I didn't have an exact picture that summed up 2011 for me, but I really liked this one.

I’m going to go ahead and come out and say it: 2011 was a pretty amazing year for me. Like, better than most years. I’ve been thinking about it a lot the last month or two as this year has been drawing to a close and running down some of the various activities and adventures I’ve found myself in. I decided it seemed appropriate to make some kind of list, if only so that I have a good way to remember this past year. Also, as my friend Josiah so eloquently put it, “bitches love lists.”

A couple of quick notes before my list: This is not chronological or in any kind of order. I’m actually writing this to distract myself from some actual work I should be doing, so all of these items are just as they come to me. Also, this list is hardly a complete run-down of my year. Just some of the highlights that seem worth sharing.

With all of that in mind, here we go!

1. Continued working as a barback/door guy/bouncer at the wonderful Meanwhile Bar. Our great regulars and awesome staff make this easily the best job I’ve ever had.

2. Continued as a freelance journalist, mostly contributing to Revue Magazine and Rapid Growth Media. (A couple of clips I’m proudest of from the past year can be found here and here.)

3. 2011 was an awesome year for music, especially for my long-time favorite genre, hip-hop. My home state of Michigan was at the forefront of acclaimed music.

4. 2011 was the year dubstep music took over and I found out I kind of like some of it.

5. I did a bunch of karaoke in weird bars.

6. All that karaoke in weird bars led to the beginning of a sweet publication called Off The Grid, where I’m proud to say I hold the title of Contributing Editor (I’m on the masthead!).

7. I attended and covered two pretty intense, and very different, music festivals (my coverage can be found here and here).

8. My coverage of Gathering of the Juggalos got me called a “counterfeit” by The Atlantic (in link form only).

9. I worked in, and learned about the SEO industry for a hot minute (it doesn’t pay shit).

10. Began as an Editorial Intern at The Rapidian.

11. Took a couple of trips to Detroit and kind of fell in love with the city.

12. I wrote about my love affair with Detroit here and here.

13. Took a great trip to San Francisco to visit my dad and sister. I also kind of fell in love with Oakland while I was there. I also spent a great day and a half in Portland, OR visiting some old friends.

14. I became really disillusioned with politics and only consider it as fodder for jokes on Twitter.

15. If I have to throw in one low point of this whole year, it was the closing of my long-time hangout, 76 Coffee. However, the memories and friendships I value from my time there live on.

16. Basically maintained all of my worthwhile long-time friendships, while adding several new ones.

17. Last but not least, met and fell in love with an amazing girl who I will be having New Year’s Eve dinner with very soon. Also, she is better than you at karaoke.

I guess I need to draw some sort of conclusion to end this post, and I guess this year. If I had to sum it up succinctly, I guess in 2011 I did a ton of stuff without really doing anything. I don’t have what you would call a “career.” I’m no closer to that 9-5 job some of my family wants me to get. I certainly didn’t make much progress in going from the 99% to the 1%, to use a bit of timely humor. But all of that in mind, I loved my 2011.  Sometimes it was crazy, sometimes it was confusing, sometimes difficult, but always fun. If I had to name a year as being my “favorite,” I would have to say it has been this past one. At this point I have no reason to expect less from 2012, except you know, that whole world ending thing.

P.S.

HAVE I MENTIONED HOW EXCITED I AM THAT THE LIONS ARE IN THE PLAYOFFS?!!!?

Tonight, The Meanwhile, the bar I work at is hosting a benefit for the group Until Love is Equal. This has been an amazing group and I’m honored to work on a night that benefits an organization fighting for one of the most basic human rights. This note was written back in July by one of the founders of ULIE, Erin Wilson. I felt the need to share it. Enjoy!

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This movement, Until Love Is Equal, didn’t “start” as much as it “coalesced.” When Holland’s City Council failed to stand up and protect a vulnerable and frankly despised minority of fellow Americans – we did.

The sense of right and wrong that led us here is unlearned – it just is. We are a moral and good people. Those who oppose the anti-discrimination ordinance are unwittingly obstructing something that is moral and good. Our movement is a tool to repair a thing that got broken.

The commitment to fairness and love that coalesced this movement… existed long before Until Love Is Equal. We just gave it a name. It has had many names. Mohandas Ghandi called it “Satyagraha.” It means standing firmly behind one’s ideals, with non-hatred as a guiding principle. Non-cooperation with evil. The power of truth.

We’ve formed an unintentional Satyagraha. We have conducted ourselves as if the means and the ends were inseparable and this is a beautiful thing. We’ve treated our opponents lovingly and respectfully, especially to the extent that they would stop obstructing a just end.

I have witnessed such boldness in the past month, here. And behind the scenes, people with so much to lose have summoned such courage, and acted on it. For so long this reflex seemed to be conditioned out of us: we had come to suppress the urge to get up, stand up. Who knows why. Perhaps we simply adapted to our environment out of a sense of survival, maybe for fear of reprisals. “Resistance” became the kid on the milk carton: we’d see her picture and read about her but it felt like that girl was gone for good.

I don’t know what happened in the past month, but the weather is changing. Maybe it’s the issue. Maybe it’s all the issues piled on top of one another. Something is different. We’re remembering what we had forgotten – the fact that we can change things, and make things right. It’s like muscle memory.

I hope to see you tonight in Holland, at City Hall. And again in two weeks, at the next City Council meeting. And at the one after that. And when there’s a vote, and when it passes, we hope to redouble our efforts as the opponents find new ways to create tension and propagate injustice. We’ll do this as long as it takes. Until there is a just end. Until love is equal.

In ten years, when the landscape has changed – when we look back at this immoral, unjust chapter in Michigan’s history with some sense of shame – we will also know that thousands of people stepped forward. Many who have nothing to gain but much to lose. This amazing thing coalesced and we did not remain silent. It has been uneasy, sometimes frightening, and most of our work is ahead of us. Yet here we are.

This is a privilege, to be here with you. Thank you for being part of this.

Yours,
Erin

The #GR2Detroit gang

THE WHOLE WORLD OPERATES ONLY ACCORDING TO MY NARROW IDEOLOGICAL BELIEFS!!!

As hard as we all try and avoid this kind of thinking, obviously we are all guilty of it at some point. The internet, blogosphere, and social media are full of it. However, a couple days ago, as I going through my Twitter feed I came across one of the more egregious examples I have seen in a while. Daniel J Mitchell, who according to his blog works as a Senior Fellow at the libertarian think tank Cato Institute. The other day Mitchell had a blog post entitled Atlas Shrugged Comes to Detroit.

It should be noted that I’ve read a couple of Mitchell’s pieces in the past, and while I don’t agree with much of his thoughts, I don’t think he’s a dumb guy. Which only leaves me to believe, after reading this latest post, that he is either totally intellectually dishonest or lives in a complete fantasy world. Mitchell’s central premise is that he believes that because Detroit has “blighted areas” and Atlas Shrugged author and prominent libertarian philosopher Ayn Rand once mentioned blighted areas in her writing, that makes Rand “seem like a prophet.”

Whatever, I know that many libertarians consider Rand a hero (despite it coming out that she accepted government welfare). That to me is the smallest issue in Mitchell’s post. Where he really falls apart is when he refers to Detroit as “a miserable case study in big government run amok.”

First things, first. The notion of big government has been bothersome to me for quite some time. I have never figured out how people say our government is too big, because there is no standard for what the size of our government is supposed to be. It would certainly be reasonable to say that our government is dysfunctional (see entirety of 111′th and 112′th Congressional sessions) lacking in transparency, and almost dishonest to a T. However none of this has anything to with size and has everything to do with good vs bad government. Could one make a case that a *portion* of Detroit’s problems are due to it’s government being too big? Sure. A bigger government is going to be more prone to dysfunction and one hand will have no idea what the other hand is doing. However, it seems much better to say that many of Detroit’s problems stem from poor to terrible governing practices (see Kwame Kilpatrick).

But all of this is really beside the point because Mitchell says that Detroit’s problems are all because of it’s government and leaves it at that, most likely because that’s what fits his ideological beliefs. Apparently all that stuff where GM, Ford and Chrysler made terrible cars for the better part of 30 years that no one wanted, and shipped all it’s manufacturing to the Third World, devastating the American economy, and then taking a bunch of tax payer money when their house of cards folded. I guess Mitchell forgot about that. I’m guessing that’s because to him those “private” sector companies are the job creators.

Just to make sure we are telling the whole story here, and not going purely by ideology, while I’m a huge lefty and almost completely support the rights of union workers and believe entirely that collective bargaining should be an absolute right, unions like the UAW had a ton to do with getting Detroit in the mess it’s in right now.

The great irony of this whole thing is that for it’s terrible economy and huge decline in population, Detroit is actually something of a libertarian paradise. I live in Grand Rapids about 150 miles west of Detroit. In my 26 years I have only been to the actual city fewer that five times. I always operated under the belief that aside from a sporting event or concert at one of the venues on Woodward Avenue to catch a band that wouldn’t stop in Grand Rapids, there was never much of a reason to visit The D. But a couple of months ago I had the privilege to be part of a bus trip with others from my city to go visit Detroit and learn about some of the radical changes (many for the better) that the city is going through.

Grand Rapids to Detroit: Bridging the Gap from GR Social Diary on Vimeo.

The one thing we heard over and over is that due it’s vast economic and political problems, Detroit is almost lawless for entrepreneurs and urban farmers (not that it’s stopping people).

Jerry Bellanger, who owns the beautiful building that houses Cliff Bell’s bar on Park Avenue describes the “lawlessness,” or libertarianism of Detroit like this:

“You know one aspect of the blight and vacancy is it’s an open range. You can pretty much stake a claim here. It takes a lot of work and sweat equity and you know you’ve got to have some guts.”

There is no doubt, and I am speaking directly to Mr. Mitchell right now, that Detroit’s problems are numerous, and hardly limited to “big government.” There are people doing amazing things in that city, and while perhaps it will never be the city it was 60 or 70 years ago my few experiences in Detroit have been nothing short of wonderful. I invite Mr. Mitchell, as well as others from the Cato Institute to leave their Washington D.C. office for a few days and go visit. I think you might like what you see.

I had heard this song in passing many times over the years, but it was not until I had to write a paper for a college class last year about the story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates (who dedicates the short story to Mr Dylan. During the writing of that paper, I concluded the following:

Upon listening to the song, it is not hard to imagine Arnold Friend as the narrator of the song, informing Connie that it is indeed, “all over now, Baby Blue.”

So today, let us celebrate the life of one of the most prolific American songwriters of all time. Happy Birthday Mr Dylan!

Glenn Greenwald’s take: we should not be cheering.

Jeremy Scahill on JSOC: the Casey Rybacks who took down bin Laden

Sincere or sarcastic? Rush Limbaugh is still an asshole

Some amusing/sad photos from outside the White House last night

And unrelated, shameless self-promotion (Rapid Yes!)

And because I heard this joke made so many times last night prior to the announcement, I just can’t help myself.

As this news has settled in, I am left with heavy and conflicting emotions.  I refuse for a second to celebrate the death of a person, even one as despicable as Osama Bin Laden was.  However I have no doubt that the world is a better place without Bin Laden in it.

I firmly remember sitting in Peter Stuursma’s Government class as a junior at East Grand Rapids High School on the morning of 9/11.  I had no idea what to make of the news that morning.  As the 10 years of the War on Terror has passed I have become firmly against the global military initiatives.  I no longer believe that the United States has any real peaceful ambitions in the Middle East.

I would like to believe that bin Laden’s death will somehow bring about some change in the policy regarding the war in Afghanistan and other parts of the Middle East and central Asia.  Sadly, I think that is highly unlikely.

So as I sit here thinking about the unilateral power our President has to order the death of one person, and what that means from a political and moral standpoint I’m left with little words to describe my emotions. I think like many Americans who came of age during the global War on Terror, there is little to do other than have a drink (or 2) and think about the death of an evil man.

What I've been doing the last 2 hours

ITPWatch and Kent County Families for Fiscal Responsibility claim that the Rapid runs “90% empty.” Here are some basic calculations that prove what a ridiculous claim that is.

The Rapid saw 9,307,111 fixed-route riders last year, which comes out to about 25,500 rides a day. 25,500 is ten percent of 255,000. So you’re telling me the daily capacity of the Rapid is 255,000? That would mean the Rapid would have to run (with 32 seat buses) roughly 8000 trips a day. That’s 8000 trips divided by 52 routes (both ways on 26 routes) which means 153 trips per bus per day, or 6.375 trips per bus per direction per hour.

That’s on a 24-hour schedule. On a more realistic 18-hour schedule (like the one the Rapid currently operates), that means that each and every bus would have to be running 8.54 trips PER hour from 6 AM to Midnight, seven days a week, for the Rapid to be currently running “90% empty.” That’s a bus in each direction of each route every 7 minutes. In what universe is that happening?

Rapid Yes: Spread the word and Vote YES on May 3.

While written at a completely different time and under different circumstances, the tone and message are appropriate.  I know that on this historic day, Dr. Thompson would be cheering as Egyptians overthrow “the forces of old and evil”.

Needless to say, the worst was over by sunrise this morning, and then came the work of cleaning up.  Living on a small sidestreet that takes forever to get plowed, all the neighbors just took it upon themselves to shovel, by hand, our whole street.  Here are some pictures I took:

"Before" shoveling

There is a porch there somewhere

There is a house there somewhere

There's the porch

The Crew

My roommate's car unearthed

My car unearthed

You should also check out some of the pictures my roommate Jon took (he is a real photographer). Now that shoveling and blogging are done, it’s time for a beer.