Lincolnite

I probably should, but I really don't pay much attention to politics up the road in Omaha. Still, I've glanced now and then at recent stories about the effort to recall Mayor Suttle. Apparently he has annoyed a bunch of people. Or something. Like I said, I haven't followed it all that closely. The recall election was yesterday and, with most votes counted, Suttle is declaring victory. But "victory" isn't the word I'd used to describe a 51/49 split. That 49% doesn't represent people who didn't vote for him. It represents people who hate him so much they want him out of office. That's a really, really important distinction. The dude is as lame as lame ducks come. Aren't you glad you live in happy little Lincoln where we get to bitch and moan about things like late night phone calls?

Folks who travel in the area have known for many years that South 56th Street between Old Cheney and Pine Lake Road needs to be widened. Now it appears the City Council may be ready to do something about it ... in 2013 or later. Unlike some other infamous streets that travelers would like to see widened -- South 27th Street being the most prominent by far -- 56th Street's troubles aren't just about driver convenience. 56th Street is narrow and, particularly on poor weather days, feels very unsafe. Roads simply aren't designed like that any more, and for good reason. The widening project would have been much easier ten years ago, when it should have begun. Now there are more homes, more businesses, and many more vehicles that will be inconvenienced by the road's closure. Consider, for example, that a significant percentage of the displaced traffic will move over to 40th Street, which itself is only two lanes north of Highway 2; it doesn't have much extra capacity. But better late than never. Here's hoping the project actually does begin in 2013.

Most of you have probably noticed the cameras at various intersections around Lincoln. There are about fifty scattered around town so they're pretty hard to miss. How many of you thought they were traffic enforcement cameras (aka red light cameras)? They aren't. It seems to be a common misconception, although it's one that has been debunked oodles of times. The cameras are used only for traffic monitoring purposes, not enforcement. You won't receive a ticket or court summons in the mail if you drive through an intersection on an orange light. Not that you would ever do that, of course. The only reason I bring this up is that I hear the "red light camera" rumor all the time. Family, friends, strangers, kids, adults -- it's a pervasive myth. It really gets me when I have to explain the truth to the same person repeatedly. ("Nope, they still aren't red light cameras.") It wouldn't be such a bad myth to allow to propagate if there weren't so much outrage associated with it. Some people get pretty feisty when talking about this imaginary intrusion upon their liberties. (The right to endanger fellow motorists, I guess?) Personally I prefer folks reserve their outrage for actual transgressions. There are plenty of them out there so it's not like we need to go inventing any fake ones. Lincoln may some day have red light cameras. If that day comes, I'll be among the first to chatter about it. For now, though, let's put this myth to bed.

Fantastic news for those who aren't fans of using robocalls to advertise parking bans. Mayor Beutler now says the calls will only be used for emergencies. Parking bans definitely don't meet the criteria. This isn't a perfect solution, however. Beutler said he heard from many people who found the calls "bothersome", even if they didn't come at 2 in the morning. I'm among that crowd (although I didn't directly contact the Mayor's office). But it's important to note that I recognize that although I find the calls bothersome, that doesn't mean there aren't those in the community who find value in them. A better solution would permit folks to opt-in to the calls for non-emergencies like parking bans. Then folks who live in the city's core -- where parking bans are actually enforced -- can have one more medium by which to receive parking ban information. Meanwhile folks like me who live in neighborhoods where illegally-parked cars are rarely ticketed or towed (but they are plowed under) can choose to settle for the umpteen media already available to us. There's a catch, of course. I suspect there's a strong correlation between the folks who need to be informed of a parking ban by phone and the folks who would never know they could opt in to receive the phone calls. So it's not perfect yet. Baby steps.

Every now and again I like to search for "lincoln nebraska" on various websites around the web. It's fun to see how Lincoln is mentioned. Sometimes I learn about things I would have otherwise missed. Such as a book on cranes, information about online registration for business entities in Nebarska, or that Western Nebraska could see a lot of grasshoppers. Often I see the same old, same old. Sports news (heavy on the Huskers). Unicameral business. Stuff like that. And occasionally I find things like this:

It turns out Grateful Greens, the new restaurant taking over the former Inna's Pirogi / Roost location on O Street next to Oso Burrito, isn't "just" a salad and raw vegan restaurant. In addition to those items, they will also serve vegetarian, meat, and seafood items. Now, when I say this is great news it's not because of some selfish reason. I was afraid the restaurant's concept, as it was described to me, was far too restrictive to be successful in its chosen location. O Street plus vegan equals disaster -- or at least that's what I would expect given my experience observing the Downtown dining scene. I hate to see fresh local businesses go under, so I was very worried for them. I'm less worried now. It sounds like Grateful Greens will offer a good variety of items. More than that, good vegetarian and vegan food is really hard to find at restaurants in Lincoln. The niche isn't huge around here, but it does exist and it's currently underserved. If Grateful Greens can fill that gap and offer meat/seafood items that satisfy the carnivorous majority, they'll have a fighting chance. The rest is up to Lincoln's fickle Downtown diners, an unpredictable lot whose opinions can swing on something as simple as the weather during opening week. I crave new vegetarian options, so I for one hope for the best.

Apparently some people angry over receiving a late-night snow emergency phone call the other night actually called Mayor Chris Beutler to complain. Not at his office, mind you, but at his home. Who calls the Mayor at home in the middle of the night to complain about a phone call? I was as grumpy as anybody about the calls, but that's just rude. You don't fix one annoyance by being annoying in return. For that matter, let the guy have a personal life. Beutler's home phone isn't an appropriate venue for Mayor-y complaints.

I hope I'm wrong, but I suspect you can be all but certain that Grateful Greens will be the next restaurant failure in the former Roost location next to Oso on O Street. Matt Olberding says they will offer "gourmet chopped salads and raw vegan food". Not. A. Chance. Let's count up all the factors making this a gigantic uphill battle:

1. Downtown is a cutthroat place to open a restaurant.
2. O Street is hugely competitive and rent isn't cheap. Just opening the doors is expensive.
3. The specific storefront has seen several businesses fail already, including the excellent Roost.
4. Salads aren't sexy. They're good for dieters -- yay New Year's resolutions! -- but they have limited ongoing appeal.
5. Vegetarian food is "weird".
6. Vegan food is really weird.
7. Raw vegan food is criminally insane.

I realize I know very little about Grateful Greens at this point. It could be the most awesomest restaurant Lincoln has ever seen. Even then, though, I see them going the way of Inna's Pirogi, a perfectly palatable restaurant that never stood a chance in the same location. I could see Grateful Greens doing fine if only they were to choose a better location. I realize that Downtown is sexy, but it's so risky. Downtown tends to do best with "safe" restaurants -- places that dish out pizza and sandwiches and burgers. Bucking that trend is hard. Very hard. I just happen to have a better location in mind. I've long hoped that Maggie's would one day join its fellow Haymarketeer The Mill in College View. In reality any good vegetarian or vegetarian-leaning restaurant has the potential to do well there. It's a heavily Seventh Day Adventist neighborhood, and SDAs just happen to tend toward vegetarianism. You've got decent traffic from 48th Street, an SDA college, an SDA church, some cool storefronts ... what's not to love? But I digress. I wish Grateful Greens the best. Perhaps they'll prove me wrong. If they're going to succeed, they've got a steep hill to climb. I know I'll give them at least one visit to give them a small boost. It's a start.

I can't help but laugh at poor ol' Steve Joel right now. The new LPS Superintendent had previously promised that school closing decisions would be based on "actual conditions" rather than forecasts. His promise melted quicker than a snowball in a microwave. Last night's decision to cancel classes today marked the second straight day he did exactly the opposite. And for what purpose? As far as I can tell it's to shelter Lincoln's kids from perfectly average winter weather. That's a rather quixotic agenda, and one that likely isn't as good at its goals as its supporters suggest. One assumes the goal is to protect the most vulnerable children, but ironically the best way to protect those kids is to allow them to go to school. I know I know, these complaints are tired and overused. I keep making them not because I have a penchant for dead horse beatings. I probably wouldn't have posted this at all except that Mr. Joel made such a big fuss about being different than his predecessors. He has earned a good mocking. Two, actually. I suspect that even he -- like so many politicians and public officials before him -- will admit that he should have kept his mouth shut. At this point I wish LPS would just come out and be honest. Quit making us wait until after bedtime to learn if school is out the next day. The rules are becoming clear: school will be cancelled if the forecast calls for a cumulative total of more than six inches of snow, or if the wind chill will be below zero. I'm not sure why they don't just come out and say that. It'd save everybody a lot of stress.

As expected, a little public outrage got us some answers about those late night phone calls the other day. The company responsible, FirstCall, has taken responsibility for the screw up. Best of all, Lincoln won't be charged for any of the calls. That's the good news. The bad news is that something is still wrong. FirstCall tells us they can make approximately 3,000 phone calls per minute. Yet we are also told that 90% of the 52,967 phone calls were made within 90 minutes. That's a rate of only 530 per minute -- a mere 1/6 the advertised rate. Why the discrepancy? Had the calls gone out at the advertised rate, they would have been done in about 20 minutes. Something doesn't smell right. City officials need to take a look at our contract with FirstCall and compare what we were sold with what we've been given. If FirstCall isn't living up to its promises, perhaps we need to shop elsewhere.

Mayor Beutler, I know that wasn't you on the phone last night after I went to bed, but I'm holding you responsible. The call I received came way too late, and my call wasn't even that late. John Spatz got his call just after 3:00am. Had that happened to me I would have driven straight over to Mayor Beutler's house and ... well, no, I probably wouldn't have done anything. But I would have been pissed. I was angry enough as it was. I understand why Lincoln uses robocalls as part of its emergency management strategy. They can be a quick and relatively cheap way to get vital information out to the public. Fair enough. But nothing -- NOTHING -- about a forecast that calls for four or five inches of snow overnight requires a phone call between 10:00pm and 8:00am. A tornado warning is one thing; a few flakes aren't going to kill anybody who is snuggled into their bed. I suppose City officials will try to claim that the information provided in the phone calls was important. Baloney. Not a single word in the recorded message was relevant to me or my family. Nor, I suspect, was it relevant to the vast majority of you -- at least not in the middle of the night. A snow emergency announcement just isn't very important. I can't park in certain places? No biggie. It's certainly not something I need to be woken up for. Particularly since the snow emergency was announced at 1:00pm on Sunday, and it was broadcast through every media outlet in and around Lincoln. Look, the point is that waking people up in the middle of the night to tell them "Hey! It's snowing outside!" is just plain dumb. That whole October 1997 thing? Yeah, now that was a snowstorm to wake up people in the middle of the night for. But that was unique because of the storm's scale, its damage, and -- this is important -- the fact that it was way more feisty than what forecasters predicted. Exploding trees, downed power lines, and general chaos are worthy of sounding the alarms; five inches of the fluffy stuff, not so much. Mayor Beutler's crew blew this one and he owes Lincolnites an apology, along with a clear explanation of the policies he is putting in place to ensure this goofiness doesn't happen again. Is it really a big deal? No, not in the grand scheme of things. But these little annoyances go a long way toward shaping public perceptions of local government. This is easy to fix. Fix it.

Jeff Korbelik finished out his top five restaurants in Lincoln today by naming Dish numero uno. I don't have much to say about the selection since I've never eaten there. I've heard Dish is excellent for whatever that's worth. We all know, however, that Oso Burrito was robbed. It didn't even make the top 13 -- what a scam! Where else can you get a bowl of mulligatawny, an avocado taco, a BBQ chicken burrito, and a beer? I demand a recount. Overall Korbelik's top 13 aren't too surprising. It's easy to quibble about individual placements on the list, but half the fun of creating a Top XYZ list is to make people froth at the mouth because they disagree with you. That being said ... other than Oso, where did Jeff get it wrong? What did he get right?