Several months ago, the syndicated NPR program “Day to Day” interviewed this author about what makes cities interesting and livable. He gave some examples of some organic things that were happening in several cities. The host asked him to give an example of a city that was doing things wrong and this guy immediately brought up Kansas City. He said that Kansas City was dominated by Chamber of Commerce types whose development schemes are dominated by this irrational inferiority complex (which I’ve discussed in past blog posts about “Cupcakeland’). Kansas City’s civic leaders and ruling political class think that Kansas City is inferior to other cities and use their clout (and millions in taxpayer money) to fund projects that most of us don’t want or don’t need. Think Power and Light District, light rail, various TIF scams and the expansion of the convention center. Versus organic things that make Kansas City cool, like the Crossroads Arts District.

This author was not from Kansas City, nor was this show produced in Kansas City, so it’s noteworthy that Kansas City’s ruling political class was dissed. This guy is fundamentally correct–Kansas City is being ruined by rich idiots who spend our money on their stupid projects. These products may be fun to visit once, but they do nothing to address the basic needs, or desires, of average Kansas Citians. Especially in this worsening economy.

Now I’ve been a big newspaper reader for many years, but one of the reasons why I’m happy that big newspapers like the Kansas City Star are failing is because of the role they play in forcing the local ruling class’s agenda down our throats. The folks running the Star probably never give this any thought–in their mind, they are doing their “civic duty” in promoting Kansas City. One of the worst writers for the Star is Kevin Collison, who the Star bills as their “development” beat reporter, but who’s really served as a pimp for local developers for years.To be fair to Collison, the Star often publishes unsigned editorials supporting development scams being promoted by the local ruling class, so it should be understood that the people who run the Star are also pimps for the local developers.

In his most recent column, Collison reports on a new proposal to build a hotel next to, or near, the downtown convention center. One option in this proposal is a 35-story hotel. Several sites are proposed, including an option to build it over the freeway, which is stupid for reasons I’ll explain shortly.

There has been talk for several decades about building more hotels in the area around the convention center. There are some logical reasons behind putting another big hotel in that area, even when there are 3-4 hotels within walking distance of the convention center. Now I have a little bit of experience with this subject, as I helped plan large conferences for the American Association for the Advancement of Science back in the late 1990s. I understand what’s involved in planning and running large conferences which have different requirements when it comes to venues. But my experience with the large conventions put on by the American Library Association are is more germane.

People may think that Kansas City has this huge convention center which could host just about any kind of large convention. If I remember correctly, a typical annual ALA convention has around 25,000 attendees, depending on where the convention is held. ALA never has their convention in Kansas City for one simple reason: Kansas City doesn’t have enough hotel meeting rooms near the convention center. Large association conventions like those put on by ALA and AAAS involve hundreds of events that happen in hotel meeting rooms. They have the big vendor exhibition in the main convention center, as well as the big keynote speeches, but for the most part, these conventions are held in small hotel rooms. That’s something Kansas City lacks, which is one logical reason behind years of proposals to build one or several hotels near the convention center.

One of the more stupid suggestions in this new proposal is that this hotel tower be built over the freeway trench (which I call the “traffic sewer’) which runs underneath the convention center. The Kansas City Star has been pushing this idea for a long time, as have other civic “leaders.” They see some burning need to put a park or buildings over the freeway, because the freeway is a barrier between sections of downtown. Why in the world should local taxpayers be eexpected to bankroll stuff to address this aesthetic problem that nobody sees as a problem? It could be argued that the freeway is a good thing, as it serves as a moat between crap like the Power & Light Theme Park and the awesome Crossroads District.

Of course, Kansas City doesn’t need another downtown hotel and this proposal should be opposed vigorously if any taxpayer money is allocated to the project. It’s simply ridiculous that projects like this are being suggested in these horrible economic times. Kansas Citians don’t need another convention hotel, they need economic development in their neighborhoods. This is amply illustrated every day by just looking at the crime reports or driving around. People in this city need their basic needs (and desires) addressed. If you want to create jobs, support more projects in poor neighborhoods.

The supporters of the hotel project will argue that the hotel will create jobs and generate revenue for the city. It’s kind of amazing that this argument is used by folks, because it is so easily refuted. A new hotel will create construction jobs and then low-paying hotel jobs. Most of the money generated by the hotel will go to rich investors, usually outside of Kansas City. The hotel may help attract a few more conventions and thus some tourist dollars, but that is a stretch that the economic depression is going to last for 5 years or more and because Kansas City is fighting against other cities trying to host these conventions. Of course, you can generate construction jobs and better-paying long term jobs if you build projects in neighborhoods that need them. Wouldn’t it be smarter to create construction jobs in communities that need improvement, as opposed to jobs created to build a hotel that will stand empty most of the time?

Kansas City doesn’t need a new convention hotel.

I’m working on several new blog projects and one of them is more or less ready for the public. I’ll be blogging about web design and technology issues at the new Bread and Roses staff blog The Bit Bucket. We still may change the name of the blog, but William and I will be posting updates on a regular basis. If anybody wants to join us in this project, please get in touch. I have lots to say about web design issues and also want to share techniques and answers to annoyances I run across. Also hoping that the blog can address technology issues like intellectual property, state and corporate censorship, and more. Bookmark us!

Schoolhouse Rock was a big part of my childhood TV viewing. Here’s a pretty damn good animation on politics which evokes that old cartoon series.

As many of my friends know, I’m very enthusiastic about the WordPress blogging platform. I’ve been using WordPress for around 7 years to run this blog. My part time job for the past six months involves training people over the phone on how to use WordPress to set up blogs and websites. That’s right, I train average folks, ranging from retirees in Texas to homemakers in Iowa, in how to configure and use WordPress for their online websites. I’m pretty good at this, from what I’ve been told, though I really don’t enjoy talking on the phone for hours at a time. Lately, I’ve started training friends and my own clients on WordPress. It’s really the easiest and most versatile content management systems out there. I have many years experience with content management systems, but I prefer WordPress. Using it more often for business clients and personal projects.

At some point in the next few weeks, I will be blogging more about WordPress and other tech at the new Bread and Roses tech blog. But I’ll share a few items about my WordPress projects before things fire up over there. By the way, we need a catchy name for the blog.

Today we launched a new site for the Blue Nile Cafe, a popular Ethiopian restaurant here in Kansas City, Missouri. The old design was a simple one based on CSS and static HTML files. The new one is built on WordPress and uses a theme similar to the one used for this blog. I wanted to start using a content management system like WordPress for more client sites, mainly to make maintenance easier for me and so that the clients can make changes and add content. I also wanted to use a pre-built system that is friendly to most browsers–debugging browser compatibility issues is the thing I hate most about web design. Also wanted to use WordPress because it comes with lots of good plug-ins. Currently, the new site is using “My Page Order”, a versatile gallery plug-in, and a popular SEO plug-in.

I’m also setting up a blogging service at Infoshop Blogs which runs on the multi-user version of WordPress. We will be offering blogs to people and will be using the service for some special subject collaborative blogs. I’ve already done phone training with one person who has signed up for our service. Another friend who is a professional writer plans to set up a blog on our service.

Here are a few WordPress tech notes from the past few days:

• If you are setting up a draft WordPress site in a subdirectory of a current site, there is an important step you have to do before you move files around and make the site live. I didn’t do this right with my blog and it took several hours of hair-pulling to fix things. Before you move files, go to Settings > General and change WordPress address (URL) and Blog address (URL) to the new URL. DO NOT VIEW THE SITE! Go to the site via SSH or SFTP and move the files around. Things should work after the files are moved.
• I like the URLs for my websites to be readable, so configuring Permalinks was something I finally figured out how to do correctly. I want the URL for each page and post to include the words in the title of the page or post. You do this by going to Settings > Permalinks and typing /%postname%/ into the custom structure. Create an .htaccess file in the website root if it doesn’t exist and make it writable (777 should work). Click the blue Save Changes button and WordPress will write some code to the .htaccess file. Change the permissions back for that file to the previous settings. The new URLs for your blog / website should work.
• If you change the URL structure of your blog or website, remember that you may have to change previous redirects in .htaccess and you’ll have to add new ones.
• If you set up shorter URL names (or permalinks) for your blog, be aware that the new structure may conflict with existing directories. This blog used to be the only thing on this site and happily sat in a subdirectory called “blog.” I wanted to retain this address for the blog when I set up this website to be a homepage for myself with the blog off the main page. For days I couldn’t figure out why the blog wasn’t showing up. I thought I had to tweak the .htaccess file, which was redirecting visitors to the old subdirectory. This afternoon I finally figured out the problem. WordPress creates permalinks using the custom structure I mentioned earlier in a way that the URL looks like a subdirectory. The blog URL wasn’t working because there was still the “blog” subdirectory. Once I removed that subdirectory, the new URL works.

After existing in three different locations over the past six years, the Crossroads Infoshop is closing and going into storage.  The closing is mentioned today on the Pitch’s blog. The closing of the infoshop isn’t really any cause for sadness, because most of the remaining volunteers are happy about leaving the location. It’s an end of an era, but the infoshop is an organic institution, so it’s going through a new phase in the life of the project. There is still a core of volunteers and some energy that will hopefully set up the project in a new location. I think that there is lots of support for an infoshop in Kansas City and probably some support out there for a radical bookstore, if one existed.

The infoshop is closing for several reasons, the most obvious one being lack of finances. But it’s become abundantly clear that the current space just sucks as a venue for any kind of business, social space or community center. The building is falling apart and is a health hazard.

I’ve been involved in two infoshop projects over the past ten years, including the erstwhile Brian MacKenzie Center in Washington, D.C. Before that, I was a volunteer at the Rainbow Bookstore in Madison, Wisconsin. So I have plenty to say about infoshops and the late Crossroads Infoshop. In this post, I’d like to address some of the more annoying things that came out of the Crossroads Infoshop project, but as I will explain, I’ve run into these attitudes before. Let me also note that I wasn’t involved in the Crossroads Infoshop after February of 2009. I left the project, mostly because of burnout and an interest to pursue personal projects.

I’d like to address several attitudes that I ran across in the course of volunteering for the project, all of which have been expressed in the blog story at the Pitch.

1)$250/month rent is “high” or “unaffordable”: When I’ve told people outside of Kansas City who are involved with infoshops and indie bookstores that our rent was $250/month for a storefront space with around 1000 square feet, they look at me in disbelief. This is an incredible deal for any kind of radical social space with limited funds, but for some reason, in recent years, there were always people hanging around the project who think that $250 is unaffordable. And by extension, they think that the landlord, Harry Reaves, is making bank by asking the infoshop to pay that amount (which we rarely did). Most volunteers understood that this rent was reasonable and that the infoshop had a responsibility to pay it. The difficulty was that volunteers weren’t proactive enough about raising money, which I should note, is a problem with volunteerism at any nonprofit organization. But things weren’t helped by the attitude that $250 was some kind of onerous rent levied on us by a greedy landlord.

Now I can understand that many of the people who are drawn to infoshop projects are people who subscribe to an ethic of anti-capitalism and DIY frugal living. Yes, you could run an infoshop in a squatted building like they do in Europe, for a few weeks perhaps in the Midwest of the U.S.A. If you don’t want to pay rent, you can always give away pamphlets from a table on a street corner. But that’s not what an infoshop that has to pay rent to exist in a building is about. The Crossroads Infoshop was set up with the understanding that we’d pay an affordable rent for a marginal storefront in a poor neighborhood of Kansas City. We spent months fixing up the space in a form of sweat equity that meant we didn’t have to pay the full amount for the rent right away. Reaves was doing our project a huge favor. The bookstore was supposed to be the main way we raised money to pay for rent and other overhead. That paid the rent for about a year, but the bookstore didn’t take off because it wasn’t capitalized properly after we re-opened. In other words, a bookstore has to be always getting in new inventory in order to attract customers. This is Retail 101.

Of course, running a bookstore/infoshop requires more finances than just cash to pay the rent. There is overhead. Bookstore inventory expenses. Money for special programs and guest speakers if you are really ambitious. We could have done a better job of raising money to cover all of those costs. The spurt of new volunteer energy that happened in the infoshop after I left could have led to a better financial situation for the project. That didn’t happen for various reasons, including the volunteerism problem endemic to any nonprofit, but the attitude about the rent “being high” was a huge hindrance.

It didn’t surprise me that two of the people who expressed this attitude were the types who hung around the project for a short time before they moved on to the next interesting thing.

I think that this silly attitude about the rent being “high” was fueled by several things. One was the perception that the building was run down and thus the project shouldn’t be paying that amount. Another was a problem caused by the landlord, who wasn’t transparent about building operations, repairs, and finances. But the main underlying factor is a misinterpretation of the practical implementation of radical politics. If you have a dogmatic attitude about “all landlords being bad”, then you will see anybody in that role, even somebody like Harry Reaves, as being somebody who seeks to screw you over. This attitude wasn’t present during the first year in the new location, I think because that batch of volunteers had worked with Harry when we were fixing up the space and saw him as the community activist that he is. The attitude about the rent became more common among the second wave of volunteers, who really didn’t understand the DIY origins of the project.

I think that the underlying cause of the attitude about the rent being high is that some folks are a bit over-zealous in their application of anti-capitalist politics. I’ve seen this over-zealous attitude directed at AK Press, the San Francisco Anarchist Book Fair, and other successful radical political projects. People apply their anti-capitalist politics to everything, even anarchist projects that operate as businesses or look like a normal non-profit organization (or event). These people are confusing an independent bookstore with Wal-mart. You think they’d support the independent bookstore, but they see it as part of the problem, because it’s easy to go to some meeting and complain about $250 being spent on rent.

2) The radical bookstore wasn’t viable at 3109 Troost: IRunning an independent bookstore of any kind is difficult these days, even at the best location and being run by the brightest, talented booksellers. It’s especially hard given the recession and the changes in bookbuying caused by the Internet. It’s hard to run a bookstore in a town dominated by chains, including corporate used bookstore chain Half Price Books. It’s even harder to run a bookstore using all (or mostly) volunteers.

The Crossroads Infoshop and Radical Bookstore always had a bookstore component until April of last year, when volunteers made the understandable decision to convert it to a library. Around the time of my departure from the project, I had been a bit stubborn about retaining the bookstore aspect of the project. Part of this was because I was interested in putting my time into the bookstore operations. The other reason was that the bookstore, even in its half-assed form, was generating revenue for the project. Most of this revenue was coming from book sales on Amazon.com, not from sales of books in the actual bookstore. Since I was leaving the project and was the only person interested in continuing the bookstore, I understood the decision to turn the project into a library.

Now I have around 20 years experience with publishing, libraries, bookstores and infoshops. I’m always learning something new, but i do know the book and magazine trade inside and out. Several volunteers and a critic over at the Pitch have argued that a radical bookstore wasn’t sustainable at the location on Troost. One person argued that the prices on the books were too high, which is a criticism I heard in Washington, DC. I remember that the person involved with the D.C. infoshop project actually suggested we sell new books at below cost, which was effectively subsidizing people buying our books in an unsustainable manner. When I suggested a steep discount for “members”–a practice widely used by bookstores–this wasn’t good enough for this person. This person in Kansas City argued that some of our new books were unaffordable to residents in the neighborhood, which was true, but that misses several facts. Our bookstore was selling books to residents of the Kansas City area, most of whom could afford to pay the cover price (or a member’s discount). Secondly, we carried a huge selection of cheap paperbacks and even gave away books to indigent community residents.

I still think that Kansas City can support a radical bookstore, even one located on Troost Ave. At our first location in the Crossroads District, our rent was $650/month. We actually managed to pay that rent through book sales, although the project needed to raise more money than that. Volunteers didn’t like the noisy, isolated location. We had some excellent events on First Fridays, but otherwise there wasn’t any foot traffic. But we discovered that there were quite a few people in Kansas City who would drive to our location and buy books. It also helped that we were new and had a good selection of new books and other merch.

The bookstore at the Troost location would have thrived if we had been able to capitalize our inventory following our re-opening. When we re-opened, we had standing debts with several of our core vendors, which limited our ability to get new inventory. If you’ve run a retail business, you understand the importance of having new stuff. This is especially important for bookstores. You cultivate new customers by having new stuff.  We did get some wonderful donations of used books after re-opening, but we never stocked the bookstore like a proper radical bookstore. We didn’t have anybody who could lend the project money to buy new inventory and all of our fundraising and sales was going towards paying overhead. We also didn’t have the cash to do any marketing, which would have helped us even if the marketing was limited.

Let me finish up this post by pointing out that the infoshop wasn’t supposed to be just about selling stuff. We saw the bookstore component of the project as a way to provide alternative resources to the community and as a clear revenue source to support other aspects of the project, including the library, events, and an area of free stuff.

The next incarnation of the infoshop project may not include a bookstore, but I think a radical bookstore is viable in Kansas City. The important thing is that the current and future group of volunteers collectively put together a project which they and everybody else are excited about.

Here’s an interesting video slide show of various graffiti around Kansas City. The non-graffiti parts of this video are a bit silly.

american catastrophe - photo: Michael Byars

Last Saturday night I got a chance to see one of my favorite Kansas City bands, American Catastrophe, play at Davey’s Uptown. This was the second time I’ve seen them play at Davey’s in as many months. This was the fourth or fifth time I’ve seen them in the past year.

This time I brought along a friend who is a musician, who I thought would enjoy the style of music that American Catastrophe plays. My hunch was a good one–he thinks that they are awesome. I describe their sound as Americana meets “big wall of sound.” In other words, country/western flavor with big guitar sound. I mentioned this description to lead singer Shawn Hamontree the next day and he thought that my description was apt.

American Catastrophe is Shaun Hamontree on guitar and lead vocals, Amy Farrand on bass guitar and backing vocals, Eric Bessenbacher on drums, and Terrence Moore on guitars, harmonica, banjo, and backing vocals. This show featured some songs that they are supposedly retiring from live shows. They will be focusing more on new songs at upcoming shows. If you have a chance to see a future American Catastrophe show, don’t pass it up!

The opening act was Adam Lee and Dead Horse Sound Co., which we found to be a nice discovery. I’d describe their sound as honky tonk indie country.

As a person who has been blogging since 1992 and as somebody involved in publishing for the past 25 years, I’m very happy with Scott Rosenberg’s book on blogging, Say Everything. Rosenberg covers all the bases, as only somebody can who was knee deep in the genre and who worked for Salon.com, a new media site that hosts blogs. The book covers the origins of blogging in the 1990s and some of the key personalities that rove new innovations and technology in blogging. He also covers all of the controversies kicked up by blogging, including the never-ending debate about if blogging is a form of journalism. Rosenberg is an excellent writer too, though I think that some of the latter parts of the book could have been trimmed.

Another strength of Say Everything is that it covers with respect the liberatory aspects of blogging. One of the main strengths of blogging is that it is democratic–anybody can write about anything. This has scared the shit out of publishers, who have now lost their roles as gatekeepers to writing, publishing an culture in general. Blogging has opened up a post-scarcity world for the average person who wants to have their say about anything and everything.

It’s also encouraging that Rosenberg gives the alternative media milieu its due for the role it played in the culture that led up to the explosion of blogging in the late 1990s. An an entire chapter covers the story of Boing Boing, which started out as an offbeat zine in the early 90s and morphed into one of the most popular blogs in the late 90s and 00s. But I think that Rosenberg could have devoted more of the book to the alternative media movement of the 1990s, which really laid the groundwork for blogging more than anything else.

If you would like to help out the folks in Haiti, I’ve put together a page listing reputable aid organizations, including several started by veterans of Common Ground in New Orleans. I will be updating the page with more news about Haiti and ongoing relief efforts.

Kansas City now has a new, serious alternative to the Kansas City Star and The Pitch. The Kansas City Free Press launched earlier this month. It’s an Internet-only news and events site, but that only makes sense in this era of declining print circulation. The site has paid staff, which is a promising sign that serious resources are backing this effort. The KC Free Press is more than a blog.

The KC Free Press has an events calendar which puts it in competition with the Pitch and the Star’s awful Ink publication. It also has a directory of local businesses and services called The Finder. In addition to providing information it also allows user reviews.

It’s also good to see that they are making alternative comics available, something that The Pitch used to do when it was a more readable and useful publication. The design of the their website is excellent. The Star’s website is so awful and hard to navigate. I know that the Star was locked into a content management system used by the Knight Ridder chain. It wouldn’t be surprising if efforts to revamp the Star’s website got axed in recent Star cutbacks.

The Free Press is a welcome addition to local media and jurnalism, but time will tell if they can provide anything in terms of original local journalism.