How to keep visitors out of downtown

In our society's continued efforts to offer fewer services for the same (or more) money is the automatic parking lot.

If you are unfamiliar with the concept, it's just as it sounds. You go in, you park. You pay a machine that gives you a receipt. That receipt then gets you out of the lot. Simple in concept, abosuletly horrible in execution. Of the various times I have used these lots, never once has it gone smoothly. Someone always forgets to pay ahead of time; and more often than not, there's trouble with the machine at one end or the other, leading to long lines and frustraited patrons.

Tonight was my turn. I spent 10 minutes in the freezing cold trying to force the ticket (which I had dutifully paid for earlier) into a machine. I finally gave up and hit the talk button. That person may have been somewhere on the premises -- or halfway across the city for all I knew -- he just told me I was doing it wrong. I wasn't, but it took a few more minutes of tyring before a security guard type came over, looked at it, and realized the machine wasn't working. Now, could he pass me through the line, after standing in the freezing cold for all that time? Of course not. I had to cut into the other line to finally extract myself from the ramp.

It put me in a remarkably foul mood -- one that erased most of the good cheer I had from the show I had just seen at the Guthrie. And I imagine the other folks who've had this experience over the months had the same reaction. They weren't talking about the show they saw or the time at the museum or the great restaurant or just having a good time downtown. They were complaining about the damn parking. Considering this is in the district that Minneapolis has spent a lot of money to redevelop and is hanging its future on, that's not a good sign. People already are worried about safety downtown. They don't like the hassles they have to deal with while there; and they certainly don't want to cap it off by wasting time in the parking lot because the city doesn't want to hassle with any kind of human contact to deal with problems. In the end, people find other places to go -- some in more friendly neighborhoods in the city; many out to the suburbs where things are a lot easier.

And I know exactly where they are coming from. After tonight, if it wasn't for my job, I doubt I'd go back to the Guthrie again. I certainly don't plan to head downtown for any outside fun in the near future -- and it's at most five minutes from my house.

Punk as all fuck

Punk is, of course, dead. Has been for a long time. Most likely somewhere between Green Day topping the charts and Hot Topic introducing a full line of authentic Misfits T-shirts. But that doesn't stop new generations from getting angry, or understanding the purity of three chords and a cloud of dust.

I've been thinking about this a bit as of late, after making a series of trips to Extreme Noise, my friendly neighborhood collectivist record store. Mpls. has long had a solid punk rock scene, dating back the 70s really. The anarcho/hardcore/crust/whatever you want to call it has been strong for about 20 years (with ebbs and flows I would imagine) and Extreme Noise is a nice face on it all.

Anyway, I've come home with a collection of different stuff as of late, trying to move away from the underground metal I've been devouring in recent months and back to more a straight-forward punk sound. The best of the lot so far is Behind Enemy Lines, who have a lot of righteous anger (I'd be angry too if I was based in Pittsburgh) that blazes on their latest, One Nation Under the Iron Fist of God. It's basically been in my car stereo and on the iPod continously for the last week. Powerful stuff, especially a double-shot of post-Katrina tunes that put it all into focus (the 1984 references up top are pretty cool as well).

Some of the other stuff is taking a while, mainly because groups like Totalitar, Protestera and Krigshot don't sing in English. Still, no matter the language, the anger is there.

Right, dinner beckons. And then more political noise I think.

Owned by Yoshi

I spend an inordinate amount of time huddled with a controller in hand or huddled over the tiny screen on my Nintendo DS -- certainly more time than someone approaching 40 should do. Yet the thrill of controlling little avatars of myself hasn't changed over the past 25 years or so, back when a few pixels were enough to entertain me.

Which doesn't mean I love everything about gaming, and my ire this time is directed at a seemingly innocent title, "Yoshi's Island 2." I mean it sounds so cute and innocent -- and looks it as well, with a neat 1980s Nintendo vibe to the graphics and baby versions of Mario and the gang teaming up with dinosaur Yoshi for an old fashioned 2-D platformer (for those of you reading who don't know what that is -- Donkey Kong was the first popular platformer; this is more evolved, but the basic is the same, you jump and climb over obstacles; and try to defeat enemies to get to the end of the level, and then you do it another level, and so on).

OK, cute vibe, insane gameplay. I mean, dying 30 times in a row at the same place on an early level insane. I finally gave up midway through the second world (which is pretty early in the game) after spending 30 minutes trying to complete one task. It just wasn't worth the blood pressure spikes. And by looking at the saves from the other people who rented the game before me, it looks like they had given up in similar places.

Now difficulty is an important part of these games, but can anything be considered successful if most of the people abandon it long before the end? I don't mind working hard for any kind of success -- some of my favorite books and films made the audience work for the payoff -- but games are expensive (this one would have been 30 bucks; and that's a cheap one) and all too often seem to be crafted for some kind of (probably) mythical hardcore gamer that will gladly spend hours perfecting their skills. For the rest of the people who may want to play this for some kind of distraction from everyday stress, that isn't going to work. We'll just slam down the controller (or expensive hand held device, which did bounce once off the carpet on the toss, but seems OK), give up and grumble about the money wasted and vow to never come back to the series/designer/publisher/game platform. Not the best way to build an audience.