Downtown This Weekend? Follow the Balloons

From my blog...just in time for Sunday Tours:

Do you want to visit Pacific Electric today?

The update from 3 AM:

The courtesy patrolman and I visited Art the Ass at 4:12 this morning. I felt the CP needed to see what we are faced with on a regular basis. I knocked on the door, Art answered. I said it's 4 in the morning, your party started at 2, your guests are gone, turn off your stereo please.

"I'll turn it down" he says.

"No, Art - turn it off. You turn it down we still hear the bass. It is time to turn your stereo off" I say.

"It is my laptop" he responds.

G: "I don't care, turn it off"

A: "The street noise is louder than my music"

G: And, since 2004 I've been able to get a good night's rest. Turn off your stereo

A: I'll turn it do....

G: You need to turn it off.

Art then looks pleadingly to the CP, hoping for some kind of relief.

CP: Art, it's 4 a.m. these people need to rest.

Alex arrives on scene...

Alex: "we can hear your music through the wall. If we didn't do you think we'd be up?"

Art: I'll turn it down.

G: You need to turn it off.

I begin to repeat this phrase as Art all of the sudden doesn't understand what I'm asking. Sure the music is playing off his laptop, but he's hooked up to a sound system. The sound system is right up against our wall. The bass travels through our wall like it's a flimsy Ikea lampshade.

The music stayed down for 15 minutes after we left. It played for the rest of the night. And, 9 minutes before my alarm clock is supposed to go off...Art's thump-thump music continues to flow as if he's been partying since it was 1999.

Street noise doesn't phase us. The only thing that really would get me out of bed (prior to Art's arrival to Pacific Electric Lofts) was a person screaming violently, and the occasionally (like once a year occasional, check my blog) drunken party participant. What Art is being allowed to get away with is unreasonable.

Art Levin's is in unit 614 at the Pacific Electric Lofts. Located at 610 S Main Street (6th/Main)

Today is the last day of the Downtown Living Weekend, and Pacific Electric has an open house. I strongly encourage everyone to come check out our building, the roof, and eat the cookies. Stop by Art's place, knock on the door and introduce yourself. Let him know you've been reading about him on the web, and you were interested to meet the guy in person.

I'm sure he'd appreciate getting to know more downtown neighbors.

You can visit me at the Metro booth at the Downtown Living Weekend. I didn't get a lot of visitors yesterday, but those I did see...was great.

For more Art the Ass stories, which are all sadly very true, visit my website!

Was it just me, or was this event rather sparsely attended this weekend? I dropped by the booths at 7/Fig at Sunday at noon and felt like I was the only one there.

Couple thoughts on the weekend - First - Hal and his team deserve major kudos - an enormous thing to organize.

I think they should have stuck to "Downtown Living" in years passed. Opening it up into everything watered it down and got people confused. I think that was the reason for the low turn out, not the slow down in the market.

717 Olympic's amenities (and fun treats for open house participants) were hands down the best.

I had one negative experience that I wanted to share, and I'm sure you are all vaguely aware of this issuee:

It was 12:30 on Sat and I was looking for a lunch place in South Park. I had finished Brockman, told my friend to meet me at Tranquility Base and we'd go to Evo. Tranquility Base had their 1/2 ass sign up that said "lunch and dinner", but they were indeed closed (this is the 2nd time I had this "lunch" experience there, but I assumed on the open house weekend they'd be open) they told me they open at 1pm for lunch. It was 12:30 and I was hungover and starving!

thanks to my Joe's parking pass, I could be lazy and decided to drive around to find an open place and I could tell my friend to meet me there. I spent 20 min trying to find something open within 4 blocks in all directions of Evo.
J's lounge, Liberty Grill, Palm, Infusion, Tranqulity - ALL CLOSED for lunch.

I settled for a sandwich at Starbucks. Those are the days that I admit to liking Starbucks and don't dismiss it as a cultureless "chain" - it's OPEN!

Sounds like Hal has a few more items to add to the next Open House. It is unfortunate these restauranters did not participate.

Opening it up into everything watered it down and got people confused. I think that was the reason for the low turn out, not the slow down in the market.

The event's attendance figures have trended downward continuously for the past few years. Some of the organizers theorized that the lower turnout in 2007 was due to protest marches. This year they can easily blame (and rightly so) the huge run-up in gasoline prices and signs of a spreading recession.

The one factor that probably supercedes all these various reasons is that the public's enthusiasm for playing a real-life version of Monopoly, including the flipping of condos, no longer exists. That and the natural downturn in housing prices has put a chill on things.

Folks who care about the city should hope that growing apathy and pessimism, towards events like the Downtown Open House event, don't end up putting a squeeze on the developers of new condominium projects, thereby pushing the community right back to where it was over 10 years ago.