Here's Donald Wardlaw, the Bank of Richmond building renovation architect, on my approval of the colors the arrival of Shellie Bourgault's Hidden City Cafe.
Glad you find the colors more pleasing. I have not had any doubts that they would get better with time. Wait till you see it with Shellie's restaurant inside. Her place is going to glow and draw customers like a lamp draws bugs in the night.
What will the neighbors think? Will they answer with bright lights of their own?
Astounding news reached me yesterday that not everyone agreed with me on the Bank of Richmond building's red look. Earlier this month I said I didn't like it. Now it seems that some people always liked the deep red and also appreciated its historic roots.
Then yesterday the copper cone took shape, and I have to admit the red looks better than it did.
That settled, building owner Mark Howe should consider a proposal offered by two consultants who paused outside Point Richmond Market yesterday morning. A passing TOTP correspondent overheard them not only suggesting that underwear hang in the windows but that they themselves could help choose the styles.
I suspect that the Design Review Board would want to review this modification. We can be confident, though, that when the scheme's historic nature is pointed out--the Point once thrived on brothels--board members would applaud.
It would then be up to Mark Howe to let function follow form--while he recoups his enormous investment.
Call the upstairs a bed and breakfast if you have to, Mark, but show us the full potential of our historic district.
There are quirky parts of street life in the Point that I'm used to. Then there's the stuff I still have to get used to.
I've come to expect the little piles of dry cat food poured by some kind person for the homeless cats. Or the stained glass artist on the corner straining to make carpenters high up on the rebuilt Bank of Richmond building hear her invitation to her booth at this Saturday's street festival. "You promise?" she shouted. Yes, yes they nodded.
I know all's well when I see Karl Gillette outside his Old Firehouse office pacing madly and inhaling a cigarette in his intense European way as he talks to clients and suppliers on the phone. And there's the intense man who erected shrines on every tree on the square.
Now there's a different curiosity in town. It's Steve Spencer tearing down the pink posters taped up by David Vincent, who just puts them up again for Steve to tear down again. They've done this eight times this week.
The posters advertise today's art and music festival, organized by a contingent of business association members--including Steve Spencer himself.
David Vincent is the man so dedicated to Masquers Playhouse he's said to talk in his sleep about the finances. Publicly, he's known for wearing a Masquers sandwich board to sell tickets.
He's doing what he always does. He's a marketing machine. He's doing it the way it's often done, taping promotions to power poles.
After his first few batches were torn down, David taped a new flier with a photo of Steve and passed out copies at Wednesday's business association meeting. Two business owners lounging outside the Baltic late on Friday had a laugh as they recalled the story. "Those are collectors' items," one said with a chuckle.
After Steve tore down the festival posters for the seventh time, David borrowed an eight-foot ladder on Wednesday evening and placed new ones as high as he could reach. By noon the next day, they too were torn down.
Steve Spencer, with shaved head and burly frame, is most commonly seen at neighborhood council meetings sitting alone in the front row on the side farthest from the door, offering his opinion on nearly every subject. He too is doing what he has done before, tearing down promotions attached to public surfaces. He is inconsistent, however. He left standing the crude fliers tacked to trees for Totally Led Ministries, the big color posters for Point Richmond Association of Mother's blood drive and of course the shrine under the tree in back of the Indian.
He offered his rationale for this inconsistency during a 15-minute rant on Wednesday afternoon. But that is off the record. In fact, there's only one thing he'll allow on the record: taping the posters to power poles is illegal and any cop can explain that to whoever doesn't get it.
Of the half dozen business owners I've talked to about this, not one expressed the slightest concern over David's placement of the posters. "Couldn't [Steve] wait a few days?" asked one. Joe Bagley, head of the committee that organized today's festival and which Steve is a member, is annoyed. "Is [Steve] for us or against us?"
The festival will do fine. Enough business owners have posted the pink fliers--nicely designed by Rita Bagley and Steve Hurst--on their storefronts so that you have to be blind not to notice.
I may take a while, though, getting used to a guy who is certain of his own correctness but is so oblivious or insensitive that he stands squarely on top of a pile of cat food left there for strays, grinding it into the sidewalk.
There's a new Web site in town with news of the Point. Now, before you gasp and wonder aloud how in the world the Point can support yet another news site, please listen: I say the more the merrier.
Consider the facts: With 3000 residents, the Point is too small to support a full-time reporter. Yet we're still a spunky little place with a lot going on. For all of our local media, we still need more. The only logical solution is volunteer writers with their own little columns on the Web--i.e., "blogs."
Each blog broadcasts a point of view. Each starts with the question, "Is this news or not?" Volunteer editors also ask, "Do I have time today or not?"
Talk of the Point reports news that interests me. That's it. I don't care what "needs" to be reported. I used to edit for the Sierra Club and other such groups and I'm weary of news that "should" be reported.
Enter Karen Schneider and her "My Point" blog. In her first paragraph of her first entry, she tells about reading my news about milk-in-bottles returning to Santa Fe Market and spots room for "a different sensibility." Ah, that feeling of being needed!
She is a recent acquaintance of mine and a good editor. Over coffee at Rosamaria's Cafe a month ago, I urged her to start up her own blog. I'm pleased that she did.
Her second entry was a long, thorough report on last Wednesday's neighborhood council. The report is not only useful, it goes a long way toward qualifying her for that organization's secretary.
Welcome, Karen.
What's that paint on the new Bank of Richmond building? Is it primer? Is it a mistake? Is there enough concrete to support it? Whatever it is, I hear it's not what the Design Review Board approved.
Mark Howe, the developer, says the board did not stipulate any particular colors. But then he intimates that he's not so hot on that dark red color himself. "It wouldn't take long to repaint it," he says.
Watch this space for more.