For future reference, I think I've found a pretty solid place to do Knight Investigator badges if I ever want them: http://www.shieldspride.com/
It would end up costing around $500 for a couple of them, but it might be worth it just for the total amusement. I would end up having to ask them if they can turn the 7-point stars so that they are point-up when they do the stamp and imprinting, but the silver ones are close enough to pass cursory muster.
So... who wants to be a detective?
So, I haven't actually written up my review of Jade Empire yet. It's been an oddly busy summer. However, I have gotten four other video games that I'm preparing reviews for, and they would be: XIII: Thirteen, Pariah, Bad Mojo, and Darkfall.
XIII: Thirteen
Thirteen by Ubisoft is an interesting little escape from the usual photorealistic first-person shooter types out there by presenting everything in a much more comic book cell-shaded style. The opening sequence to each of the chapters looks exactly like panels being produced out of a comic book, and internal events snap into view with a similar effect.
With voice acting by everyone’s beloved David Duchovny (who played Fox Mulder on the X-Files) we picked up this title less because I know the comic it is set from and more because I don’t mind his voice...
Read the rest of this review at Vox ex Machia »
Pariah
Pariah is an all around mediocre first person shooter that just cannot stand up under the weight of its own ego. The graphical complexity of many of the environments was certainly beautifully painted, the puzzles seemed interesting enough, and the foes—while not that bright—did perish with satisfying cries of pain; but it seemed to lack that spark that makes a video game worth playing. It is a straightforward nothing-special-here first person shooter and nothing more.
Read the rest of this review at Vox ex Machina »
Hopefully I can muster the time to hit those others that I wanted, but this is what I have at the moment. My next set of news will probably encompass my work on Vexations more than it does Vox Ex Machina but I figured that it was a good time to introduce that to this slice-of-life blog as well...
Living out in Michigan makes for some very slow days. I don't quite get out as much as I do in the mean, sun-baked streets of Phoenix. Also, I might mention, I really don't get near Detroit much more than once a month.
So, what I've gotten myself up to has mostly been video games. Lots of video games. Recently I bought myself Prey and F.E.A.R.
Prey, an uncanny, scary, atmospheric FPS involving a juxtaposition of aliens and Native Americans. The game starts out presenting our hero, Tommy, a jaded and disillusioned Cherokee boy (young man really) trying to break free of the Reservation. It's steeped in every pop culture Native American cliché that I could think of, and then some. Suddenly, aliens attack. They start sucking up cars, people, the bar he works in, into this weirdly convoluted ship that is traversed via a bizarre network of space-warping portals.
The best parts about this game happen to be some of the humor. Once and a while, wandering about, you come across a panel on the wall that is currently receiving radio from Earth—and it happens to be Art Bell. Callers continually call in about various strange happenings, lights, and other events involved with the alien attack and he does his best not to believe them.
The biggest problem I had with Prey is that it was amazingly short. The death mechanic is interesting—when you die you are thrust into the alternate world of your ancestors where you fight the dishonored dead—of course, this makes short work of dying over and over because you come back, whilst your foes do not. It doesn't have enough replay value to go back in with a more difficult setting.
The best things about this are the weird varieties of puzzles that present themselves from the space-warping qualities of the ship. Sadly, the game just does not go far enough with those puzzles. The most intriguing part was a labyrinth of wall-walking-gravity-conveyors, but it didn't end up lasting that long.
High point? Discovering that the aliens were apparently the doom of the Anasazi causing them to totally vanish so long ago (not that we haven't seen me using this sort of a plot in Vexations or anything.) I laughed, I cried, I kicked alien butt in the name of my ancestors.
F.E.A.R. This game fell down mostly on story. While the creepy little girl effect really got me, and I loved having bullet-time to take out my enemies in this FPS shooter it really wasn't doing such a good job of keeping my attention. What drove me forward wasn’t the interesting new foes, but the next time I met Mr. I-Eat-Dead-Bodies or the scary little girl who light fires and threw stuff at me.
Otherwise it was a generic FPS with horror elements. Things that I did like involved how the bad guys would jump for cover, or leap over objects to get at me. They'd throw grenades when I was hiding and scream in horror when I appeared. I'm told by everyone that they're telepathically controlled clones, but they seemed pretty well socialized for clones.
There isn't much in the way of tactics, or problem solving that I had to do. The enemies are loud—well, most of them are—talking to each other in their outside voices on the radio whenever I'm getting near. I don't need to walk like a cat, these guys were made to be snuck up on.
I think that they could have done a lot more work with the NPCs (or at least more NPCs in general who weren't specters walking in my vision) and had them be more interactive. Maybe some escort or protection scenarios. As a horror it did a pretty good job with the ethereal ghosts that fell into dirty ashes every time I got a good look at them, and the dead bodies falling out of ceiling tiles, but sadly eventually it just got tired. I stopped jumping at noises about half-way-through. I think it was because I realized nothing was coming to get me anymore, at least nothing that wasn't going to bark, “AREA SEEMS CLEAR!” on its radio before it came up on me.
Today, I got Jade Empire.
Let's see how this goes.
The wonderful rE/dOx and LadyDev have showcased Mill Avenue Vexations, our lovely detective/cabdriver Vex Harrow, and awesome author Kyt Dotson on The Ungodly Hour once again! You can get the mp3 audio here. Listen up everybody, and after you’re done: go visit The Ungodly Hour. You can find the showcase and their music by finding the March 30th, 2007 show.
Read more about it on Vex's news blog.
Well, Vex over at the Mill Avenue Vexations blog beat me to this one, but apparently there is a superhero who sometimes patrols the Ave. His name is Citizen Prime and when he hits the mean streets in his beautiful costume (costing him almost $4k) with his cell phone and a hearty dose of extroversion.
I discovered him because I found an article at AzCentral.
On a Tuesday night in April, I followed Prime on a shift. As part of a recent effort to interact with the community more often, he spent a couple hours in the late evening strolling Mill Avenue in Tempe, mingling with the crowds.
He has a Myspace page and even a full blown webpage—still under construction, but I’m sure it’ll be awesome.
I for one, find it heartening that he treads softly places where I so solidly place my own soul.
The Ave.
Via Boing Boing, I discovered this neat service, outside.in.
The project manager, Stephen Berlin Johnson had this to say about the research from the goings on:
Since we've been tracking local blog posts by neighborhood for six months now, we figured it was about time we figured out exactly what the US's bloggiest neighborhoods were, given that this is the question every sensible person has been trying to find an answer to for years now.
What's interesting about the list we compiled is that it turns out placebloggers tend to thrive in gentrifying communities -- half of our nabes in the top ten were in the middle of some form of gentrification. makes sense, but it wasn't something we went into the project expecting to find.
I suppose that as myself, I am not surprised. My neighborhood of choice is Mill Avenue, and Mill is suffering from a very powerful case of gentrification. It's like a disease that wracks a body—the immune system rushes to the aid, but discovers no enemies to fight, just strange, new growth. A cancer. And so some of the elements, in this case the citizenry, fall to squinting into the sun and going through the motions.
With things that are familiar vanishing under the treads of bulldozers people begin with the light touches: they start talking about what it used to be like—how they wish it still was.
Today Vex on Mill Avenue Vexations brought up a lot of this stuff, observations of the old, the execrations into the new.
It's like Walt Richardson said, "There's a lot of changes, down on Mill Avenue." Oh, but those times are done changing.
For good or bad.
Once again, I have returned to Michigan and, although on my arrival the weather notwithstanding, it is actually extremely green here and not white. The beginning of April seemed to haven’t quite released itself form the clutches of the Snow Queen and I have some interesting photographs of flurries and a very light wannabe blizzard caught in an MPEG. Unfortunately, these things will be remaining on my hard drive for the time being.
The not-so-humble of Ann Arbor is brimming with activity these days, enough that it was next to impossible to find a parking space this last Sunday to go to Borders and buy a bunch of books to read. In doing so I picked up a series of totally random titles from the shelves along with a few that I actually want to read—such as titles by William Gibson that I haven’t gotten into yet and sadly the next in The Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind (yes, it’s crack.)
It’s taken me almost two weeks now to totally settle in and recover from the airplane trip and the dramatic change in climate. My fingers are eternally cold now; a distinct and strange change from living in Arizona. Although, truth be told, since it was winter in Phoenix the temperature has changed little between there and here at the moment.
I look forward to this summer because it means I’ll have a lot more time to spend working on Vexations. Expect at least six new novelettes coming out. Covers are already in commission and things are looking up.
More news later.
He is the proprietor of The Graffiti Shop, does glass-blowing, and is a general all around scoundrel and awesome person. If there is anything about the Ave that I love the most, it's him.
This necklace nicely exemplifies the simplicity of his presence and additions to the Ave. Being a glass blower he creates lots of different items from large (smoking bowls) to the small (much like the above necklace.) I bought my first pentacle from him a long time ago, about the time I lived on the Ave as a MIll rat.
I gave it to Ms. Vex Harrow, of course, since she suggested that she could make a rather powerful talisman out of it. I figure that she'll probably have something to say about this gift herself.
I don't receive gifts for my work in the community very often, and I didn't quite expect one from Lawrence's quarter--I give him the books because I think of him as one of the important fixtures that makes the place what it is. He's a welcome part of my life and experience down there. The Graffiti Shop is an element that I would like to see prosper and continue to bring good things.
Go. Hunt. Visit the Graffiti Shop. Visit Mill.
Since I am currently waiting to get my camera back from where I accidentally let it lie (my friend's house.) I thought that I'd share this interesting little link with everyone that reads this blog.
It's a Wiki Map of the Mill Avenue District.
I even added the Mill Avenue drum circle to it.
This one is a tribute to artists, particularly those who have done work for me in the past. It is a story that will probably someday become one of the comic book versions of Vexations.
It will be available over the next few Saturdays at drum circle and the Graffiti Shop on Mill Avenue. Possibly at other locations as more places take the booklets in small numbers.
Remember, supplies of these are limited and it is not available on in the web store yet, so get out and get one soon.
One could easily liken a city to a person, with a childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. Phoenix and her metro cities have always fascinated me for this reason. This city—as I have previously posted—is constantly attempting to re-invent itself. Tearing down the old, building up the new, and sometimes even demolishing the new to bring up the newer and newest-fangled bleeding edge of urban domination.
Mill Avenue is no exception to this. It is a center of community, commerce, and conversation that suckles most directly off of the youth and the college, which is why an article posted over at Exurban League caught my attention.
If you want 6th Street, you've got to get rid of the bland corporate storefronts and blander post-retro buildings and get back to Tempe's roots. Bring back the fun of starting an evening out by filling up at Restaurant Mexico then going over to Wong's to listen to Dead Hot and then up to Edcel's for Walt Richardson & The Morning Star Band and capping it off by a 2am breakfast at Stan's Metro Deli and all the other things that brought Mill Avenue back from the brink of irrelevance. People used to line up out the door at The Coffee Plantation on a Friday or Saturday night: When's the last time anything was that popular on Mill?
The Ave has always kept my interest because there were things to do and places to be. The Graffiti Shop, Coffee Plantation, the deep thud of a band playing at Long Wongs—while these places are older than they are new, they were not Abercrombie & Fitch, or the newest reincarnation of some stupid sunglasses store limed with faux stone and too-bright windows in the dimness of the twilight. I know that I am one who advocates the drum circle before all else, but Mill is also the buildings and the stores that have been proudly lifting their chins and smiling at the passersby.
Now, condominiums are going up around Mill, they’re building them at the waterfront of the fake lake, they’re lurking just beyond the grand glow of the Ave, and looming with dire intent. These people who haven’t even visited Mill except for through the tempered glass of their limousines, and through the slats of office windows, are making decisions about changing Mill into a tourist paradise. Their concept of cool is imported from Scottsdale, trying to attract teenyboppers with money. To leech gross out of high-rent storefronts that are all glitz and glam that have no staying power and no substance. No soul.
That's it for now. News from the street level. It’s Saturday, and soon another Mill Avenue Night.
According to an article that I just found laying around on AZCentral.com the police are hitting the bricks again along my favorite haunt, Mill Avenue. The article starts out extremely well, in my vision, issuing notes about extremely useful things that having officers on foot patrol does for the population. Anyone who has watched police officers ride past on their bicycles, noses in the air.
This is not a bad thing.
The police are our civilian warders, although many place themselves and act like a sort of paramilitary and literally look down on the civilians whom they are dutybound to protect this is a sociological problem that is created by the cliques of the profession and I might mention is felt rather palpably by a great deal of people who live on the Ave. The more people lend to disconnect them from the goings-on of the street the worse this behavior can only become. Bringing them back into the fold should help build a bit more tolerance on both sides.
For the most part police officers on patrol and denizens of the street don't scrape against one another--transients, Mill rats, tourists, college students, none of these groups have any reason to tangle with the police. But, when people come together there are always those times when friction becomes fire. These times are when it is best that our warders are aware of and sensitive to all the cultural innuendo that drenches the Ave and don't end up inflicting more injury when they attempt to help out.
So, I say to people. See a police officer walking the beat on our red bricks and say, "Hello." Make sure that they know they're welcome. Get to know them. They may be in uniforms, they may have guns, but they're people just like we are.
If the Ave is going to be a worthwhile place for all of us we must embrace all comers -- especially our civil protectors.
As per usual, a run of one-hundred is on the presses right now that will be released for free on Mill Avenue and the surroundings, while a small set will be held aside for people who are out of state who would like to support this project. Don’t miss out on owning one of our collectible booklets, Vexations is a piece of Tempe history and is slowly becoming a mantelpiece of readers on the Ave.
Also, if you happen to like the cover art go to the artist’s thread in our forums and give her some props! Her name is Marlon Teunissen and she did a stunningly good job.
This post is going to be a short one, seeing as how an entire week has gone by since my excursion.
The most notable thing that I can report on from the 6th is that I met the Mural Mice. What is a mural mouse? you're probably wondering. Well, they are a pair of extremely interesting people who came down to my beautiful Ave from Prescott, Arizona. They are called mural mice because they paint murals and have recently been part of some projects in that region of the state.
The most amusing and striking thing about them had to be their lovely hats, which looked like brown berets with mouse ears attached.
The past two Saturdays have been less noteworthy than most because of something extreme and strange to the Arizonan physique: extreme cold. Last Saturday wreathed upon all who entered the street a bone-chilling cold that sunk chiseled ice claws into the skin and just did-not-let-go until it had sucked every last iota of warm out of the body. This weekend, far less so, but the cold still created a lessening of those who were willing to brave the midnight of the Ave.
Also, it would seem, that the Mill Street Preachers have a “retreat” to Las Vegas where they vanish from our sight and appear in a far, far more neon and noise filled realm for a time. I couldn’t say exactly how they are faring out there – as I doubt their money for trivia scheme works so well – but I suspect that I can prize some stories out of them whense they return to our presence and ears. Although the break is welcome enough.
This weekend, Nutmeg decided to come out to join us for a short time and numerous others of Drum Circle fare also arrived to compete at the scene. The tribal drums rumbling in the background made for a staccato thunder and underlaid the cold with the warmth of cordial conversation and good company. Rob and Ashley came to see us, bringing with them a troupe of comers. Amish brought about his new dog and brought messages about his designs on the next Estrella War, and even some idle thoughts about garb.
This night, like others, bent short under the stars and I found myself returning home earlier than I would have usually had. Although, of late, midnight is later than I usually remain in the midst of drums and conversation.
I actually didn’t manage to visit the drum circle tonight, I don’t know what exactly ensorcelled me not to go into that region—but I suppose it was the new and glittering distractions that were brought out to the region where the street preachers stand. Several interesting things happened tonight: I received a CD on Halloween containing a sermon by a pastor at a local church, Christa stood up on the soap-box for her first time and tried to execute the Good Person Test, and I passed out two copies of Have a Merry Vexing Christmas (one to a nice young lady, and one to one of the new preachers who didn’t know me for who I was.)
Christa and the Soapbox
Christa is a sleepy-eyed brunette with a Swedish look—I often expect to see her in pigtails—who tends to wear sweaters and some sort of drab outfit. She is soft-spoken and a bit more laid back than most of the group who come to Mill, sometimes she seems to me to be a little out of place. When she took the soap-box she didn’t have the same force as the rest when they use that bully pulpit and managed not to angle many from the shoals of people rippling past. What can I say, it was truly a tough crowd; even after she started offering five dollars it took a while for her to hook her first bite.
Two bites, no bait. She didn’t manage to give away the five bill for reasons unknown to me. The first one simply ran away because she couldn’t get into the Good Person Test (probably outside of her headspace anyway, it is a bait-and-switch) and the second she simply didn’t give the money to. Why is beyond me, and I didn’t ask. I only caught the tail end of that conversation of her trying to make sure with her peers it was okay she didn’t give the money away because the man taking the test wasn’t sincere.
That particular bite I expected to actually receive the money, he was a rather clever fellow. When she hit the question where it is asked “Have you ever stolen anything?” He grabbed the money and hoofed it all the way to the street, but then, pretending a change of heart, turned around and returned it while prostrating himself and smiling jovially. That kind of jocularity I find extremely amusing—it’s too bad that she didn’t find him cunning enough to win the money. Though I think the flirtation is really the reward he was seeking.
Another prime, and noteworthy, anecdote about her stay on the soapbox (and this is not something that I’m going to opine on myself) is that a homeless fellow came over for the Good Person Test, only to turn himself away because he had taken the Ten Commandments Test at some point (that’s where they ask people to name all Ten Commandments in a number of minutes for $20. Apparently, next-to-nobody has passed that one. I can pass that. Catholic upbringing and mnemonic training, I guess.) While Christa stood on the soapbox an excellently dressed man—20’s style coat and tie surmounted by a gangster hat—stalked over and pointed out to her that while she was offering that five-bill to the public, the homeless fellow was sitting nearby. The 20’s man seemed perplexed when she basically ignored him. It wasn’t part of the gig.
Street Preachers I Have Met
The first new appearing street preacher approached me to compliment my garb, telling me that I looked good in Goth. “You pull it off really well, you know. Other people, they look kind of trashy or like they’re trying too hard. You have a subdued, well carried look. It’s a very good job,” he said. I thanked him and he spilled out into asking me about what I did. I replied that I am a writer and an amateur social anthropologist and that my golden-edged book is not a Bible, it’s lined paper for me to write observations. He reflected on how young I looked and how he’s seen me out there quite a bit (my attention must be waning because I’ve never seen him before.) He asked about the state of Mill and I told him about some of the new developments, the corporatization, Tempe Government’s assaults on the homeless and Mill rat community, and other sundry facts—most of which I think were lost into him because he didn’t reply to any of it.
I should really have known better: the first time you talk to one of these people they are not talking to you; they are talking to a mirror.
Eventually he gave up after realizing that I have witnessed most of what they had to say over the years already and he had very little to tell me that I would have already been keen to. I believe his name was Chad.
The second man to approach me did so in a very similar fashion. He had shoulder length brown hair, bluish eyes, and a open and friendly demeanor; I think I recall that he wore some sort of a painters cap or something similar. He opened up the conversation by asking me what I thought of what they were doing, I minimized my answer with my most common reply, “Just observing. I find it amusing.” And he opined that he hoped that I would find it more than amusing and queried as to my take on religion—what mine was—to which I replied: Celtic. And after a few questions were shot back-and-forth I ran into the impasse I generally run into (the part where I realize I’m a mirror and not a person) where I couldn’t get across how the Celtic gods are people who actually walk around in everyday life and we can meet on the street; that, no, an everyday man or woman cannot just claim to be the Morrigan (I know what the Morrigan looks like, I’ve met her once—it was a chilling experience.)
Meanwhile, he went on about his faith in the general way telling me how it filled a hole in his life. (Please excuse me here if I don’t go into detail, this spiel is so common to witnessing preachers that it’s not worth repeating.) He eventually tried to pull the line, “You understand, Christanity isn’t a religion, it’s a relationship.” To which my most common reply is, “Well, you’re just redefining relationship to mean religion, aren’t you? I don’t know a single religion that isn’t a relationship with the divine in some form or another.” I got really close to pulling out my “Relationship with the Goddess” line, but he quickly caught wind that I didn’t really want to talk religion and instead told me that he would, “Pray that God would touch my heart and stir my feelings—and open my eyes to the truth.”
I didn’t quite feel mean enough to tell him that I hoped someday he would speak to me like I was a person instead of a cog.
Halloween, a Sermon on a CD
This part is why this post is so late. While I stood listening to an exchange between a few ruffian kids (including that nice girl I gave the booklet to) and the Jamaican looking preacher fellow, another one of the street preachers, who I associate strangely with Father Mulcahy from M*A*S*H, approached me to give me a CD. “Do you have a computer? Something that can play CDs?” he asked, “It’s a sermon by our pastor about Halloween—it includes some history too.” After I affirmed that indeed, I do have a computer that can play CDs he gave it to me and I secreted it on my person.
The first glaring error, and it’s a doozy, there is no Celtic “god of the Underworld” named Samhain—this is the Celtic/Irish name of the holiday upon which Halloween now rests (and also the Irish word for ‘November’). To the literal this name means “Summer’s End”—“sam” + “fuin”—and there are no Celtic gods with this appellation in any legends or pantheon known. Where this particular belief sprung from is unknown to me, but from my research it was a mistake made by eighteenth century Church scholars who set the misinformation to paper. It doesn’t take much research in primary and secondary source material to discover that this belief is simply incorrect.
The sermon goes on to expound more about the history of Halloween, most of which includes some real scholarly facts. That Halloween wasn’t big in the United States until the massive Irish immigrations and that it didn’t really take much of a hold until rather recently. That it is a festival rooted in the pagan beliefs of the Celtic culture. Even that Halloween is actually a day put on top of another one worshiped by the old Irish by the Catholic Church in order to help them convert the native people of the Celtic and Gaelic lands.
The sermonizer then goes on to totally distort and misrepresent the holiday using weasel words such as “wicked” to describe the spirit of the festivities and the nature of the celebration. It is correct that it is believed that the veil between this world and the Otherworld thin on Samhain Eve, that this ‘tween time is brings to moment when the spirits of the Otherworld and our dead can reach back to us, and we can reach to them. Yes, some of them are wicked and not nice, but foremost they are not evil nor condemned—the Otherworld is not remotely similar to the Christian Hell (which I suspect he was trying to get at in that part of the speech). Like there are malevolent people, there are malevolent and mischievous spirits, and they get to come back too. I think that we are all aware that it is not a good practice to demonize an entire people (in this case the spirits) based on the acts of the few. Some lessons are just hard learned.
He goes on to recollect that witches and demons appear in the costuming—totally ignoring the fact that the European vision of the witch isn’t even a standard element of the original Samhain holiday. Using this to segue into quotations from the bible that tell the people who move into Israel “not to partake of the beliefs of their neighbors, not to become like them,” speaking prohibitions against witchcraft, divination, and other supernatural beliefs. Which, I see as perfectly fine. If this religion wants to keep its core and not melt away by assimilating too many others, they are welcome to do that.
What I am at odds with is the propagandist vilification of another culture through bad scholarship and distortions of their beliefs.
Yes. Halloween is a very pagan holiday, it is not distinctly Christian in of its own, and like many of the Christian holidays it is a day that was “Christianized” in order to assist in the assimilation of the native peoples of the region. If modern Christian congregations want to get themselves back to basics and avoid things that are not inherently theirs they can do so without doing insult to the cultures that they are trying to push away from.
The man who did this sermon is quite intelligent, even witty. “The devil has tricked us with his treats.” That was a lovely and clever line. Christians might as well distance themselves from things that really aren’t originally theirs—although, I must say, they’d be giving up an awful lot that they’ve gotten very used to being part of Western culture.
Both Christmas weekend and now New Years weekend have displayed an amazing dearth of Mill goers, especially evident in our local proselytes; the drum circle has not suffered as greatly from this winnowing as there were still at least three drums this NYE weekend and they rumbled on.
We hit the Ave about 9:30p.m. with my friends Omni and Rico. Omni decided to bring Rico on a leash with a leather collar, which commentary went that nobody even looked twice at someone drawing a bright-orange afroed boy about with a metal chain leash—welcome to Mill! I’m sure that stranger things have been seen roaming the streets now that Drum Circle is exiled from our usual place at 12a.m. because of newly enforced park regulations.
I got enough time to sit around and speak with the usual goers and find out how their lives are going. The Ave isn’t usually so calm on the outside of a Saturday night, so it gave a little time to sit down and actually hold some discussions with various folk. Without the usual lively forum produced by the preachers there wasn’t much reason to hang around the corner, so I spent most of my time around the drum circle itself.
There, I passed out almost half of the copies of Have a Merry Vexing Christmas that I had on hand and enjoyed myself with people that I know there.
Later, we trotted off to Zia Records, a place that I haven’t visited in a long time. It’s just off of Mill near University. I bought myself a copy of Memoirs of a Geisha.
Adding to the ghostly lack of people on the Ave were barricades being set up for the next day’s festivities. The New Years Eve block party apparently was going to block off a large portion of the Ave itself, with large metal archways with a logo proclaiming “Insight!” (The next day I would return to the Ave for the block party and discover a lot of the street rats already inside—we are nothing if not resourceful for getting into or already being inside of these events when Mill gets shut down. Tickets were $20.) Some tents had already been set up, a huge white pinnacled tent rose up on the spot where Long Wong’s used to sit, selling ASU and various NYE Tempe paraphernalia. I was not interested.
Burning rubber where angels fear to tread.
