It can't produce a positive-sum result, but it can be percieved as a positive opportunity by everyone heading into the event.

P.P.S - I wish I could put the TU cartoon up, but it's not available on the website! I guess I'll just have to buy the print edition demand they put the whole paper online.

Liq-our-Treat: Statistically, Halloween is a drunk-driving debacle in the category of New Year's, Fourth of July, and Labor Day. Bet you dind't know that. How about this: Three times as many alcohol-related car crash fatalities happen on Halloween as on St. Patrick's Day. That's not good. And it sure as heck is surprisng, given the common perception of the two holidays.

Some people seem to think this is a new and growing trend: I certainly agree that Halloween is increasingly being marketed these days as a booze-fest for adults rather than a children's tradition. A quick look through today's Metroland reveals the following ads: costume party at the Alcove Pub, Halloween Party at the Bayou Cafe, Halloween Party at Valentine's, "Monster Bash" at Sneaky Pete's, Halloween Party at the Elbo Room, Halloween Party at Cafe Hollywood, Costume contest at the Waterworks Pub, 4th annual Halloween Bash at Big G's, an a "Halloween weekend at Jyllian's." That's more than I remember seeing 5 or 10 years ago. Throw on the beer commericals - like that Coors Light "sexy ghots" ad - and it sure seems like there is an aggressive campaign to promote drinking on Halloween.

On the other hand, this isn't a trend that has come out of nowhere. It just can't be the case that Halloween 30 years ago was no different than any other regular day in terms of DWI. College kids don't need much of an excuse for a party, and I assure you that they didn't just discover Halloween in the last decade. And I definitely remember there being some drunks at the school-sponsored Halloween Party when I was at Shaker in the early 90's. I also recall going to a Halloween party at Bogie's circa 1997 that was held in conjunction with their legendary "$5 all you can drink Thursday." So it's not like this is a trend that has been whipped up in the last few years. But it certainly does seem to have accelerated in the recent past, that's pretty clear to me.

One thing that magnifies the danger on Halloween is the ghosts and goblins that no one really thinks of Halloween as a big DWI day. Thus the public-safety messages, blanket police patrols, and generally wariness of people isn't there to deter would-be drunk drivers like it is on New Year's or St. Patrick's Day. Luckily, that seems to be changing: Maybe soon you'll be able to add Halloween to the list of nights you can score one of those "free cabs" back from the downtown bars.

P.S. On a semi-related topic, I have always wondered if the "college girls/women dressing up in the sluttiet costumes they can justify on Halloween" trend was a rather ancient tradition or just a modern treat that I happened to catch the wave of during my teen/college/young adult years. Whatever the case, the new emphasis on Halloween drinking must only be accelerating it, right?

RESTUARANT REVIEW: I've got a new favorite SmAlbany Indian place: Sitar ($$$, 2, 92, Central Ave., a few miles west of the northway). Some of the best Indian food I've had in a good while. We had pretty standard fare: chicken tikka masala and chana masala, and both were superb. The service was excellent. The only way to knock this place is the price: it's a bit more expensive than other Indian options around the Capital District, but I thought it was worth it. Plus, the Entertainment Book has a good coupon that can save you some money. The atmosphere is slightly more upscale than most Indian places, but definitely only slightly. Definitely a good location for a date. Most recently ate here: October, 2005.

Back in the saddle: It didn't take local sports anchor Dan Murhpy long to get back on the air after being dumped by WTEN back in August. As reported late yesterday: That's welcome news. I always liked Murphy on WTEN. I don't have a clear recollection of him when he was doing radio on WPTR, but I'm definitely eager to see what he can do with 2 hours a day of local sports talk.

Murphy's move will adds to the already nice set of options for sports talk radio listeners in the SmAlbany area. AM 980 now has Wyland, Jim Rome (syndicated), and Murphy going straight from 10am to 5pm, while WROW has Mike and the Mad Dog (syndicated) from 2pm to 6:30. And although I usually only listen to it for yankee games, WTMM 1300 has round the clock sports that features the Dan Patrick Show in the afternoon, Mike and Mike in the morning, and The Herd midday. All together, that's a local radio menu with a lot of variety and talent.

And gosh, it sure beats the old days. Seems like just yesterday I was trying to pull in WFAN 660 from New York in order to get any decent sportstalk during the afternoon drive.

Goodbye Fixins' Bar: Thank God the Thurway Authority finally decided to upgrade the food at the rest stops. Having gone to college in central New York and having taken numerous trips to Yankee Stadium every summer for most of my life, I'm definitely no stranger to the issue of what the hell kind of time warp has the Thruway food services been stuck in? Once upon a time, I simply thougth that all rest stops in the whole world were stocked with terrible food. Then I took I drive to Florida one year and it dawned on me that New York's are simply among the worst.

Here's the understatement of the week: Indeed. My dad has been hot about this topic since the Carter administration. I mean, did you ever go to the old Pattersonville stop, prior to the remodeling? I can remember stopping at a truck stop in the middle of the night in Alabama in college, surveying the place, and thinking to myself, "Well, it's definitely nicer than the old Pattersonville stop on the Thruway."

It must have been about 10 years ago that they upgraded the physical infastructure - the bathrooms, the exterior, etc. - at most of the rest stops, and that was great. Before that, you didn't even want to walk in those places. So it's not like we're talking about the old, decrepid rest stops. It's just that they never did a similar upgrade to the food vendors at a lot of the stops. The article mentions some of the new food choices that are coming in but it fails to mention the current choices, which are clearly the crux of the contemporary complaints, best put by reader B. Wolf in an email I received this morning: So true. Everyone eats at Bob's exactly once in their life. Then they're done with it. Two other points relating to rest stops:

1) There is one diamond in the rough on the Thruway - the Sloatsburg/Ramapo stop down between exit 15 and 16 on I-87 N/S. That place is simply amazing, at least in comparison to the other stops. It's like a mall. And there's covered parking. Plus, when you're coming home from a yankee game, it's the point on the trip when you know you are no longer in danger of downstate traffic, which is nice.

2) No matter what they do, the eastern part of the Mass pike is still king - not only are they the cleanest rest stops I've ever seen, but the food selection is great: Boston Market, Fresh City, Auntie Ann's, and Ben and Jerry's - all under one roof.

The Dumpling House: The seemingly endless road construction on Everett Road between the I-90 exit and Albany-Shaker Road has caused lots of headaches for the local businesses that reside there. In one case - the Dumpling House Chinese restaurant - it seems to have actually driven the restaurant out of business: Here's the thing: I've been to the Dumpling House dozens of times in my life. It's one of my in-laws favorite Chinese places. The service is good - the Changs are great - but the place is always empty. It's set to close October 30th, but I have always been amazed that it managed to last. I always figured it as a high-volume take-out joint since I couldn't imagine it did enough eat-in business to survive. That or it was a front for something.

So you can imagine my surprise last night when I went there with my in-laws and the place was absolutely packed. I'd never seen it even half as full. It seems that the construction slowed business, but actually announcing and preparing to go out of business revived the flow of customers. What a coup it would be if they managed to stay open because of the recent surge. I mean, that's why we were there - my in-laws wanted to go "one last time" - and that's why I assume other people were there. I have my doubts, though. I know a lot of people love it, but for me the food there has always been wonderfully mediocre, and it's clearly overpriced. My best guess is that the construction was just the nail in the coffin of what was a slowly sinking business to begin with. I mean, it's not like Beff's is exactly suffering these days. But I could be wrong.

Google and Blogs: Most people don't have a clue about the advanced features of Google, like Google Maps, Google Print , and Google Earth (which i discussed several weeks ago). My gosh, a lot of people don't even have the Google Toolbar yet. But perhaps the best Google software for anyone who reads blogs is the new Google Blog Search. It's by far the easiest way to search multiple blogs for a post on a given topic. And it updates virtually immediately, since it is based on atom feeds. Honestly, it blows Technorati away if you're just trying to search and don't care about links, etc.

Of course, I'm pretty sure Google doesn't offer a way to embed the search on individual blogs, so for now Oh, SmAlbany! will have to rely on FreeFind, whose search box I have placed below the archives on the right hand side of the blog. This is a long overdue way to search SmAlbany with ease. Happy back-post hunting!

Brave new SmAlbany: As long as we're on a tech kick, it's worth noting that Fox23 now has podcasts avaiable daily for both news and weather, as well as a weekly podcast of the high school sports show. Not bad, but not great - it's basically an .mp3 of the TV show, which means it's not adjusted for things like not seeing the weather graphics. I also found Radio Free Upstate (also a podcast), which offers conservative and libertarian commentary with an upstate slant. Haven't listened to it yet, so I can't offer an opinion.

Muffin Tops at Crossgates: Today's Times Union has a feature story on the "muffin-top" - the sultry combination of a female wearing low-rise, hip-hugging jeans and a little bit too much mid-section flab. That combination results in the look sported in the picture at right, which was formerly simply called "ugly." The article interviews researchers at various universities for their take on the matter, and that disappointed me. I got all the research I needed during my visit to Crossgates yesterday. The TU could have done some field research and landed a dozen interviews in 5 minutes. A few other highlights from my trek out to Guilderland:

1) Given the recent focus on teen-related problems at Crossgates, I can't imagine the mall is thrilled with the way Spencer Gifts has decorated the outside of their new space. The exterior of the store is faux brick with graffitti sprayed on it. And it extends around the bend of the store (out of sight of the storefront) to the point where some shoppers must be thinking that someone just tagged the mall. Very amusing.

2) I was asked to do one of those "quick test" surveys, where they pay you $5 to watch some commericals and report what you think. As a social science student, I was simply aghast at their research methodology. I won't bore you with the details, but let's just say that there's no way they are getting results with any external validity. I didn't say anything, though. I enjoyed the commericals and I bought a pretzel with the money.

P.S. Alert reader J.M. writes in to note that the TU basically ripped this story off from a Daily News story from this past summer. It's always fun when the local papers run features based on three-month old "Daily Dish" columns. Yeah, TU!

The Great voter-eligibility Debate: Up in Saratoga, it's once again time for the annual fight over whether and how the Skidmore students should be voting in the town elections. In a small town like Saratoga, 600 or 1000 votes from the college can turn the outcome of the election. At Ohio Statse - where there are 50,000 students, the college can be a major player in city politics. And that means that lots of people get really heated about whether or not they should be voting and also about little trivial detals, like whether they should have to walk to town in order to vote instead of a voting machine being placed on campus. All of this means it's again time for political science 101 here at Oh, SmAlbany! Itsn't it great what 6 years in graduate school will do for you?

As always, the first thing to throw out the window is the partisan rhetoric. It's important to remember that the rules of a democracy are often shaped by political preferences instead of philosophical values. This leads to lots of hypocrisy. It's why politicians so often flip-flop on fundamental issues and why partisan bloggers are so often caught making hypocritical statements. For almost any democratic rule worth debating, there are reasonable philosophical positions to support either outcome. People interested solely in the outcome simply pick the philosophical position that suits them as a justificaiton. So, of course, in Saratoga this means that the Republicans oppose Skidmore voting and the Democrats favor it, for the most part. In towns where the college is more conservative than the town (think Colorado Springs or South Bend), the opposite situation ensues.

Of course, beyond all the partisan rhetoric there is a serious philosophical debate about the voting rights of transient people. Let's first examine some reasons why it might be a bad idea for college students to be allowed to vote locally:

1) College students are barely residents of the town: At a school like Skidmore, the vast majority of college students go home to their families on every break from school. That means that they actually live in Saratoga about 26 weeks of the year, or half-time. So they are short-term, part-time residents at best. (Now, in some locales the laws have been drawn that you have to actually sign up for residency in your college town if you want to vote there. In other places (like New Haven, CT) you can vote ion the local elections regardless of your residency status. But that's simply a sub-question to the main question, and not particularly part of the philosophical issue.)

2) College students aren't part of the tax base: The vast majority of students live on campus, so they don't pay rent in town. Similarly, most of them get the vast majority of their meals on campus. In effect, they are only very slightly part of the local tax base, since Skidmore operates under the non-profit tax laws. They consume the services of the town without really paying for the services of the town.

3) College students don't have any long-term interest in the community: This is perhaps the fundamental objection to college town voting. While college students are a mainstay of any college town, the individual students aren't there very long. Thus they don't worry about the future of the town. For instance, college students would never support a public works project - like a library - that was going to take more than 5 years to complete (assuming they had to share the tax burden). They'd be gone. So if the trade off is higher taxes now for a library then, or some short-term project now vs. some better project long term, they are always going to side with the short-term. Democratic entities have enough trouble producing long-term benefiical results without the added complication of fundamentally short-term voters.

4) College students don't have any fundamental interests in the community: This is similar to the last item, but a different effect - college students don't have much interest in the long-term vitality of existing public life. This gives them all sorts of incentives to support policies that have short-term benefits but drastic long-term costs. For instance, college students would probably not support the improvement of the public school system (again assuming they had to share the tax burden), since they will be long gone before they have school-aged children. In effect, they are a permanent proportion of the town that really doesn't care about the town. And that's important, espeically in a town like Saratoga, where less than 100 votes can often determine the outcome of the elections, bonds, and school budget votes.

5) College students are rich and different - this is not a real objection, per se. But it's the way that the above objections are often articulated in college towns. Unlike Saratoga, most college towns feature populations of locals who are not wealthy. Saratoga is an exception in that the students at the college are probably not from families that are particularly more wealthy than the average citizen of the town. That's not true in most college towns. Furthermore, most college towns feature liberal campuses and conservative town populations, relatively speaking. Thus the complaint from the town is usually as follows: a bunch of rich kids who don't pay taxes and led a charmed upbringing are coming to the town and trying to pass liberal policies against the wishes of the simple folk on main street. In effect, college students are seen as the limosine liberals - rich kids in SUVs pretending to be working-class revolutionaries.

Ok. That's the basis of the philosophical objection. Now let's discuss some reasons why they should be voting:

1) Where else are they going to vote?: It's clear that college students should be allowed to vote somewhere. The ony real alternative to voting at the college is to have them all vote absentee back in their hometowns. But they don't really live there, either. In fact, the hometowns could argue just as easily as the college-towns that students shouldn't be voting there for all the reasons listed above! Sure, they have roots in those towns, but they are by and large not going to be heading back to the old towns. They don't pay taxes in the old towns. It's a weaker argument, but only by degree, not by kind.

2) Allowing them to vote in the college-towns increases their turnout: It has been shown they college students are far more likely to vote in the college-towns than they are in the hometowns. This is for a number of reasons: 1) being able to vote in person rather than by absentee ballot generates an easiness to the process that raises turnout. 2) Students tend to be more aware of local issues in the college-towns than they do in their hometowns, so they tend to be more interested in politics in the college-towsn. 3) Students in the college towns tend to have aggregate interest - i.e. the interests of college-students - while students who vote in the hometowns tend to not be affiliated with any particular local interests.

3) Voting in the college-towns builds better democratic citizens: The lowering of the voting age in 1971 had one nasty side-effect: People gained the right to vote just as they were generally being uprooted from the political community where they initially grew up - some were going off to college and others were moving as they found work in new communities. This placed people's intial entry into adult political life right at the moment they were least likely to have any knowledge or history in the community they currently resided. Several studies have shown that students who vote in college-towns are more likely than those voting in hometowns to continue to vote after they leave the college town and settle in a new area. The implication is clear: getting students to vote in the location they live can have an effect on their future voting habitis.

4) Voting in the college-towns improves the college-town relationship: Often, if the school is small compared to the town, allowing the students to vote has the effect of both softening the ability of the town to dump on the students with ridiculous rules while at the same time leaving the students unable to truly affect the other policy areas of the town that don't concern them. That's a happy outcome for both sides. This doesn't work well in places where the school overwhelms the town, but that's not most situations.

Personally, I'm very torn on this issue. There are bad results from either policy. If the college truly overwhelms the town, you have situations where the students, as voters, end up running the town to a certain degree. Sometimes students even run for mayor, hoping to bank on support from the other students. I don't think that's a good idea. On the other hand, when students don't vote in the small towns, the towns have a tendency to put in place policies that are sometimes quite anti-student. Throw in the beneficial effects of student voting and i'm probably in favor of college-town voting, but not by much.

At any rate, don't listen to the partisan on this one. They are simply worried about the effect of student voting on the political outcomes, not the philosophical question that underlies it.

P.S. I'm going to start collecting all of these PoliSci pieces into a new right-side tab, so they can easily browsed in the future. They seem to be some of my more popular posts, so I thought I'd make easy access available.

Online Newspaper Access: In the wake of the New York Times deciding to take some of its online content and make non-subscribers pay for it, it's worth remembering that the Schenectady Gazette does the same thing. That's right, you can't get any content in the Gazette online unless you sign up for a subscription. Predictably, the results of this policy have been the same at the NYT and the Gazette: few people subscribe and no one references the articles on the internet. Blog references to the pay-for content in the Times have dramatically fallen off since TimesSelect went live. And no one ever links to a story in the Gazette. It's a silly business model in the exploding age of Internet media, because so much of a paper's relevance is tied up in the degree to which the chattering class discusses it. The chattering class is now significantly online. The Times pundits, and the Gazette, for all intents and purposes, are not.

That's a shame, because the Gazette online has one thing going for it: it's a model of how online newspapers should be structured (you can peruse an example here). It looks like a regular newspaper. You can quickly browse it like a regular newspaper. You can search it rather intutively. It's not perfect, but it does offer a rather striking alternative to the Times Union site, which has the entire paper for free but is cumbersome to navigate.** Of course, I'd be remiss not to mention the worst local newspaper website: The Troy Record, hands down. Seemingly designed to frustrate the reader.

**Two points here that warrant mentioning:

1) The Times Union site is not a bad website. It's a bad newspaper website. As it turns out, I don't think the natural way people read the newspaper is anything like the way they naturally read the internet. The TU site makes sense as an internet site - it's just that everyone wants to read it like a newspaper. Thus the headaches as you try to get to the part of the paper you normally head for with your print edition.

2) The Times Union does offer a pay-for service that rivals - or even exceeds - the Gazette structure. It's called the e-edtion, and it delivers the goods...but again you have to pay. You can get old issues, however, which trades $2 for a trip to the library if you need a back issue.

Update: A knowledgable reader writes to inform us that back issues of the TU can be had online: Beyond 1995, you're still heading to the library, though.

In the inbox: I received this email this morning from Iraq:
The pleasure is all mine. Jeremy - you should know that I speak for the vast majority of people in Albany when I say that I sincerely appreciate your efforts in Iraq and your service to our country more generally. The email sent a chill down my spine when I first read it. It is surreal and very humbling for me to think Oh, SmAlbany! is, in some small way, making a soldier in Iraq feel closer to home.

And the converse is true as well. A letter like this really makes me feel connected to a war that is relatively easy for many of us to be detached from. I don't personally know anyone who is in Iraq, and it's therefore easy for me to sometimes let a day pass without even thinking about it. Thank you, Jeremy, for at least momentarily reprimanding my selfishness. I'll keep you in my prayers.

Best of luck in finishing your assignment, soldier. Albany awaits your safe return.

Clownin' around: Anyone who, like me, went to grade school in the greater SmAlbany area in last 25 years surely remembers Cranberry the Clown, who was featured in a Times Union cover story yesterday. I must have seen her act at least once a year when I was a kid, usually on stage in the elementary school cafeteria, but occaisonally at a birthday party or a little league parade day.

Of course, I never had any inkling of the difficulties that forced Cranberry - who's real name is Jan Potter - to start her career as a clown: That's impressive. Good for you, Cranberry.

P.S. I was definitely a Cranberry supporter in my younger days, but in the realm of school assmeblies I was always partial to magician Jim Snack, who is apparently now - and I'm not making this up - a motivational speaker who does magic as part of his talk.

P.P.S. This TU article is a classic example of how their Life/Leisure/Special Interest section sometimes tends toward bad writing by way of trying too hard. The article is simultaneously excesively long and short on factual information. It's also written in a strange style - i can only describe it as "detached" or "dream-like" - that seems to demand a new paragraph almost every sentence. It also fails in its attempt to weave flashbacks into the prose. It's like the story itself was not deemed good enough, so the writer was told to get creative with the structure of the article. Wierd. Effort: B+, achievement: C-.

Sellin' like colonial hotcakes: It appears that one important detail was left out of last week's debate over heritage tourism in Albany - we don't have enough pankcake houses! As reported in the Sunday Times Union travel section cover story, Williamsburg, VA has more than just America's colonial history to keep its heritage tourism afloat: And just in case you were worried, this is clearly not a conicidence: All kidding aside, read the whole article. It gives a good sense of the tradeoffs that a community makes when it heads toward a heritage tourism economy. While the article gushes about the greatness of the Williamsburg - Chesapeake - Jamestown - Norfolk tourist corridor, one can easily see the drawbacks to such heritage-industry-as-local-economy, most notably the loss of any real local history. Williamsburg is simply one hell of a fake colonial town, stuck in 1760.

Not only will Albany never be Williamsburg, I'd never want it to be Williamsburg.

Also: Reader B.W. had this response to the Albany tourism debate: I'm a little more charitable than that, but point taken.

Midterm election '06: If you're thinking of running for Congress next fall, let me suggest one possible issue: McNulty's absoultely pathetic website. The thing looks like every final project for Computer Science 101: Introduction to HTML editing, circa 1997. You see, Mike, if you put a slash before the i, it turns the italics off. It's unbelievable that any Congressman has a website this ridiculously amateur, nevermind the one from the area trying to reinvent itself as "Tech Valley." It's like McNulty rushed up a website after the dot-com boom, and then forgot to update the layout for the last 10 years.

After a quick perusal through other congressional websites (accesible here), I am positive that it is the worst of all 435 House member sites. Most members of Congress have professional, if not great, looking websites (an average example here), offer readers tons of policy information (example here), or at the very least make you confident that they didn't outsource the job to a local 5th grade class project, even if you would never call the website "good" (example here).

P.S. Check out Sweeney's site. Clean, clear, and accessible. Would it kill McNulty to cut and paste the source code?

"Albany, garbage addict": Alice Green released her platform yesterday. From the Times Union article: That's a poor statement, politically speaking, because:

#1) Voters don't like being told what is wrong with them. Welcome to mass democracy 101: don't insult the voters. No one wants to hear that they are stupid or closed-minded or bigoted or selfish. No one want to hear that they are a garbage addict and if they do want to hear it, they were already going to vote for you anyway. At least she said Albany was a garbage addict and not "the people of Albany," but still. Net gain: negative.

#2) It unintentionally makes Jennings' plan sound really appealing. The landfill has become a cash cow? It has raised tens of millions of dollars? And this has covered defecits in the budget? Sounds like we should build more of them! Obviously, Green didn't mean it this way, but that's how the average reader is going to interpret it. Net gain: very negative.

Here's a rewrite of the quote that would have worked much better: Not bad. I wrote that in 8 seconds. You'd think the Green campaign could do almost as good with a few hours work.

Whatever the merits of the Green candidacy, it is obvious that the Green campaign is being run by a bunch of amateurs. That's too bad. Although I'm pretty sure Jennings would whip her in a fair fight, this has become much a joke. Running a sloppy campaign like this is a death knell against a seasoned pro like the Tanman. He's not my favorite, but I guarantee you his political advisors would never let him come off in a platform interview the way Green did yesterday. Sure, it's subtle. But it's still a disaster.

And voters are smarter than you think. You might respond by saying something like, "It's just one silly quote, Matt. No one actually cares if Green puts her foot in her mouth politically in one interview." I disagree. It sends the signal that she's a political lightweight. Sure, the Tanman is fake and moderately hackish, but people know that he's also ruthless and cunning. Whether you agree with his policies or not, no one doubts that he has the political skills to win the tough battles. A mayor who represents your policy positions is still worthless if he/she is politically ineffective. I may not always agree with Jennings, but he usually gets his way. And that counts for a lot when you know the mayor will be dealing with all sorts of tricky political situations - the thicket of interests in city politics can crush you if you aren't careful. There are also the situations that pit Albany's collective interests against other locales in the state. Would you really want Alice Green sitting down with Pataki and Silver and Bruno to try to extract state money for Albany? Me neither.

P.S. What kind of newspaper informs the readers that a candidate has released their platform, but doesn't go on to describe the platform in any detail? It's like the TU wants you to think that Green Party candidates only put environmental issues in their platforms...

A Saint's worst nightmare: While I think the ultimate nightmare would be for SUNY basketball to outdraw Siena in attendance, I don't think that will happen this year or anytime soon. However, SUNY might be good enough this year to steal the banner headline in the sports section when both teams play on the previous night. Who woulda thunk it. Certainly, they are a huge favorite over Siena to still be playing basketball in mid-march. And they will almost certainly bury them when they play each other on December 3rd.

I, for one, never thought I'd see this day. George Weber, god rest his soul, must be rolling over in his grave right now.

Alice Green - Puffin' the Magic Dragon?: So 1/3 of Peter, Paul, and Mary was in town yesterday to lend a hand to the Green for Mayor campaign. Very cool. Unfortunately, it seems like Green doesn't really know what she wants for the Albany public schools. Exhibit A: So far, so good. Reasonable people can debate this kind of public policy, but I would probably side with Green in the end. I wouldn't want to feel like I was in prison either. But then there's this: So let me review this here: Green has a "variety of programs" she would like to implement to reduce violence in the schools, but she "opposes any proposal" that would give the mayor any power on the school board.

Well then. I'm not saying these things are contradictory - they technically aren't. You could come up with a lot of good programs and implement them without any power over the school board. But two things come to mind:

#1) It'd be a lot easier to implement them if you had some power on the school board - what do you do when the school board is at odds with you? I guess you dump the programs? Doubtful.

#2) Obviously, it's not like Green has any principled problem with the mayor defining policies at the public schools - she clearly wants to be a player in public education in the city, and that's a good thing. It's rather ridiculous for her to pretend that she doesn't want to influence the board. This is just a poor attempt at good politics - attacking Jennings for something that she'd be just as guilty of doing. What mayor doesn't want control over everything?

Why not just come out and say it? That it would be a good thing if the mayor - who has a lot of power the board doesn't - could have a little more than persuasion over the school board. It's obvious that both the Tanman and Green want to influence the public schools - would it be so bad to structure things so they could? I could be convinced, but I don't think so. Oh wait, here's this problem:

That's silly. School boards are already hotbeds of partisan - in the 18th century sense - politics. And obviously both candidates for mayor want to be influential on the board.

This is just fairweather federalism under a differnet guise. Not that I mind the attacks on Jennings, I don't think his education policy is particular sound.

More on Albany as tourist destination: In response to my recent post about why Albany can never be a hotbed of heritage tourism, I got this email from Paul Bray, longtime Albany supporter and co-founder of the Albany Civic Agenda: Well, now we know why so many people call the ACA a bunch of well-intentioned dreamers. I mean, come on Paul. You might get away with that kind of pie-in-the-sky nonsense over at Democray in Albany, but we can't let it slide by over here. Do you really think anything on that list is going to attract tourists to Albany from farther away than, say, Utica? Just reading it over makes me laugh. Washington Park as tourist destination? UAlbany's campus as a model of architecture? And then there's the associations with past presidents. Like I said Monday, I've been to the Van Buren House ten times. It's not a tourist destination and it never will be. And Arthur's grave?. Trust me, you couldn't pay locals to take a trip to the Albany rural cemetary. And Roosevelt does have a nice tourist spot - but it's a mansion down in Hyde Park.

The comparative advantage of Albany as a heritage tourist town is not much. Trust me, no one is going to travel here to check out Lock 7. Rocky's errection is startling, but it's hardly the kind of history we'd be looking to preserve - it's only a monument to Albany heritage if you are talking about the political machine and the greenback slushfund flowing through the state government. And everthing else - the historic churches, state street, the old houses - well that's just niche tourism, anyway.

A few things on the list I can agree with: the capital is a magnificent building that might attract some tourists. The state museum is nice, something most smaller cities don't have. And by virtue of being a rather old city, Albany's history intersects with major pieces of American history. But so does virtually every other city in the northeast. And that's the problem - in order to be a tourist destination, you need to show people why it's great to come to your city and why you can do and see stuff there that you can't find anywhere else. And Nipper and the Egg are not going to make the cut. You need the big bang.

The bottom line is that you cannot produce a heritage tourism industry from the supply side. If there is no natural demand, the odds are incredibly against the artificial creation of such demand. The city could spend $100 million dollars pushing the above list of items, and it wouldn't change the bottom line: we don't have the one big thing that will get tourists here. It's cold half the year, there are no beaches, and there's no grand canyon. And that's why we're different than Charleston - they have Fort Sumter, they have the beaches, and they have that lovely carolina weather. Once you have that kind of natural demand, it's easy to do supply-side type things to enhance your attractiveness as a tourist town. But you'll never create that initial demand artificially. It just doesn't work that way. To say the difference between Albany and Charleston is just that Charleston has its act together and we don't is like saying we could produce as much orange juice as Florida, but we just don't have our act together. It's patently ridiculous.

Now, does this mean that we shouldn't care about Albany's heritage? Of course not. But let's be realistic here. There's a difference between actively preserving Albany's past and trying to sell the city as a heritage tourism town. That's the point I was trying to make on Monday. And in subtle ways, I think it's better not to be shooting for tourism - you don't create faux history like Williamsburg, you don't have to emphasize stuff that is popular over stuff that is actually historically relevent, and you don't have to spend a ton of public money on advertising and public relations. Instead, you can actively preserve things like historic buildings and old churches. The little things that are part of a real history, not a tourists history.

Look, I'm damn proud of Albany's heritage. I love its Dutch past and its Irish influence. I love the old buildings and I love the political history. And I'd love to spend more public money than we currently do to promote that history and preserve it. But it's just crazy to think that we can actually produce a tourism industry here. To argue that we have the "resources and narratives" is to misunderstand what makes a mid-sized city tourist destination popular - the one big thing. And that's what we don't have.

So, yes, scream at the politicos if you want them to spend more money and have more sensitivity toward historic Albany. But get off the soapbox and stop pretending that Albany's history could turn this town into Gettysburg if we just played our cards right. It's hackish idealism and a waste of time.

P.S. - I do wonder what Bray thinks are the reasons "why Albany metro is unlikely to become a heritage tourism destination" if it's not the lack of resources and narratives? My assumption is that he would point to the political system as the problem, just like Metroland did. But that's just a guess...

Good Idea, Poor execution: So far, the month-old Times Union experiment with blogs has - how should I put this - been a disappointment lacked energy not lived up to its potential. I don't have any knowledge of how many hits the blogs are getting, but I can't imagine they are getting very many. Here's why:

1) The blogs have zero personality: This is the TU's fault. The writer's seem to have no power to spruce up their blog's physical appearance. All of the blogs are bulit from the same basic template, and it's not a very good one at that. You feel like you're "stuck" inside the TU website. Every blog looks exactly the same, right down to the font, which also doesn't seem to be alterable - no one uses blockquotes for instance, even when quoting a TU article. That's not blogging. And while all writers hate to admit it, presentation counts when you are trying to build readership.

THE FIX: Allow the bloggers to modify their sites and get some individuality going. Train them in some basic web development if necessary.

2a) The blogs have tended toward journal-blogging: By and large, the kids writing the high school sports blogs are decent writers. I've been mildly impressed. But almost all of them have taken the route of writing basic diaries of their experiences, from a very closed perspective - we hear about what they did, how they felt, and so on, but we don't get a sense of the teams they play for at all . That's fine, but as I pointed out a while back, it's really hard to do that in a compelling manner. Outside readers (like me) have trouble caring if they don't know the team personally.

2b)The blogs lack focus: This follows from the above criticism. Many of the blogs often stray from their intended material. Sometimes they talk about their sports team, but sometimes they talk about whatever they feel like.

THE FIX: The TU should encourage the bloggers to find an interesting "angle" for their blog, and they should encourage them to stick to it.

3) The blogs are being strangely promoted : The TU is pushing the blogs, for sure. If you go on the website or open the sports section of the print edition, you'll see little advertisements directing you toward the blogs. But that's not good enough. If I were the TU, I'd challenge the bloogers to come up with quality pieces surrounding TU-suggested topics, and then print the best one's in the regular section of the paper, both online and in print. Right now, the blogs are being treated as a separate kiddie-pool to the real paper. Getting some integration would both enhance the readership and compel the bloggers to write better material. I mean, if the point of the blogs is to get a viewpoint that doesn't exist in the regualr paper, then it only makes sense that said viewpoint should occasionaly appear in the regualr paper, no?

THE FIX: The TU should notify the bloggers that quality and timely pieces of writing may be picked up for the regular paper. And then they should follow through.

The Times Union took a pretty bold step in heading toward blogs. But they seem hesitant to take the steps that would really make their blog experiment a part of the newspaper. Obviously, this is a first run for them. Hopefully, they will head in the direction of better, more integrated blogs.

What's the definition of Albany?: Well, that's the question that I looked up this morning on Wikipeida, the online encyclopedia that is open source so that anyone can edit it. Here's the entry for Albany. Not bad - you get history, geography, demographics, some nice facts. A decent entry.

However, an important tidbit appears in the second paragraph, much to my surprise: Whoa. And note that they use the far less popular, though in my opinion better, capital S-lowercase m-capital A-one l spelling.

The Cap City? I guess.

Pack your bags, honey, we're going to Albany: Look, I love Albany. I love the town, I love the people, I love the history, I love the politics. And I definitely love the architecture. I'm about as big of an Albany apologist as you will find and a perpetual optimist and promoter of the city. But even I had to laugh at Shawn Stone's and Ann Morrow's articles in Metroland this week, which had two basic points, one reasonable and one ridiculous:

A reasonable point: Albany's city government doesn't do enough to preserve historic sites around town. Writes Stone: I can agree with this. Things tend to get knocked down instead of preserved. Like many cities, Albany spent the past two generations trying to cope with the new reality of automobile transportation and its downsteam progeny, commuters. The 787 interchanges were probably a mistake, and the new comptroller's building is kinda blah. All true.

Maybe we should think more about historical preservation. I could get behind that kind of effort. Giving the city a better sense of its past would definitely be the kind of thing that could do wonders for the atmosphere downtown and in many of the neighborhoods.

A ridiculous point: This lack of preservation deprives Albany of what could be an "economic engine" - heritage tourism. Writes Morrow: Just give me a break. Every time I think Metroland has bounced back into reality, they come out with nonsense like this. Albany floats - broadly speaking - on the state goverment, end of story. That's what it has, in the economic sense. Throw in some tech development, some good colleges, and there you are. Have the editors of Metroland ever been to Bridgeport, CT? Or Allentown, PA? Or Kingston? Those cities have tons of history. Just an overflow of history. But guess what? They are economically depressed, and it's not because they missed the boat and forgot to build a heritage tourism industry.

I mean, please. How many places in the United States can benefit from heritage tourism? I can think of a few: Williamsburg, Gettysburg, Sturbridge, Mystic, various small towns in Vermont, Cooperstown if you count it. It's just not the basis for augmenting a medium-sized city economy. It's not like the Shakers haven't been trying out in Colonie. But they aren't exactly pushing wheelbarrows full of money around the Ann Lee preserve. And even more to the point, what's so great about Williamsburg, VA - it's just a fake town that plays on people's misperceptions about the colonial era and tries to sell them expensive faux junk from the 18th century. There's nothing particularly historic about it. It kinda sucks. And unless you have the "big deal" - like Gettysburg or Cooperstown - you not talking about streets paved in gold.

Morrow tries to compare Albany to Charleston, SC, arguing that Charleston does everything to preserve its history that Albany should be doing, and is thus a great heritage economy. But Charleston has always been a tourist destination. The weather is nice, it's on the coast, and - by the way - the civil war began out in the harbor on an island that the feds pay to maintain as a tourist attraction. It's not a big deal to orient your public policies around maintaining and augmenting that kind of tourist attraction. And Charleston does a great job of it - you can tour plantations, you can walk along faux antebellum era cobblestone roads, and you'll never see more sweetgrass baskets and confederate flags for sale than down at the Old City Market.

The point of all this, of course, is that you can't simply build a tourist town, and you certainly can't build a heritage economy from nothing. And while it's true we don't have nothing, we don't have the tourist attractions around which it makes sense to build a preservation economy. The people who care about Albany, NY are the people who live around Albany, NY. No one flies in from California to check out our city for a week. Maybe they should, but they don't. And fixing up the old buildings and trying to build a heritage economy won't change that. Neither will a convention center. Hell, building casinos wouldn't change it, either.

That's life. We have a lot of history, but we don't have any key pieces of American history. Yeah, I've been to the Martin Van Buren house. Ten times. I've never seen anyone else there at the same time. I've looked at Chester Arthur's grave, I've admired Rocky's errection, I've strolled down the million dollar staircase, and I've walked along the Corning Preserve - all in the same morning and always virtually alone. Our history - Albany's history - is not of interest to the average tourist. Not even close. Even Saratoga battlefield isn't historically "big" enough, and that's way bigger than anything in Albany. I mean, I could imagine a day trip to Albany - if you lived in upstate New York to begin with - but is there enough to see that you'd even consider getting a hotel room?

And this is what just infuriates me about the Metroland article. They take a perfectly reasonable point - that we should do more to preserve the city - and they think they need to make it the be all and end all of economic life in Albany in order to sell the idea. And they have to blast the city government at every opportunity. This is why some people run the city and others daydream about it.

We should preserve historic Albany, but not for the tourists and not for a heritage economy. We should preserve it for ourselves, and because historic preservation is worthwhile in its own right. And yes, that means compromise: downtown will have to have new buildings suited for the modern economy and some historic structures will have to go. But at least it won't be a tacky tourist trap. The last thing we need is to be doing preservation on some bottom-line economic calculation. Not only would no one show up, but that's not preserveration, it's faux history for economic gain. We can't make heritage tourism a focal point of the city. It simply won't work. Would you trade the state government for a historically redeveloped Albany? Of course not.

Albany's history is worth saving, but not because it will save Albany.

Local milestone, national anomoly: I bet you didn't know that the Doane Stuart School in Albany is the only successful example of a Protestant and Catholic school merging in the entire United States. As reported by the Time Union over the weekend, the school celebrated the 30th anniversary of the merger over the weekend: Of course, Doane Stuart has a special place in my heart - my wife and I got married in their chapel. In fact, SJC's family is Catholic and my family is Methodist, making our merger pretty darn Donae Stuart-ish.

Attention Scalpers: The TU is reporting today that the county has dumped Ticketmaster as the vendor for tickets at the Knickerbocker Pepsi Arena. Apparently, tickets.com outbid Ticketmaster for the contract: Two thoughts here:

1) My god the Internet is great for business competition: Wasn't it just last decade that Ticketmaster- after it shoved out Ticketron - was quickly becoming a monopoly? Now it's being outbid by an outfit called Tickets.com? I thought the dot-com bubble burst like 6 years ago. I wonder if this will mean fewer surcharges. Paging Eddie Vedder!

P.S. Tickets.com is owned by...Major League Baseball? Who knew!

2) The Price Chopper angle: Apparently, you will also be able to buy Pepsi Arena tickets at Price Chopper:
In some ways this is quite a surprise. Not to harp on the "back in the 90's" theme, but this would have been huge news in, say, 1992. I can remember when the Bookmark bookstore in Newtown Plaza on Route 9 became a ticketmaster outlet around 1991. For a while, it was the big secret for getting great concert tickets. All the suckers would be down in long lines at the arena or trying to get through on the phone, and meanwhile there would be 7 people in line at the Bookmark, all of whom would have their tickets 2 minutes after they went on sale. It was great. I remember going there with my dad to get tickets to the Siena-Tulane NIT game, getting pretty darn good downstairs seats, and then watching the news that night show all the disappointed people who couldn't get a ticket down at the arena.

But the point, of course, is that the Internet has rendered such secrets - and the whole concept of going somewhere to buy a concert ticket - totally moot. It really doesn't matter if you can buy tickets at Price Chopper, since you can buy tickets now (and print them out) sitting in your bedroom in your underwear. I'm actually surprised that Price Chopper is getting into the ticket business now - it seems like a service that was basically designed for the internet to completely swallow.

P.S. According to the TU article, Tickets.com is promising an easier to navigate website than the Ticketmaster one. That's kind of surprising - I always thought that Ticketmaster did a good job with their online sales division.

P.P.S. That's a real tearjerker in the above paragraph, eh? Siena in the NIT and selling out the Pepsi! God, that seems like ages ago...

Live, Local, and on the 'net: While researching the above post, I stumbled onto this. I know, I know. Who knew that local news celebrities had webpages! There's probably a post or twenty worth of material in there, but it's not really my turf. Paging the AlbanyEye...

Gentlemen, start your engines: In the immortal words of Deion Sanders, "I'm ba-ack." Now, I'm not promising the same level of content I was outputting over the summer, but I will be posting daily with at least one reasonable entry. And just like Mark McGwire, I'm not here to talk about the past: we're going to bury Giesel and the rest off the old news crowd. Their fifteen minutes is up on this blog.

Like the Figgs in the summer of 1995, you can consider this the triumphant return of Oh, SmAlbany!.