I can't wait to try this out

In kind of the spirit of (e:metalpeter) 's last post I have my own thoughts on the issue, but more so from the transportation side of things. This was influenced by listening to On Point this morning during my drive in to work. It was titled, The End of Affordable Air Travel?

It really reinforced some major points to me, the one being that at some point we are going to go back to flying as a luxury as it was back before regulation. Flights will be sparse and some cities will lose their service all together. The effect on tourism and even say grandparents visiting their kids and grandchildren are going to be major issues. So if someone is really family oriented taking that job down in the Southeast or Southwest may not happen, unless their family moves down with them. Who knows it may lead to someone taking a lower paying job in WNY just so they may see their family often instead of once every 10 years. Yea, you can make the point of keeping in touch with iChat, but really does it make up for a real hug or your grandma's fresh baked goodies?

What really gets me is that with airfare going through the roof taking that trip elsewhere may not be cost effective anymore. If it is going to cost $400 to fly to a city that you can drive to within 8 hours flying will lose out in the end. Going through the B.S at the airport just isn't worth it.

That's where I hope we may have a resurgence with train travel. I remember seeing a special on PBS about the (WIKIPEDIA - Pioneer_Zephyr) and realized what we could have had if train travel wasn't squashed by cheap oil for decades. It would really come in handy now wouldn't it? Could you imagine the Central Terminal if it wasn't piecemealed off 28 years ago? Especially if we had real "High Speed Rail" like they do in Europe & Japan? Not that "higher than the freight train thingy we have now between NYC & DC" Laying the track for a rain system is costly, but once is set up it is a kick ass way of moving people around efficiently in regards to a carbon footprint.

So in the end I think people are going to eventually fall back into the cities by circumstance not by choice (e:metalpeter) We will be like the French, in where the Rich live in the inner city & the poor live in the 'burbs. Some of the sprawl had to deal with people chasing "the best & newest." So where do you build a new house? Out where there is space, especially since you're going to build a McMansion with a 3 car garage & a storage place for that 40' "Dick Boat" and the R.V. You won't fit 3 cars, a camper, boat and jetski in that city lot. So you destroy a forest and build on a swamp so you can squeeze all of those toys in your property. Because you are chasing the next "best of the best" product like the newest line of spring fashion or the newest best high tech device. You wouldn't believe the amount of peices of furniture, rooms and kitchens that are bought and remodeled just so people can show them off to their neighbors. It got beyond utilitarian living & just became a pissing contest of "I have a Ralph Lauren ______ 2005 edition Blah. When it would get to be 2015, time to remodel & change everything even though everything works & is still functional. It's funny as I remember when my older generation of my family all died off they still had most of the same stuff they had when they first moved in to the houses they had. My mom hustled my great uncle's 1950's kitchen table & chairs along with the old school oven. The only reason why he got rid of the 'suffocation death trap" white latch refrigerator was it broke in the 80's & parts were not available any longer. My point is the stuff they had worked just fine & they never felt the need to remodel. Ironically when they passed the stuff they had was extremely valuable, since it was authentic & should have never survived our consumerism culture.

It was brought to my attention last night as I was leaving the R.E.M show. There weren't too many suckers like myself that parked & paid $20 to drive home. Most of the people were crossing the bridge on Lakeshore Blvd to catch the Go Train or the TTC. Yea, that was a good time last night :-) but seriously I wish I could afford to live in Toronto and ditch the car, but that is another post sometime...

Oil up more than $10 a barrel in one Day!!!

Yea, in a sick way I kind of enjoying it. I own shares of UGA the U.S. Gasoline Fund Exchange Traded Fund. It is basically a basket of Gasoline Futures Contracts, so when the price of Gas goes up, so does this Fund. Hey, I just wanted in on a piece of the action. It's a still a capitalist kind of society until next January when most likely things will change drastically. Not because of some grassroots mandate, but by circumstance. This is only the begining. 30 years of an economic boom fed by an easy money orgy is not going to be corrected by 6 months of "flat" growth and bounce back like some bad cold recession like in 2001. This is going to be 1930's time and as prices for everyday things explode like Wilhelm Germany things are going to get ugly.

From my perspective things in this country are going to go left for a very long time. Everyone is going to be affected, heck even Ed McMahon is going to lose his home and he is supposed to be that "Great Depression Generation" that kept saving every penny they made, kept a cellar filled with canned goods & stole all the condiments from the restaurants they went to.

Then again it is what we signed up for when the Alpha Males on Wall St came up with these "innovative" products to make "Joe 6 Pack" a mini Donald Trump. No one complained about inflation when Real Estate Prices shot up to the stratosphere & people had to sign their lives away. What perfect timing was it when the changed the bankruptcy laws right before the top of the slippery slop started to turn? Everyone wanted to keep their profits private when their house doubled or tripled in a few years. Now they want to nationalize the losses when they owe the bank more money now that their mortgage is under water?

It makes me wonder if America is really the ultimate capitalist society that it claims to be? Money like life is a Zero Sum game, the losers pay off the winners, the Credits balance the Debits. Right now it seems that no one wants to pay off what they owe. It may be true that we never want to go too far to the left, since Americans are always for free enterprise and such. But with powerful market forces at work I leave you with this one thought.

What if in the ultimate free market Capitalist way a Hedge Fund cornered the market on some life saving Pharmaceutical Drugs keeping them out of reach of the public; With the intention of holding them on pure speculation that they price would go up? It would be a free market with those with access to capital using their leverage to gain more capital, thus making a profit...

These are interesting times, it will be interesting to remember when before the return to strict regulation people used to drive up the cost of shelter, heat, food, ect.

For the most part I really was a bore this weekend. The only thing I really ventured out in doing was going to check out this attempt at an outdoor festival in Niagara Falls Ontario called Springlicious
It really wasn't all that rocking when I stopped by on Saturday afternoon, although the weather had something to do with it.


Although I have to say one good thing, it was a good feeling to sample food without being attacked by strollers as is so common at any outdoor event in Western New York.

What really surprised me is how much the Niagara Falls Ontario downtown has deteriorated. Queen St is starting to look like any burned out downtown in western New York. For the most part the only thing down there is City Hall and Orchid formerly the Daily Planet.

We then just decided to hit a Real Tim Horton's and do something else. What came next was a stop at the Penn Centre in St. Catherine's. It's just lately I have been feeling less and less Canadian for some reason. It could be the absence of seeing another U.S. plate when I was driving a bit deeper in the Niagara Region. The dollar & customs going back in the U.S. has the lion's share of why Americans just don't visit anymore. The problem with that is being Canadian and feeling part of the country is a core part of my being. Lately I just feel it slipping away on many levels. SO what did I do? I bought a Roots hoodie and I made sure that it featured the lettering Canada on it somewhere. The next thing I did was I stopped at the beer store to buy a 12 pack of Carling Black Label. Canadian beer prices are not cool as it was $20 for a 12 pack of beer that is on par with PBR.

Anyway when ever I have free time and resources I plan on messing around in Canada this summer. It really gets into gear with the R.E.M. concert next weekend, of which I currently have an extra ticket is anyone is interested.

Originally a comment, but I decided to post it due to size.

I wasn't too thrilled about the square last night. To be honest I was there for a grand total of 35 minutes and left. The masses really got to me to be honest. The smoke was as if you were indoors and I just couldn't stand all the people walking aimlessly with a beer in one hand and a cell phone in another. Oh, and those "hot topic" kids on Main st really pissed me off.

All I can say is I'm glad that there really isn't anyone I' too crazy about on this year's schedule. To be honest if there was someone was passionate about, I'd flip. Trying to focus on an artist is tough in the "world's biggest outdoor happy hour" environment. At this point I am happy to pay to see a concert to be around liked minded people, not kids trying to distract themselves or people just there taking up space for something to do. You could throw Lance Diamond up there on stage and still get the 10,000 people crowd. It's all about drinking, free entertainment, and trying to get a phone number, all while trying to to look good in doing so. I can go to Chippewa any weekend for that, if I really wanted it.

The biggest surprise of the night was the amount of people squeezed into Tim Horton's! Not even in Canada do you get so many people getting their coffee & donuts at one time. Yea, it was cold so coffee was in order I suppose.

In closing I just didn't get a good vibe at all from the first Tats.

At this point I wish I could attend more Tuesday's in the Gorge at Artpark. You wont' have to deal with the punk kids or homeless looking people. Shit, I must be getting old & snobby :-/