Category Archives: Unpacking

Tim Horton ► Throwback Thursday

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Not celebrating his birthday today is Miles Gilbert “Tim” Horton, who died tragically in 1974.

My followers on the facebookery have seen me exclaim, “This is a sports story I can understand” (or the opposite). The day I realized how little I really cared about sports was while sitting in a Tim Horton’s Donut Shop on Trafalgar Road just north of Lakeshore (no longer there, like so much of my past) in Oakville, Ontario, in the early ’70s. I had only recently moved to Canada from Detroit and was enrolled at Sheridan College. Me and a few of my fellow students were hanging out at our local Timmy’s. There were far fewer of them back then.

I can’t remember exactly how it came up, but everyone at the table was shocked that I didn’t know that Tim Horton had a career outside of mediocre coffee and wonderfully delicious glazed donuts.

“BUT YOU’RE FROM ONE OF THE ORIGINAL 6!!!”

I didn’t know what that mean either. I learned that at one time there were only 6 hockey teams in the entire NFL. The Detroit Red Wings was one of them. My entire knowledge of hockey consisted of: 1). The local team was called The Red Wings for some obscure reason; they played at Olympia Arena, where I went to see rock shows in the ’60s; people threw octopuses onto the ice.

Horton was a hockey hero. He played for the Toronto Maple Leafs from the year of my birth (1952) to 1970. I learned far more about Tim Horton after he died in a spectacular car crash on the QEW, on February 21, 1974, not that far from where I was caught out for my ignorance. At the time of his accident he was into his 2nd season for the Buffalo Sabres, after bouncing from the New York Rangers and Pittsburgh Penguins.

Horton was returning from a game in Toronto when he was clocked at a high rate of speed by a police officer who had been alerted by a citizen. The officer lost him, he was going so fast, but came upon the crash scene soon afterward.

Horton’s tragic death stunned all Canadians. While there were rumours that Horton was drunk when he died, that had not been confirmed — in fact, denied — until 2005, when Glen McGregor (formerly of The Ottawa Citizen) obtained the autopsy report with a simple Freedom of Information request.

It took more than a year before I finally got the file sent to me via the Archives of Ontario. I wrote a story  based on the autopsy in 2005 (Citizen links expire after three months, so this will have to do).

To date, this remains the most interesting document I have ever received through the open-records law.

The detail is clinical and vivid — the description of what Horton was wearing, what was in his car, the grim catalogue of his massive injuries. The pictures show the wrecked Ford Pantera and the responding police officer’s diagram and notes explain how Horton was tossed from the car at high speed.

And, the autopsy reveals, not only was Horton quite drunk — twice the legal limit, the post-mortem blood alcohol test showed — but it also appears he had been taking an amphetamine. He was found with Dexamyl pills on his body.

Dexamyl combined dextroamphetamine with amobarbital, a barbiturate, to take the edge off. It was a popular party drug in the 60s (Andy Warhol popped them) that had also been marketed to harried housewives before it was sensibly outlawed.

Horton was likely taking these to stay competitive in the NHL. He was still playing at age 45 44 and probably felt he needed an edge to keep up with players 20 years younger.

Apparently Horton’s car had rolled several times in the crash. That’s why when, in 1976, Tim Hortons introduced Timbits, some people thought it was in very poor taste.

Years later, while living in Hamilton, Ontario, I spent far more time than was practical researching a freelance article for the Hamilton Spectator. For a couple of days I traveled across town to hang out at Tim Hortons #1 all day and all night. I wanted to absorb its atmosphere before I started writing the article I had already sold. In the final essay, as printed, very little of that immersive research made it into print as my editor changed the focus during the editing process.

TANGENTIALLY: I’m glad they did because I have always believed that collaboration with editors makes for better articles. One of the things I miss in the Not Now Silly Newsroom is having an editor I can kick stuff around with in order to give articles a better shape. Working with a perceptive editor had always been one of the joys of my freelance writing career.

At any rate, because I don’t thrown anything away, here is my final draft right before I turned it over to my Spec editor for a final massage, which included the headline. This became LEARNING TO LOVE THE HAMMER:

The Mighty Donut

I moved to Hamilton three years ago and only have the United States Army to blame. More about that later.

Prior to moving to Hamilton, like so many others before me, my only impressions of Hamilton were formed as I was flying over the Burlington Skyway Bridge on my way Elsewhere. The landscape, especially at night, looked like something out of Bladerunner. Flames shooting up to light the sky. All those smokestacks belting out non-stop pollution. All that industrial wasteland stretched below, spoiling what would have been a beautiful vista if not for the factories.

Before becoming a resident, I had only ever set foot in The Hammer on two previous occasions. Back in the ‘70s, the Ontario government invited me to put on my award-winning slide show at a conference on post-secondary education somewhere on King Street. My second Hamilton trip was to hang out backstage at a Pink Floyd concert at Ivor Wynne Stadium, apparently the last time the city allowed an outdoor concert there.

In neither case did I actually see any of the city I was visiting, only the small areas surrounding my final destination. I still couldn’t say I knew Hamilton.

Before my move to Steel Town, it had always been a place of derision. In fact, during my College Days in Oakville we had an off-colour joke we would tell about Hamilton. Maybe you know it. It’s the one that ends,”Quick as I could I drove her to Hamilton.”

From what little I had seen, and everything I had heard, Hamilton was not a place to which I would ever want to move. However, life’s a funny ol’ dog and is apt to play tricks on us. Who could have predicted that the American Military Complex would create the Internet, allowing uninterrupted communication in case a nuclear attack? Who knew that I would be a very early convert to cyberspace, spending much of my free time online?

So, there I am, minding my own business, and living my quiet life in Toronto. It’s a full life, too, consisting of a job, an ex-wife, growing children, and friends, not to mention a whole support system of neighbours and local merchants.

Then one fateful day, while in an Internet chat room, I found myself in conversation with a Hamilton woman, close to my own age. As we typed our short, staccato sentences back and forth, there appeared to be an attraction of ideas and personalities. Much to my surprise, she eventually asked me whether I would be willing to meet her for coffee.

Meet we did, only to discover the attraction was even more powerful in person than over cyberspace. It wasn’t long before I found myself moving lock, stock and record collection to Hamilton, Ontario after many years in a quiet, Polish neighbourhood in Toronto’s west end.

For me it was Culture Shock on a grand scale. For starters, in my initial explorations of my new hometown, all I was able to see were the boarded-up buildings in the core.  Toronto didn’t seem to have that problem. Retail space in Toronto never stayed empty for long.  Seeing all the plywood in Hamilton made me wonder what I had gotten myself into. It saddened me to see a downtown so economically depressed. Sadder still because I grew up in Detroit, where buildings that were shuttered when I left more than 30 years ago, are still empty or, worse, burned out hulks or simply torn down. I had to ask myself, “Had I moved to another Detroit?”

Transit was another one of those things that made me feel out-of-place. I don’t own a car and when I first arrived in Hamilton, I felt lost. Not that I couldn’t find my way around, although all the one-way streets made that difficult enough. I felt lost because the transit system certainly wasn’t anything like what I was used to in The Big Smoke. From my apartment near lower High Park, I could be downtown by streetcar in 20 minutes, 15 if the lights were kind. Uptown? Add another 5 minutes. In Hamilton, I seemed to wait at least that long for the bus to simply arrive.

Another transit anomaly that drove me crazy: In Hamilton no matter where I am, I have to go downtown to get home. I learned quickly that I had moved into a bus near-black hole. Buses come to this neighbourhood from downtown, and go from here to downtown, but, if I wish to go west – or return home from the west – first I have to go downtown. This is almost always in the opposite direction from where I really need to go. For the first time in my life the expression “You can’t get there from here” had real meaning.

Another thing that gave me trouble was finding a good magazine rack. In Toronto they are all good magazine racks. Even the smallest convenience store has shelves groaning with obscure publications. It took me a while to find that kind of selection in Hamilton. However, someone recommended Book Villa on King Street, which I now frequent. I have to use the dreaded bus system to get there, but at least it’s downtown, where the bus actually goes. [In an odd coincidence: I discovered just two days ago that Book Villa had been owned for 25 years by the parents of someone I have known for years – someone who I knew from Toronto who I never associated with Hamilton.]

One of the biggest challenges I had when I moved to Hamilton was finding the type of ethnic cuisine I liked — cheap, spicy hot and tasty. In Toronto, you can’t swing a chopstick without a hitting a restaurant fitting that description. It took a bit longer to find the type of eats I like than it did magazines, but once I discovered The Roti Hut on Main East, I felt as if this dream might be realized. Now that I can have a damn fine roti, I’m still sampling in my search for the best gyro in the city. Suggestions are welcome.

When I first moved here locals told me that I would have to see the sites before I could make an informed decision on Hamilton. The closest two sites to where I live – and those that I visited almost immediately – are Dundurn Castle and The Mountain, since I live off Dundurn almost halfway in-between.

I looked around Dundurn Castle and decided it was a beautiful mansion, but I simply didn’t get “castle.” Now Casa Loma is a castle!

Then I looked at The Mountain and pronounced it boring. It was pretty much the same suburbia one can see on the outskirts of any North American city. I always studiously avoided places like this when in Toronto, referring to its environs as Scarberia no matter where it actually might actually be located.

After my first few weeks of exploration, I decided that Hamilton had an inferiority complex masquerading as Delusions of Grandeur. Hamilton is a city that would make a castle out of a very big house and a mountain out of a molehill.

I’ll bet you dollars to donuts I’m not the first to have said that.

I have seen a few more of the local sights since I arrived: The Farmer’s Market, Cootes Paradise, Bayfront Park, Gage Park, Esterbrook’s, Dundas, and the RBG among them. However, none of that made me feel any more comfortable with my decision to move to Hamilton. It still felt wrong somehow and after 2 years here, I still felt like a stranger in a strange land.

During this time I had decided to kick-start my writing career. I had freelanced as a writer in Toronto for what seemed like a lifetime and spent 10 years in the CityPulse newsroom as a ventriloquist, putting the words in the mouths of the dummies. One day I made what seemed like a momentous decision: I would find something to write about and submit the article to the very newspaper you are now reading.

While looking for a suitable subject I discovered that the very first Tim Hortons donut shop was here and a light bulb went on. I had never been to that Temple of KREWLER Culture – a place where “dollars to donuts” is a meaningful phrase: Tim Hortons Store #1. I developed this conceit that I would make that pilgrimage, write an article, resume my freelance writing career and my fame would be ensured. Besides, donut shops are a great place for people-watching, which is one of my favourite pastimes.

It’s a funny thing about Tim Horton. I never knew who he was. People were amazed when I professed to not knowing about the hockey-playing Tim Horton. I’m certainly old enough and I did grow up in Detroit – one of the Original Six. However, I have never followed hockey (is this sacrilegious?), so the NHL right-shooting defenseman simply didn’t register on my radar. I thought he was merely some guy who started a successful chain of donut shops.

Ironically, I only first became aware of hockey’s Tim Horton at his end. His passing was big news when I lived in Oakville. When he died his name was on everyone’s lips and I didn’t know why. Soon, as is my want, I made a sardonic joke about Tim Bits. The looks that I received from my closest friends makes me realize I don’t dare repeat it in a town where he is revered.

To research my article, I spent 2 evenings at Tim Hortons Store Number One, which sits on a nondescript section of Ottawa Street, just north of Main, kitty-corner from the Canadian Cremation Services.

My first reaction was, to put it mildly, a disappointment. I had expected a time capsule, a Timmy’s that hadn’t changed since the ‘60s. What I received, however, was a Tim Hortons that looked like every other Tim Hortons. Had it not been for the huge plaque on the front and the special inlayed tile on the floor inside, I would have never known that this was original store. I later learned that in October 1999, after extensive renovations, it was reopened with grand ceremonies, which included MP Sheila Copps. One thing that I don’t understand is why they didn’t keep the name  “Tim Hortons Way,” which is what they renamed Ottawa Street temporarily.

Those two evenings at Timmys were a revelation to me.

I watched the customers. Mothers with their children. Old coots that smelled bad. Neighbourhood locals, who obviously came in daily to sit around and chat. A garage mechanic taking several coffees back to his coworkers.

I watch as the cashiers in a complicated dance, serving the customers and weaving in and out of each other’s way as they get donuts, pour coffees, take money in what looks like a complicated ballet. However, they never bumped into each other.

The Spectator never bought the article I sent, incidentally, telling me that had just printed a large feature story on the donut empire called Timmys and I was bringing nothing new to the table. However, the table brought something new to me. I sat at the same table those two nights at Tim Hortons Store #1 and as I watched, and took notes, I came to a better understanding of Hamilton.

People are pretty much the same everywhere, but the people in Hamilton are decidedly more working class than Toronto. The fashions aren’t quite as “houte.” Fingernails aren’t as clean. Hairdos aren’t “just so.” The buildings aren’t quite as tall. The streets aren’t as clean. The graffiti isn’t nearly as interesting. The nightlife isn’t as exciting. The selection of movies isn’t as great. The storefronts are not as glitzy.

That’s when I realized my mistake. I was comparing Hamilton to Toronto, only to find it wanting. However, once I stopped using Toronto as a yardstick I began to enjoy Hamilton in ways I had not previously.

I discovered that I liked the working-class mentality of the city and that people were down-to-earth, more honest, more open, and far more accepting. I found that I could look up into the night sky and see far more stars. I learned that a drive of less than 5 minutes would take me to the country. I marveled at the architecture of some of the older buildings that remain. I found that I loved being able to walk downtown in about 15 minutes and I even grew to tolerate the dreaded bus system.

In another ironic twist, I was recently hired by Hamilton Magazine to write the feature article for its Silver Anniversary issue. The thrust of the piece was to write about 25 things worth remembering and 25 things worth forgetting about Hamilton over the last 25 years. Although it seems an odd assignment to give a new Hamiltonian, I jumped into the research with alacrity, spending many hours at the Main Branch of the library, reading microfiche and rummaging through the scrapbooks in the Special Collections department.

I have to admit I was simply unaware of Hamilton’s rich history. I had no idea the Niagara Escarpment was created by the advance and recession of the Ice Age. I didn’t realize that skirmishes in the War of 1812 were fought along the shoreline. I had no idea there were vast and thriving native communities throughout the region long before Étienne Brûlé, thought to be the first European to see Hamilton, passed through. I was even unaware the Church of the Universe called Hamilton home.

Once I started taking Hamilton on its own terms, and certainly after all that research for my article, I knew I could never look at this city the same way again. And, I am glad because I wasn’t all that happy previously.

Now, after what seemed like a very long winter – with cabin fever rising by the day – I can’t wait for the warm weather so I can take long walks and continue to discover a Hamilton that is uniquely mine.

Headly Westerfield is a (Hamilton) free-lance writer who looks forward to exploring more of the interesting places in his new hometown. If he has said anything of offense about Hamilton, he asks that you remember where he’s originally from (Detroit) and pity him instead.

We All Compute ► Throwback Thursday

As I downsize the condo, I have discovered some amazing buried treasures, like my old business card.

It was tucked into my mother’s address book on the end table in the Florida Room, which I left as a small, bizarre memorial to her after she died 11 years ago. That’s when I moved to Florida to take care of Pops. I had never looked inside before. The card must have meant something to her because there were very few business cards inside. Or, she just just stuck it there when I sent it to her and promptly forgot all about it.

In the Go-Go ’90s, I was a columnist for We Compute. We Compute was, just like television, designed to be a conduit for advertising to the masses, with the content almost an afterthought. Like most of my freelance writing it started by studying the publication in question and then pitching the editor, who I had never met, an idea.

The pitch was simple:  How about a column on how to navigate the World Wide Web?

Sounds stupid, right? Yes, in retrospect it does sound that way. However, at the time it was a stroke of brilliance. Today getting around the web is second nature to people of all ages, but at the time it was neither easy, nor intuitive.

Those were the days when most of the population had yet to hear the words “World Wide Web” and “Information Superhighway.” Computers were not yet ubiquitous. A vast majority of households still did not have a computer. Of those that did a vast majority were not even connected to the interwebs. Those that were connected had to deal with spotty dial-up service on phone lines that would disconnect in the middle of a giant file download. [When I was your age…] Online veterans, of which I was already, were beginning to dump their 300 baud modems for 1200 and 2400, speeds that seemed fast as lightening compared to what we had been used to. Internet cable still didn’t yet exist.

Web browsers were still pretty new and Netscape quickly became the preferred way to get around the World Wide Web. These were also the days when trying to find what you wanted was next to impossible. There were a lot of interesting web pages being created, and one could spend hours upon hours wandering around, but the navigation — the lack of road signs on the early superhighway — would get you lost almost every time. One of the only choices for a search engine was AltaVista. If you didn’t spell something properly, or use the exact upper and lower case, it would kick up no results, or bad results, or funny results.

After a while I wrote about whatever I wanted, not just web navigation

So, I created a column pitch that I thought was a no-brainer. Every month I’d write a column giving We Compute readers little tips and tricks to navigate their way around the web and then highlight some web pages they may not have ever discovered on their own. My editor was also a no-brainer. He did not see my vision and had to be convinced that it was a good idea.

Then he named my column Web Headly, which I never thought was a good idea.

IRONY ALERT: Even though I was writing a monthly column about the internet, once a month I would have to save my article onto a 3 inch floppy drive and then trek the 11 miles across town by transit, a trip that would involve a streetcar, transferring to the subway, transferring to another subway line, and then a trolley bus to the We Compute offices. With luck I could be there in an hour, but if there were any delays, it could take me as much as 2.5 hours.

Incidentally, that’s where I first met Roxanne Tellier, whose writing I have followed ever since. She’s also become a very dear friend over the years and I get to see her whenever I visit Toronto.

The Hollywood Blacklist ► Throwback Thursday

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According to the Wiki: On this day in 1947 The Screen Actors Guild implements an anti-Communist loyalty oath. 

With the election of racist, xenophobic, and mysoginyst Donald J. Trump, it’s more important than ever to use this as a learning experience, unless we want to repeat it.

The Loyalty Oath came during the Communist Witch Hunts of the ’40s and ’50s, in which both Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan made their bones. It was the era of Joseph McCarthy. ‘Merkins were being warned that there were Communists under every bed, or inside every pumpkin in the case of Nixon.

The House Un-American Activities Committee ramped up in 1938 to find subversives and Communists in ‘Merka, not that it was illegal to be a Commie. By the next year HUAC issued its “Yellow Report,” which called for the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.

When the war ended HUAC considered briefly investigating the KKK, but decided against it to go after Commies some more. That led to 9 days of hearings in 1947 on Communist influence in the entertainment industry, most notably Hollywood. Ronald Reagan, who was President of the Screen Actors’ Guild, went before HUAC and, famously, named names.

The Wiki has more:

Many of the film industry professionals in whom HUAC had expressed interest—primarily screenwriters, but also actors, directors, producers, and others—were either known or alleged to have been members of the American Communist Party. Of the 43 people put on the witness list, 19 declared that they would not give evidence. Eleven of these nineteen were called before the committee. Members of the Committee for the First Amendment flew to Washington ahead of this climactic phase of the hearing, which commenced on Monday, October 27.[22] Of the eleven “unfriendly witnesses”, one, émigré playwright Bertolt Brecht, ultimately chose to answer the committee’s questions.[23][24]

The other ten refused, citing their First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and assembly. The crucial question they refused to answer is now generally rendered as “Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?” Each had at one time or another been a member, as many intellectuals during the Great Depression felt that the Party offered an alternative to capitalism. Some still were members, others had been active in the past and only briefly. The Committee formally accused these ten of contempt of Congress and began criminal proceedings against them in the full House of Representatives.

In light of the “Hollywood Ten”‘s defiance of HUAC—in addition to refusing to testify, many had tried to read statements decrying the committee’s investigation as unconstitutional—political pressure mounted on the film industry to demonstrate its “anti-subversive” bona fides. Late in the hearings, Eric Johnston, president of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), declared to the committee that he would never “employ any proven or admitted Communist because they are just a disruptive force and I don’t want them around.”[23] On November 17, the Screen Actors Guild voted to make its officers swear a pledge asserting each was not a Communist.

The Screen Actors Guild Loyalty Oath implemented on this date in 1947 continued for decades. Actor and former-SAG President Richard Masur is quoted in 50 YEARS: SAG REMEMBERS THE BLACKLIST as saying:

“When I joined the Screen Actors Guild in 1973, I signed the loyalty oath that, 20 years earlier, the SAG Board of Directors had made a requirement for membership. I never stopped to consider what it was I was signing. It was one in a series of papers I needed to fill out, and I was so eager to join the Guild, I probably would have signed anything they put in front of me. And I did. That’s one of the most frightening legacies of the Blacklist Era: the institutionalization of fear and prejudice.

You see, the Guild Board had not yet removed the loyalty oath from our bylaws. In fact, no action was taken until some new members refused to sign it. Those new members were the rock group The Grateful Dead, and the year was 1967.

Only after The Grateful Dead refused to sign did the Board of Directors reconsider the necessity of a loyalty oath as a precondition for joining a union of artists. Even so, the oath had become so ingrained and institutionalized by that time that initially it could not be entirely eliminated. It was simply made optional. Another seven years would pass before, in July of 1974, a year after I joined, the loyalty oath was finally removed from the Screen Actors Guild bylaws.

That’s right. It was the Grateful Dead that finally broke the back of the Loyalty Oath. Masur continues, as he make amends on the 50th Anniversary of the Oath:

Tonight, the Screen Actors Guild would like to express how deeply we regret that when courage and conviction were needed to oppose the Blacklist, the poison of fear so paralyzed our organization.

Only our sister union, Actors Equity Association, had the courage to stand behind its members and help them continue their creative live [sic] in the theater. For that, we honor Actors Equity tonight.

Unfortunately, there are no credits to restore, nor any other belated recognition that we can offer our members who were blacklisted. They could not work under assumed names or employ surrogates to front for them. An actor’s work and his or her identity are inseparable.

Screen Actors Guild’s participation in tonight’s event must stand as our testament to all those who suffered that, in the future, we will strongly support our members and work with them to assure their rights as defined and guaranteed by the Bill of Rights.

With the ugly hate rhetoric that came out of the Trump campaign, we could do worse than remembering how the Grateful Dead stood up for the First Amendment. And, with Donald Trump about to take the oath of office for POTUS, it’s incumbent on all of us to stand up for Muslims, Immigrants, Mexicans, LGBT communities, and Black folk and not allow the hate to define us.

Let us be defined by who we defend.
The same goes for Trump supporters.

 

The Grateful Dead released their debut LP the same year
they refused to sign the Screen Actors Guild Loyalty Oath.

Making Friends Wherever I Go ► Unpacking the Writer

I proudly wear this t-shirt

First the big news: The NEW and IMPROVED Not Now Silly Newsroom will open to the general public on January 1, 2017. Check out the teaser.

Yes, folks, we’re going the dot com route.

Excitement and trepidation fills the newsroom as we finally get our own domain name. As longtime readers of NNS can attest, this has been a long time coming, with some speed bumps and roadblocks along the way. Over the last few weeks the dedicated and underpaid NNS staff has been busy preparing for the move to our shiny new digs. We’ve carefully bubble-wrapped all of the 952 published posts (and the 45 stories still in draft form) from our vast archives to ensure they do not break during shipping. They were lovingly packed into boxes to await the moving men, expected any day now.

One of the things NNS will lose when we abandon this joint are the stats, so let’s take what may be our last look at one of the numbers we’ve run up over here. It amazes me that almost a half a million people have traipsed across the NNS threshold to read what I have to say. Unless it was 1 person visiting 472,851 times. I’m gratified and just a little intimidated. The more people who trust my writing, the more NNS feels the responsibility to publish the truth (as we see it). I understand there are posts here that don’t really merit serious attention. The Monday Musical Appreciation and Throwback Thursday, f’rinstance. They’re kind of filler between the important stories.

District 2 Commissioner Ken Russell at tent city

Pic shared by Nene MainMarri Coats on Facebook

However, there are NNS posts that I not only want people to take seriously, but to also share all over the innertubes. My recent post, Intense Intents in Tents about the Housing for All Miami protest in Coconut Grove, is one of them. It’s the third post in the Unpacking Grand Avenue series, with several more in the works. I was thrilled that Commissioner Russell felt my post was worthy of sharing with his constituents. I was also thrilled to learn that he slept in one of the protest tents on Sunday night.

Not only is Grand Avenue a slow-motion humanitarian crisis, it is Exhibit A in my prosecution of rapacious developers who are only interested in lining their own pockets at the expense of the poor and disenfranchised folk, who are about to be gentrified out of the historic Bahamian enclave that was unique in this country because it had, at one time, the highest percentage of Black home ownership that anywhere else in the country.

Which brings me to why this post is titled Making Friends Wherever I Go. That’s sarcasm, folks.

In the last several days I’ve managed to piss off a lot of people, beginning with some of the folks who attended the Grove 2030 charrette on Saturday who seem to think I called them racist. I’m having a polite dialogue with one gent on Commissioner Russell’s facebookery, but I’m in no mood to be polite.

That’s because of the fight I am still having with the City of Miami’s Public Records Office. It was all I could do not to respond to the latest outrage with every 4-letter word I know. I’ve been CCing the entire world on our email chain, so I’m not sure how many of them will continue to take my calls.

This month’s Top Five

Then there’s Tom Falco of the Coconut Grove Grapevine. I had no doubt he’d be angry over Coconut Grove Grapevine, Stop the Lies! I’m just surprised he told so many people because he must know, by now, that people talk to me. He should have spent some of that time correcting his lie and changing his mendacious slogan.

None of that can really spoil the good mood I’m in because my post on the Housing for All protest has become the fastest growing post of all time in the Not Now Silly Newsroom. Closing in on 600 hits in just 3 days makes me hopeful that moving to our own domain is the right thing to do.

Something I’ve always maintained about the Not Now Silly Newsroom since the very beginning: I don’t know what people want. Therefore, I really don’t write to please anyone but myself. I go with the philosophy that what is of interest to me will be of interest to others, and some more than others. Not every post here will please everybody, but that’s never been the point. The point is to share knowledge, shine light on neglected and forgotten topics, and learn. Hopefully, that will bring the eyeballs that will make going dot com worth it.

I want to send out a big Thank You Very Much to all my loyal readers who are taking the journey with me.

Take it from Kevin Ayers, our most recent Monday Musical Appreciation:

Reply From the Miami Public Records Office and My Response

I have received a reply to Yet Another Open Email to Miami’s Public Records Department of  yesterday. Here it is followed by my latest:

Good morning Mr. Westerfield,

The Public Records Division is in the process of reviewing the emails so that we may produce it to you. Throughout the process 148 PST file folders were retrieved based on the search criteria you have selected. Each folder contains approximately at a minimum 850 emails each. While reviewing the folders some were not within the search criteria you have initially selected. We are working with our IT Department to ensure that we are in full compliance with your request. As soon as we have an update we will inform you.

Please feel free to contact us if you should have any further questions.

Thank you,
Isiaa Jones
Paralegal

Dear Ms Jones:

No. This reply is not good enough.

I demand to know why you broke the promise you made to my face on October 12th that you would email the next day with a guesstimate on when this Public Records Request would be fulfilled.

What’s more this reply STILL does not answer that basic question: WHEN WILL I GET THE FILES I PAID FOR?

It’s this simple: You broke your promise to me. I only received this reply after I started kicking.

You may recall something else I said in our face-to-face meeting (because I certainly do). I apologized that my emails came off as edgy, but that every verbal promise made to me by someone in the City of Miami government has been broken, which is why I like to get it all down in writing. You said you understood and you didn’t take it personally.

You should now take it personally because you failed at the most basic part of your job: Keeping your promises. See? I should have gotten it in writing.

Dazzling me with numbers doesn’t take the place of fulfilling my Public Records Request, nor does it answer the basic question: WHEN WILL I GET THE FILES I PAID FOR?

Contact you if I have further questions??? You’ve yet to answer the one question I asked on October 12th.

UPDATED: Yet Another Open Email to Miami’s Public Records Department

EDITED TO ADD: 

MAJOR MEA CULPA!!! It would appear that I sent yesterday’s email to Isiaa Jones to the wrong email address, which is why it was kicked back. She may, or may not, still be with the city.

However, that does not explain why she did not:

1). Fulfill the promise made to me to email me the next day to let me know when I could expect the files I paid for;

2). Produce the files I already paid for.

This should not be such a problem. 

TO: Jones, Isiaa <IJones@miami.gov>
SUBJECT: Continued Frustration Over PRR 16-452: FOIA Request
DATE: November 14, 2016

CC: Melendez, Eleazar <ElMelendez@miamigov.com>; Russell, Ken (Commissioner) <krussell@miamigov.com>; Mendez, Victoria <VMendez@miamigov.com>; Hannon, Todd <thannon@miamigov.com>; The Loyal Readers of the Not Now Silly Newsroom; Various Facebook Groups and Pages of my choosing

Ms. Jones:

You have proven to me once again, as if any more proofs were needed, that one cannot trust anything verbal that comes out of the City of Miami. I am always struck by the expression, “You should have got it in writing.”

Let me remind you of the end of our face-to-face conversion on October 12, 2016. No doubt you remember. I had just forked over CASH to obtain the results of my FOI request. As you were handing me a photocopy of my receipt, which you made me sign, I asked you how long I could expect this computer search to take. The exact word I used was “guesstimate”. You said that you couldn’t answer that question then and there, but you would email me and let me know after you spoke to the IT Department.

Yannow what? I’m still waiting for that email. This is why I do not trust anything I am told by anyone employed by the City of Miami unless it’s in writing. And even then…

Incidentally, and far more importantly, I am also still waiting for the results of my FOI request. I feel as if the money you took has been stolen from me until you can produce the goods I paid for.

Because my FOI request is to look into suspected corruption in the City of Miami, some of which may have happened in the very office you work in, it’s hard not to think these stalling tactics are to keep me from obtaining the files I requested.

When will I get the records I paid for?

ADDED MOMENTS AFTER PUBLISHING:

This might explain why Ms Jones never got back to me, but it doesn’t explain into what Black Hole my FOI request disappeared into.

 Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:

     IJones@miami.gov

Technical details of permanent failure:
DNS Error: 98790439 DNS type ‘mx’ lookup of miami.gov responded with code NXDOMAIN
Domain name not found: miami.gov

UPDATED: Coconut Grove Grapevine, Stop the Lies!

The back of Tom Falco’s head taken at the Grove 2030 charrette
I covered in Intense Intents in Tents. Oddly enough, that post
mentioned the Terra Group, the latest rapaciousdeveloper
to try to buy up and gentrify Grand Avenue. However,
Tom Falco is only concerned with gentrification in White
neighbourhoods. Stories on West Grove are few and far between.

Can you trust his reporting on development if
he’s taking “gimme caps” from developers?

Over the years I’ve had a lot of fun at the expense of Tom Falco, editor, owner, and grammarian at the Coconut Grove Grapevine.

Our enmity began when I was still using the nom de troll of Aunty Em Ericann and I tried to get him to help me save the E.W.F. Stirrup House.

When he declined I tried to get him to provide me some direction off the record, because I was new to Grove politics, and he might be able to help understand the lay of the land. In my opinion his responses were, on the whole, racist in nature and I was unsure why he’d ‘go there’ with a complete stranger like myself. We’ve pretty much been on opposite sides ever since, occasionally breaking out into public and private skirmishes.

Later he blocked me from commenting on his facebookery because I shared my Coconut Grove articles and, later, tagged him on posts, something I saw him castigate someone else for just yesterday. I’m not sure why he’s so adamant against either practice if the goal is to share information that might be of interest to his readers. However, Falco’s only goal is to protect his little fiefdom, not the free exchange of information. Therefore, any competition must be discouraged.

There was the time I wrote Go Home, Coconut Grove Grapevine, You’re Drunk, which took him to task for being a paranoid idiot after he accused me of having a “crew” that “threatened” him. I wish I were making this up.

This is my favourite part of the Coconut Grove
Grapevine. Go ahead and sue me, Tommy.

A few days after that I posted A Coconut Grove Grapevine Update, in which I slapped him around for writing a public apology to someone after he had defamed and libeled me without apology or retraction.

Then there was the time I wrote If It’s News, It’s News To The Coconut Grove Grapevine in which I admitted being jealous that he was quoted by Miami media to comment on the destruction of the trees at the E.W.F. Stirrup House and Trolleygate, even though he had a bare understanding of either story and hadn’t really written about them to any great degree. And, in another post, I admitted my jealousy of his advertisers.

None of that includes posts I’ve started to write about him because of his tortured English, and then decided not to publish because I don’t want to be known as a grammar Nazi.

However, to my credit, I also wrote Welcome Back Coconut Grove. Falco shut down for a while, saying he was quitting to concentrate on his pathetic cartoons. However, after 4 months of not being a local Coconut Grove celebrity bartering ad space, he returned to the Blogosphere.

Back in the day, I used to make fun of his slogan “Coconut Grove’s Only Daily News” because it was neither. Eventually — and I hope it was because I complained — when he returned from his self-imposed, hair-shirt hiatus he did so with a brand new slogan: Daily updates on what’s up in Coconut Grove and beyond including Brickell, Coral Gables and Midtown Miami.

I guess he was hoping to start selling advertising — or bartering more meals — all over the place. However, he must have been disappointed by the response.

When I was writing Intense Intents in Tents earlier today, I checked to see if he had said anything about the Housing for All protest. Of course not. However, he had found the time to attend and write about what’s got them roiled in Whiteville. Falco had a post on Grove 2030. And then something about mattresses. But, anything of the Housing for All protest happening in between? Of course not. Nothing. Crickets.

That’s when I happened to notice he’s changed his slogan again.  Now it’s:

NOW IN OUR 12th YEAR!
The only place for Coconut Grove,
FL News, Views & Opinions
 

One wonders whether the UBER advert is a paid ad or part of a contra deal.
And why a plug for the mattress store? Is there some quid pro quo happening?
Falco is only concerned about news in Whiteville, also known as the Coconut Grove Business Improvement District, which doesn’t include anything west of Margaret Street on Grand Avenue.

Futhermore, I have proven over and over again that The Grapevine is *NOT* the only place for Coconut Grove News, Views & Opinions. Falco needs to remove his mendacious slogan ASAP.

UPDATE: The Coconut Grove Grapevine finally posted something on the Housing for All protest on the morning of the November 15th. While he managed to mangle a few facts, which is to be expected with Tom Falco, at least he ventured into West Grove.