You did catch Excelsior and Grand on a bad day. The drizzle ruins it a bit. But in a way you caught some of what it lacks and is unfixable. A downtown has workers in it. Excelsior and Grand has retail workers, to be sure, and maintenance staff too, but the office workers are absent.

The building with the Trader Joe's was originally intended to include office space. The office space was scrapped by the developer after few companies came to lease the planned space. Instead the space was converted apartments.

In a downtown you'd expect to see folks on the sidewalks during the day because the workers get out and about. At Excelsior and Grand, well, everyone is away during the day working somewhere else. Strangely, it really functions like some newfangled bedroom community for adults with no children.

It picks up once everyone returns home in the evening, though the Trader Joe's corner is pretty busy most of the day. Pier 1 suffers from the stupid choice of painting over most of the windows that sidewalk strollers would be looking in through.

The primary source of daytime workers around Excelsior and Grand is the Park Nicollet campus a few blocks away and there just aren't enough of them to make the area look bustling with people on the sidewalks during the daytime.

Great video, James.

I live in Hong Kong, where one night's 'buzz' sometimes leaves you longing to apply for a job as one of those pole-sitting ascetics. But generally it's a fun place, and it's certainly the result of what you call the 'uptown' effect. We've got lots of chi-chi boutiques, too, but are they any fun? Of course not. The liveliest areas here center on little shops at street level, and plenty of restaurants and coffee bars, and pushy guys trying to sell you copy watches. We can all probably do without the latter, but the other ingredients are essential -- as are lots and lots of people. Maybe uptowns are crowded, downtowns are not?

What I love is that you get paid for this...

Lucky man

if this guy wants a career again, he needs some very serious psychological examination.

I'd say a suspended sentence pending a letter from the pshrink explaining exactly how he got this way, and that he's cleaned up, might be worth considering.

society needs some explanation for all the young toughs who think they can disparage and pillage their way through life. one that they can act on. was it violent video games? too much "24?" bad-ass rap? steroids and a tape of favorite beer-and-babes commercials?

about time some of these violent wackos get pshrinked for the answer, and here's a good place to start.

Sorry, it is test. Now is 17 October 2007, 11:44:52

UGH...we've been plagued with these things for a couple of years now. Some city planner waxing nostalgic about his high school trip to Prague inflicted these upon us.

They supposedly are better than tacky stop signs or bourgeoisie stoplights. It gives us a more "European traffic solution".

Somewhere in the ninth circle of hell, Nikolai Chauchescu is smiling.

James that was a nice video. It was the first time I've ever heard you speak and I've enjoyed your work since the days of the lower case "r". Your style and wit come across in the spoken word very well.

Now onto the topic at hand. You may remember that Bloomington "constucted" a new downtown a few years ago as well. It's the Oxboro area at 98th and Lyndale. Apparently "downtown" in my 2nd tier suburb is 3 strip malls and a clock tower (that no longer keeps time). It never really took so they are going to try again at Penn and 494. What you suggest (Uptown not Downtown) is a good idea but I think the trouble with that is we already have it here in Bloomington. How did you describe it, good restuarants, shops, foot traffic, 2:00am drunks etc...it's called the Mall of America. I don't think there's enough Buzz(.mn) out here in Bloomington to support two Uptowns inside of 3 miles of each other.

I may be wrong, but don't traffic circles help traffic move more quickly? You don't have to stop as much; you just merge into the circle, then merge out.

Sure, you may have to pause if there's a lot of traffic, but if nobody's there, you just go. Contrast with a traffic sign (at which you always have to stop, even if the intersection's empty) or a light.

Theoretically traffic circles do help move traffic along, for the very reasons you state. Seeing them in operation in New Jersey, however, I'd have to say they only work if the people using them understand that whole "nobody needs to stop" thing. Having people stop on the feeder road to the circle is bad enough -- granted sometimes the traffic in the circle just doesn't have gaps to fit into -- but we have people stopping in the traffic circle lanes as well. Traffic circles with people who know how to drive in them are wonderful. With people who are idiots, I'd rather have the light.

So we intend on imprisoning a young man over a duck? It's a world gone mad, I tell you-----utterly mad.

Oh, well. At least this incident gave journalists far and wide the opportunity to ask, "murder most fowl?"

What the young man did to the duck was unspeakable, but not, perhaps, unforgivable. A felony conviction is life-altering, if not life-destroying -- it closes many, many doors.

Some states won't allow a professional license of any kind (not even cutting hair or turning wrenches) to be issued to a convicted felon. He can't become a cop anywhere, and, of course, he can't get any job that requires him to be bonded.

He won't be able to become a doctor or a lawyer in most states (though this dude doesn't sound like he's going that route, he did have a presumably responsible government job).

He'll have to get a waiver if he wants to join any branch of the military, and even if he gets in, his training choices will likely be limited.

A fine and even jail time -- yes, that's appropriate, and he'll have to live with what that does to his job and other prospects. The duck killing was shocking and horrible, but, imho, it's not worth wrecking a 24-year-old's future over.

I seem to recall one of the links on this story mentioned that he had done the same thing to a turkey a year or two ago. Whatever fine/restitution/shame that got him then, it wasn't enough to keep him from doing it again, and I have a hard time believing he's truly remorseful. He's sorry he lost his job, yes, but does he understand, even now, that what he did was wrong?

It's hard to say he should have to pay for the rest of his life/career, but punishment should definitely escalate for re-offenders. What *will* get his attention?

My fiftieth of a buck is that you are correct in that traffic circles do work well as long as everyone understands the rules.

Not far from my house, we have a traffic circle (I prefer "Fruit Loop") at a 4 way intersection with one of the roads being the inlet from an interstate into the airport. It is the economy size, with only one lane going around. It is in the heart of Rankin County, Mississippi. Keep in mind that a very large portion of Rankin County is what we effete snobs would term rural, at best. So the posted 10mph entry speed into said loop is meaningless to most. Ergo, lots of stopping in the circle.

I have found that when traffic is backed up 10 or more cars, the easier route to go from a northerly direction to a westerly direction is to turn right, U-turn, turn right, U-turn and then turn right. I can usually do that in the time three cars egress from the 10-car line...

so all the stories go after yet another nut arms up and heads to school to settle scores that most people would never think existed.

precisely because this guy is not 50 and presently setting his career goal as eclipsing Charles Whitman is why he needs some serious help.

the increasing number of these cases is precisely why every one of them we can examine needs to be profiled to find out how they are getting that way. back when I was a callow youth, sometime between the invention of stone tablets and the invention of writing on them perhaps, the knowledge that a prison record closed every door you walked past was quite enough to keep most folks living friendly.

maybe the guy can be rehabilitated, we can only hope. but let's find out why the old ultra-violence is on the rise, lads.

Call me a midwestern cretin, but...

I really don't get the hunting comparison...

A guy who chases down a duck in a drunken rage and rips the head off is SCARY -- that's not normal drunk behavior......(Admittedly, I know mostly weepy drunks and intellectually hubristic drunks, but still...)

A guy who goes out with a few buddies and shoots ducks is someone you want to hit up for meat.....

The "Daffy Decapitator" is certainly not someone I'd feel comfortable having in the neighborhood... the Ducks Unlimited guys are..

If he'd shot the duck on a pond, no, no-one would care. Why? Because in our society shooting a wild duck is viewed (by most of us) as an acceptable and relatively humane sport. Ripping the head off a duck -- and a tame one at that -- is not. What separates us from this young man is that a) we know the difference and b) we choose to comply with society's rules.

Add to that the well-known fact that people who abuse animals often escalate their crimes to abusing people...well, let me put it this way -- even after jail, restitution, shame and unemployment, would you want him to be living on the same street as your daughter?