my first craigslist posting: Art Deco Baroque Rococo 3-piece Bedroom Set - $300 (Cleveland, Ohio, in Brooklyn Centre)

What more can I say than, tadaaaaa! I had trouble with the size of the photo files until I got hold of a freeware utility from Fookes Software called EZ Thumbnails, and then everything just seemed to fall into place.

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Date: 2009-04-26, 4:46PM EDT

This is sort of the FlubADub of bedroom furniture; there's some design element here for everybody, so long as you're into exuberance. We think it's from the 1920s or 1930s. It's definitely old; it was originally designed for those metal springs. It's very well built. It is massive. It is huge. It is heavy. It casts its own unique spell. It holds a lot. Our daughter the artist was entranced by it a few years ago on a trip to a furniture shop in Wooster. She has since moved to Savannah, but had not sent for the furniture to accompany her, and now tells us it won't. It's not our style. We're in downsize mode; we'd like rush mats, perhaps on a tasteful, minimalist platform.

Cash, please. Take it away. All three pieces must move out of here together. We're near the zoo, and all the major freeways, I-71, I-90, I-480, and so forth. Live long and prosper. Sleep well, surrounded by quality construction. Wake up in another era.

If these thumbnail photos don't do the three pieces justice, I can send you larger files with better resolution by email.

• Location: Cleveland, Ohio, in Brooklyn Centre
• it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

PostingID: 1141281045; posting can be seen at http://cleveland.craigslist.org/fuo/1141281045.html.

craigslist

Callahan’s Cleveland Diary AT&T starts “U-Verse” deployment in the city

Bill Callahan points out a sighting earlier this month of a big treelawn box near our Carnegie library, at Pearl and Mapledale. It's frustrating to spend years promoting good, sensible design and city planning, only to have a public utility owned by stockholders trump the rights of property owners in an urban community. This lowers all property values, as does the proliferation of utility poles nearly 100 years after we adopted sensible community guidelines for handling our common feeds. Read Bill's whole post. Here's my comment:

Bandwidth is good. Design from AT&T is obsolete and the cheapest possible installation. Security is lousy. These things should be placed below grade; visually, they're nasty; they're also vulnerable to sabotage, vandalism, bad weather, and plain old acts of God.

I believe Newton D. Baker's administration wrote the definitive code on how to place utilities, yet we continue to ignore what would be in the best interests of the community in the long term.

Above-ground utilities on thoroughfares have no place in a well designed city, and good design starts now, with the current projects under way.

Ann Arbor, Michigan, is reeling under the insult to its streetscape; we need to fix ours now.

Callahan’s Cleveland Diary » Blog Archive » AT&T starts “U-Verse” deployment in the city

Blue Fish Red Fish : Couture First, Fashion First

Our friend DAM (David Allen Moss) (FKA Baba Dam Moss, apprentice of Baba Ram Dass) alerted me to this new fashionista offering over at Blue Fish Red Fish, and I must say, I agree with the sentiment. I think this country would be a lot better off if we all paid more attention to our attire and perhaps even started wearing ties again on a regular basis, as was the practice in parochial schools. And, as they at BFRF point out, we are all in the same pond or, to tweak the metaphor a bit, the same kettle of fish. This all has something to do with the definition of "progressive."

Here are a few links to tie things, and don't forget to tie one on with Mike at your earliest possible opportunity, for the ultimate sartorial experience short of spending $150,000 in one swell foop.

http://www.vineyardvines.com/index.cfm

http://www.capitalties.com/

http://www.beautiesltd.com/

shedding a little light: in case you were wondering

10,000 Little (micro) Ideas to Keep You Believing in Cleveland -- The prize-winning idea announced 11 days after the Galleria Gala event for 10,000 (((micro))) ideas has to do with improving lighting, and not many details of the suggestion appear. I wonder if improving lighting means reducing lighting, creating atmosphere, and conserving power?

We need to remember that automobiles, buses, and business establishments have their own lights, and street lighting is largely superfluous. At 3 in the morning, it's downright wasteful.

Tactically, the less artificial light there is at night, the safer we are. In the dark, you control your own domain.

A case in point: Since I took the overhead lighting, my own mercury-vapor streetlight, out of my back yard, I have had no further trouble with uninvited visitors. If I want to invite somebody, I'll turn the localized lighting on for them--the porch lights, the garage lights, the landscape lights. I don't use motion-sensor lighting because that, too, can be used by an intruder to his advantage, especially if you're not around.

Lights invite; they should be intentional, thoughtful, and voluntary. Businesses use lights to attract. Public lighting dilutes or negates that ambient effect.

I sincerely hope the prize-winning idea called for less, not more, in the way of the application of night-time lighting.

Bathing the streetscape with artificial night lighting merely sends the bad guys the message that we are afraid and makes it easier for the drug boys to make change.

another 24-hour place: Michael's Diner At Shaker Square

Michael's Diner At Shaker Square - Cleveland, OH 44120 -- This past Saturday, we took the blue line and then the green line (it was raining) out to see some friends at Shaker Square, in those condos taller than the Moreland Courts near the Coventry stop, and happened to notice another 24-hour establishment, Michael's Diner, right at the first stop coming out of downtown, at the north side of the square. There are three reviews at http://www.yelp.com/.

The story behind the taller condos was that the builder, a Jewish man, was denied occupancy in the Moreland Courts some time in the 1940s or 1950s, so he took pains to construct his own building right across the street and to make it tall enough that he could look down on his rejectors. This area around Shaker Square continues to offer some of the most elegant cosmpolitan living available in this country. Years ago, in the mid-70s, when I lived on North Moreland (2635?), I was able to park the car in the apartment's garage-under, grab my bags, hop the rapid, and be out to the airport with less muss and fuss than I've experienced any time since.

#4

Task Lamps in the Spotlight - New York Times -- I'm fascinated with lamps and light. Without good lighting, you have trouble living in the world of books, art, and ideas. With good lighting, the world opens up.

I also think that paying attention to having good lighting is important for maintaining our full functionality for as long as possible.

I think I really want #4, Richard Sapper’s Halley Compact lamp.

a new face on planet NEO

Rob Hawkins has redone his aggregator Planet NEO, and it's lovely. Note the functionality of the tag soup.

a rolling moss gathers no stone, or words to that effect

Here's some good news from the CIA's FUTUREcommunicate, June 2007:

Moss Takes "Entrepreneurship by Design" to Heart

After two years managing a startup with CIA, FUTURE's Founding Director is leaving to launch his own design firm, in the soon-to-be-established District of Design, Midtown, Cleveland.

Moss will be joining forces with existing partners of Nead Brand Partners and Newbomb. The combined firm will offer a progressive approach to Brand Communications, Strategy, and Experience Design and will launch under a new name in the months ahead.

The change will also allow David to further his Regional advocacy for Design and Technology, dialing up his contributions to IngenuityFest, Friends for the School of the Arts, CPAC, GameHub, Defrag, Tuesdays, and others.

Likewise, he looks forward to supporting the Cleveland Institute of Art in their efforts to integrate FUTURE programming into the strategic buildout of their new combined campus in University Circle's emerging Arts District. Best wishes, David!

here's another reason for the SB117 full frontal assault

DirecTV May Test Broadband over Powerline - News and Analysis by PC Magazine -- It seems that AT&T may be outflanked here, by just about everybody--the cable companies, the VoIP providers, the cellphone companies, the satellite providers, and now, to add insult to injury, our friend the electric company, and that more than likely accounts for AT&T's haste and desperation in ramming through the bad-for-everybody-but-them legislation known here in Ohio as SB117, sponsored by Lance Mason and Bob Spada.

If we can get broadband over our electrical power lines or through the air or over cable, and we can get VoIP over broadband, we don't really need all that legacy POTS that AT&T has held onto for years without improving, all the while charging premium prices for it. It seems that this is reckoning day for AT&T, and they're trying to dodge their demise by cozying up to our state legislators and trying to put their signature tin boxes on every treelawn between here and Cincinnati.

In the process, they're making us a technological laughingstock and pointing up our technological illiteracy and innumeracy as a community.

Remember, we don't owe AT&T anything. Let the market forces prevail. Let them fail. Do not let AT&T prove the sad old theorem we last heard from the open-source man, Bruce Perens: "If you can't innovate, legislate."

dam

Ice dams can wreak roof havoc-- here's a good article from Dayton on a problem that hasn't plagued us here in the electronic cottage since the mid-80s. I spent a few hours this morning and yesterday evening bailing out and mopping up our back porch and knocking down huge icicles all around the house. I'm going to look into those things they call ice and water shields, the rubber-mat sort of underlayment. We have balloon construction here.

NYT nonfiction book list: Frank's at #11

Gloria just gave me a heads up about the nonfiction bestseller booklist from The New York TIMES; she had been talking late this afternoon to Frank Warren of PostSecret on the phone about MTB, and he announced that his new book was at #11 on the current list. Checking it out, I see that the book I'm reading now is at #10, and the book George Nemeth seems to be chained to for eternity is at #9. We're hoping Frank comes to Cleveland soon.

marring the streetscape, for three administrations

Once again, I'm asking if anybody knows who is responsible for the omnipresent Omni Media advertising kiosks which have been marring the metropolitan Cleveland streetscape since Mike White contracted for their installation as one of his final cruel pranks. The PD article at the link has a date of 01/04/2001, nearly 6 years ago. Now that yet another year is passing, we should have some report of the revenue the City of Cleveland garners from these design monstrosities. I've seen nothing lately.

Can anybody tell us who controls these kiosks, who books the advertising, and how much the city gets for allowing its streets to be used so poorly? Who benefits? Is it some French company, perhaps the same one that currently controls the ads at the airport?

Why is our accountability so poor around here? Don't we deserve to know whether these things are delivering as advertised? There are 195 of them, according to the article, so who is responsible for them? I don't think this is asking too much, to know about assets with easements on our common city property. If they're not productive, then perhaps we should get them off the streets; to me, they are unwelcome visual clutter. If we are going to make a point of being a breeding ground of artists and other genteel, sensitive people who hold dear proportion and integration, we can't go around being so thoughtlessly tacky.