HITTING THE WALL… Like all creatures sheltering in place, Squid is having trouble keeping track of the days. You’d think the distinction between daily and weekly newspapers might also dissolve – the Weekly now has a daily newsletter, Monterey County NOW, the Carmel Pine Conehas a daily bulletin and the daily Salinas Californian prints three days a week. The Monterey Herald, meanwhile, is standing its ground as a daily.
Squid was clicking through the Herald website (the print edition comes only sometimes) when Squid was greeted by a beefed-up paywall screen titled “Paywall FAQs.” Near the top is the Q, “If it’s so expensive to produce, why are there so many free weekly papers and blogs?” The A doesn’t actually answer the Q, but it does take a dig at Squid’s livelihood: “Most alternative weeklies and blogs don’t go to such rigorous reporting standards. They often won’t have multiple sources for the same story or the sources will be one-sided… If you were to simply count up all the original stories that traditional print media creates in a day versus those weeklies and blogs you’ll almost always find that the traditional media simply brings you more original, local stories hands down.”
Huh? Squid counted, and the Weekly (which, um, has rigorous reporting standards) has published 163 original Covid-19 stories and counting.
STREET SMARTS… Squid is self-isolating like a pro, keeping the brain sharp (Sudoku) and the tentacles occupied (knitting oversized versions of the coronavirus to yarn bomb Pacific Grove City Hall). Squid got a hankering for albondigas, and oozed to Salinas’ Main Street Bakery for some of the best in town.
When Squid got to Oldtown, workers were chopping down trees on Main Street. Despite the shelter-in-place order, the city has proceeded with the Main Street Streetscape Project, part of the Salinas Downtown Vibrancy Plan. (The work wasn’t supposed to start until later this year, but the city figured if they started now, fewer merchants would be impacted.)
Some voiced complaints to Frank Saunders, president of the Salinas City Center Improvement Association. Saunders’ written response starts out nice enough – “I want to assure you that our association is very interested in receiving input from the merchants,” he told Jason Cook of Cooks Photography. But then, this: “What we do not want is constant complaints about everything we do.”
That’s before launching into a litany of complaints about the homeless – but then he pivots and goes positive again: “The lull in activity downtown has been a positive for our street and sidewalk improvement project.”
If Squid had bones and a neck, Squid might be suffering whiplash. But Squid will focus instead on Squid’s hope of Oldtown thriving once again.
(1) comment
Yup, Squid is very observant. Personally, I don't care what they do to Down Town. It wouldn't matter if I did. but it just blows my mind how every project seems to be cut just a little short so a teeny tiny percentage can be used for ?? Down Town?? There is no funding or man power to address important maintenance issues around the City but there is plenty for working on the down Town project..(I thought they said Maintenance was short handed) My mistake. The City recently received a large grant to fin a solution for the homeless problem. So what has actually been done about that? Uhm, well there were some meeting about it. Seven or so travel trailers and a Mobile shower unit? More trailers are coming later. Maybe. My bad, the trailers are for COVID-19 quarantined Homeless not the regular homeless. (They wouldn't all fit anyway.) Oh wait there is also an interactive map of services. This will take you on a loop of addresses within the City that one can find Homeless services. let's see, there were 2-3 empty lots. "planned for future use" A soup kitchen no longer open, an abandoned trailer, a small Mens shelter that sort of looks like a slum town tavern .. nothing that a person could actually physically go to and acquire shelter or assistance .But it's Okay because they plan to update the list, soon, I think.
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