Enough is enough, people.***image2***
I know we're all somewhat agitated these days. What with rampant war and terrorism and proof that corn-based ethanol processing is nearly as evil as petrochemicals, it stands to reason that we're all a bit on edge. The fact that we Americans spend the bulk of our discretionary income on consumer electronics, followed closely by pet supplies, I agree, bodes ill for the empire.
The climate change map published in August by National Geographic appears to chart New Mexico's inevitable decay into a vast inhospitable desert and we are forced to confront the fact that, by and large, Republicans are closeted kinky sex freaks and Democrats are bland, spineless oafs. It all points to a terrifying and fast-closing future wherein a few rugged survivors are left to wander what was once the Land of Enchantment, while eating scavenged kibble and wearing armored rags made from old chew toys, while wielding cudgels crafted from iPhones and MP3 players at an advancing army of ultra-conservative, priapitic zombies mumbling about patriotism and free-market reform. The zombie Democrats, I suppose, will have to be incinerated for fuel; we can count on the dried husks of their dream-shattered bodies to burn fast and clean in the desert night. But the reason difficult situations become dark and untenable futures is our collective proclivity toward complaining rather than taking positive, real action.
Griping went overboard, in a coup by complainocrats, when the Santa Fe New Mexican took the bait of some Railyard-dwelling noisemakers and ran a story by Wendy Brown called, "Construction Woes" on Sept. 21. Business owners, tenants and studio artists on the Baca portion of the city's Railyard property, which is currently undergoing full-scale infrastructure and road improvements, explained to the newspaper that, "Clients have had trouble finding their businesses, construction crews sometimes make access difficult, and everyone has had to use a portable toilet since the sewer line broke." Cry me a river of sewage sludge.
Richard Czoski, director of the Railyard Community Corporation, which manages the publicly owned property on behalf of the city, dutifully acknowledged the validity of complaints and lamented the difficult situation. His is a politically sensitive position. What he should have done was told those crybabies to shut their traps. I mean, golly, how apologetic must we be to the pissy whims of relatively privileged people who own businesses and can afford private art studios, while we use public funds to surround them with the most significant, progressive and exciting redevelopment project the city has ever undertaken? I'd like to be genuinely sorry that somebody had to use a port-a-potty for a few days while the beauty and value of their location was being immeasurably enhanced at no substantive cost to them save patience but, yeah, those would be crocodile tears streaming down my cheeks.
Meanwhile, at the other end of the Railyard development, neighbors and bandwagon thugs are up in arms-again-about the solar panels WivCo is attempting to place on the rooftop of its new ArtYard live/work and commercial development (located at the old Warehouse 21 site). Basically, the developers are doggedly plowing ahead with plans to install solar panels that protrude from the roof of the new buildings, despite having erased them from drawings for the Business Capital District Development Review Committee last year. Now that WivCo is going solar again, people are cranky because they claim the panels compromise the view or add height or aren't very well-integrated into the overall design. Of course, these are the same people who, while bemoaning the height of the ArtYard project, are simultaneously filing permits to raise the heights of their own properties and pass the deep morning shadows and mountain-blocking masses off on their westerly neighbors with much less sensitivity or oversight than WivCo has had to display. Far be it from them to notice that the streets and horizons are already full of the brutish powerlines overlaid across the city by our failure to thus far embrace alternative energy, or to care that the giant new utility towers dotting Siler Road, Rufina Street and other south side locations are more than double the height of the contentious Railyard buildings. If you only think about your own backyard and you're able to begin a sentence by saying, "I support alternative energy, but…" then you're not a community activist, you're just another complainer.
Elsewhere in the city, even as Canyon Road is listed as one of the top 10 "great streets" in the United States by the American Planning Association's Great Places in America program, motions are underway to cover Upper Canyon Road in speed humps and traffic-calming measures. Hey, we all sympathize with complaints about people driving too fast through our neighborhoods, but instead of relying on the "creative planning, zoning and preservation" that has made Canyon Road distinctive, we're apparently going to import a solution that has its roots in Chatham, NJ, home of, among other top contributions to the planet, Nabisco. Of course, once all the traffic-calming devices are in place, and the character of the street is good and compromised, people will feel free to begin…complaining.
The worst perpetrator of the complainocracy, however, is the kooky cabal made up of a couple city councilors and a county commissioner who actually want the City of Santa Fe to rescind its approval of a commuter rail. Not only is this the most small-minded example of planning for the minority (each politico involved has approximately two disgruntled constituents who are worried about noise, traffic or being run over by a train), but it's a prime example of why the rest of the state thinks of Santa Fe as a lair of bitter, self-aggrandizing monkeys who've somehow seized the capital. The train would create a meaningful collaboration and connectivity between Santa Fe and parts of the state with which, frankly, we need to form alliances. And it's being conceptually sabotaged by people who'd rather complain than cooperate.
