I have neighbors complaining about the parking allowed on our street because it makes for a two-way street that is passable by two cars at once only if they both slow down and nobody parked like an asshole. I keep telling them that those delays are the only thing that keep our street from being turned into a bypass for the parkway onramp. Then I spit on their shoes and run.
On the bars, is it possible to set a minimum price per unit of alcohol? Somebody who is going to sit down and eat dinner or something is much more willing to pay $4 for a drink than someone who wants to get drunk and can't hold their liquor.
Requiring a bar to close early might work also. The fancy bar in my neighborhood is usually closed by 10:00 or so. Or was that last time I went there.
Suburban streets in Britain commonly have bumps not at pedestrian crossings, but at c. 50 metre intervals for the length of the street. Commonly they're constructed to make it maximally difficult to straddle them with your car, by having three square bumps across the street so that they're all off centre from the carriageway. I certainly slows the traffic.
20 mph limits in residential areas are increasingly common, and often enforced as above.
Traffic in my area is slowed by having elderly Jewish men wander out into the street with complete indifference to death.
1: Yeah, I think that's right for traffic -- narrow streets and on-street parking are both important.
For the social calming that the post is asking about -- this is not exactly what you wanted, but I have a vague belief that requiring a shitload of trees will muffle street-noise some. When I type that out, it looks implausible that it would work all that well, but maybe someone would know?
I'm trying to think of 'party blocks' I know, as distinct from areas that just have a lot of bars on them. What about banning sidewalk seating out front, or having hours/alcohol sales restrictions on them? If you want tables on the sidewalk, that's coffee or food, no music, minimal alcohol. If you want outdoor drinking space, it has to be in a garden/courtyard behind the bar, so the street doesn't turn into a continuous party spilling from one bar to the next.
Can you do anything with serious noise enforcement? Allow the bars, but with a clear upfront statement that licenses will get pulled if there's anything audible at any distance from the door (I don't know how noise ordinances are phrased, but something like that.) If they want a Jello Shot bar, they're going to have spend on the soundproofing.
The serious noise enforcement piece drives me up the wall. A big chunk of our problem amounts to this dynamic:
1. Code enforcers aren't able to fully enforce the code we have, due to underfunding. I don't know if they're also cozy with rentiers.
2. In response to complaints, Council writes increasingly draconian laws that would be bonkers to actually enforce as written.
3. Everyone is unhappy.
There's a weird thing going on -- the suspected partiers are going to be undergrads, mostly? Vicious enforcement for underage drinking is going to keep three quarters of them out of bars, right? Or am I missing something that means that there's a bigger percentage of over 21s?
3. should be: regulations from 2 are enforced selectively if someone has an ulterior motive.
Then 4. can be that everyone loses.
7.4 I think that stipulation is only reasonable in mainly residential areas. In city centres it's reasonable to allow a bit of leeway. Also, if enforced universally, it would have effect of essentially banning small gigs by local bands.
The problem isn't just the noise and such. Drunk kids leaving the bar tend to leave a trail of vomit and urine and liter. Is there some way to make them pay for security after closing time to control that?
Vicious enforcement for underage drinking is going to keep three quarters of them out of bars, right?
Hence the thousands of partiers in the apartment complexes.
8: I am not dead sure where your governmental agency fits into the regulatory scheme. But while the cops may not do much for noise complaints, is it possible to communicate to the entity that grants liquor licenses, such that they will both try to collect noise complaints themselves, and revoke/refuse to renew licenses for establishments that draw complaints?
11: Well, right, she's trying to figure out rules that would distinguish residential/area appropriate bars from bars that belong on a main drag downtown. You're right that there are places where a little noise is appropriate.
13: Hence the thousands of partiers in the apartment complexes.
That... seems maybe harmless? I mean, if it's a student complex, and they're partying inside the complex... is it that bad for the neighbors? I would want to encourage design to make the complexes inward-facing, if you see what I mean, buildings around interior public space, so as to contain the students.
Come to think, maybe require retail convenient for the complexes, so you're not setting up a trail of drunks going from the complex to the nearest convenience store past streets of adults. But I'm not clear how much influence you have over that kind of design decision.
You could try putting up signs:
"Your quiet and orderly trip home from the bars protects the property values of the people you will be in 20 years."
I live only a few blocks away from a main drag that becomes a zoo on game days, but the noise rarely reaches my area. I think it's because there's just no incentive to wander away from the bars and restaurants into a residential area with nothing going on.
The vigilante patrols delivering vicious beat downs to any hapless drunks that wander into the neighborhood probably help as well.
I don't know how mandatory you can make this, but a lot of commercial neighborhoods in NYC have what I think are called 'Business Improvement Districts', where business pay an assessment that pays for extra street-cleaning/trash cans/prettier street furniture/trees/whatever. Could you whack local businesses with some kind of fee of that sort that would pay to sweep up the vomit, maybe for some friendly/non-punitive policing/security to manage youthful drunks?
17: I have a friend who had roommates who threw big undergraduate house parties. Like five kegs going at once. A house is less separated from neighbors than an apartment complex is, but I don't see how that much noise and disorder would stay in the complex. And I suspect a big apartment complex would draw even more partiers than a house party.
I mean, if it's a student complex, and they're partying inside the complex... is it that bad for the neighbors?
The neighbors don't seem to like it very much! Admittedly, there is a NIMBYism component to this.
The danger is that working class family housing is not being built, because established residents are so worried that it will be a trojan house for partying college students.
Scale is a big component - 18 units is very different from 1000 units. That is currently the main traffic-calming device.
Yeah, it's really dependent on the physical specifics. What I was thinking of in terms of isolation was a complex that took up sort of a whole block, so any non-complex neighbors were across the street. But if you're next to the complex it's still going to suck.
Even a huge complex is still going to make problems for neighbors. There is not transit so all those people are going to be driving to the party and back home. Keeping things in line will require expensive policing. It's far cheaper just to zone it out and let all the kids drift into the locality that couldn't afford to keep them out.
23: Those can and should exist, and they should be zoned "high-intensity". The problem is when they're being built in things that are zoned residential.
Like, as a college student, what sort of visual cues or rules would give you a sense that you'll be sharing a space with families, if the place is new and you don't actually see residents when you check it out?
Maybe that's the answer: families and kids are themselves the traffic-calming measures. What makes apartment complexes attractive to families with kids?
The danger is that working class family housing is not being built, because established residents are so worried that it will be a trojan house for partying college students.
There are sort of two tracks, then. (1) How do you keep college students out of your neighborhood, versus (2) how do you make it possible to live with them. Unattractive to college students, I'm not sure, but is there some amenity that they want that working families wouldn't?
Oh, wait, now I understand the original question about bars. You mean you want to make a neighborhood that repels students, without completely banning alcohol sales? That, I think your best course is banning music/outdoor seating/whatever you can do with noise enforcement /Moby's idea about minimum prices for liquor if there's any way to do that legally.
I'm not sure that banning music and outdoor seating will selectively dissuade student drinkers, as opposed to just dissuading bars. All the new places here have outdoor seating and very few undergraduates.
25: Playgrounds, elementary schools, public libraries, I feel weird saying this but churches? I don't know how much of this you can put in, but that kind of thing?
Public pools with no deep end and no diving board, and childish fixed decorations? (Like, concrete sprinklers shaped like animals.)
Why would families want concrete sprinkled on them?
30: Slows down fast-moving kids?
I don't understand cars, so there may not be any leverage here. But is there something obvious about what students want in terms of parking versus what families want, or something car-related like that?
31 seems to think too much of the taste of 21 year old kids.
Shiner is a craft beer from my perspective.
34: Maybe require the cars be moved every work day at 2:00 p.m. for "street cleaning."
People routinely run the stop sign in front of my building, which is approached in both directions from a traffic calming set of islands at the intersections one block away. On the plus side, they rarely seem to be going faster than 20mph when they run through the stop. I think people would make more effort to stop if it wasn't sort of a T intersection, where one side is really a private driveway leading to an apartment complex.
25: Literal traffic calming -- speed bumps and such -- and signs all over the place saying "Slow Children At Play"?
"Slow Children At Play"
I blame too much screen time.
My PhD-town was full of these developments (probably built on the exact same plans!).
One problem with having kid-friendly complexes is that I'm guessing the NIMBY folks don't want the sort of family that lives in an apartment complex either. Like if they have to choose between college kids and low income families, they'd choose the former. If not, in my current town, condo developments get gov't funding if they incorporate low income family housing (x number of units with under $zzzz/month rent to be rented to the best and brightest of the under $yyyy/year folks) and apparently these developments aren't possible without this supplement (ha).
For making the bars less friendly to students, what about making them small? It seems like all the undergrad places I know and avoid are big multi-level thousand sq. foot liquor palaces. The little narrow places either have different drinking crowds (cocktails, older students, pubs) or just be food and drink places.
My first post-doc town had an infamous undergrad-only development that was all by itself, out of town, completely unwalkable to/from anywhere that ended up having a huge party that was shut down by the police. I don't know how or why police pick their patrol route but that was the only party that was shut down. I guess if they kept the noise and everything in the cul de sacs, it was fine? All of these developments are going to be horrible abandoned wastelands in a few years. They are definitely not meant to last.
I think our brewery tap room experiment is a huge success. A brewery can sell beer for on premises consumption, but only 3 beers per person, and only until 8 pm. In return, they don't have to by a liquor license, which, because of limits on supply, might cost $2-300,000. This is state law.
The tavern owners hate it, and tried to beat it back in this most recent legislative session, but without success.
I think right now we have one of these for every 10,000 people in town, but 2 or 3 more are in the works.
We had one of those signs right in from of my house when I was growing up. People used to make jokes.
Nothing to contribute, except that the measures in 4 (even their watered down Mossheimat equivalents) are crazy and crazy-making.
It's an issue in Cambridge, particularly in the new developments around the station. A lot of the new buildings are small apartments used by language schools to house students on short-term courses, who take the opportunity of being away from home to party like there's no tomorrow. Last year the police were carrying out intensive patrols for a while because of tensions with other residents. Those patrols were apparently successful in reducing the amount of noise, presumably with liaison with the language schools involved, so effective community policing is probably one piece of the jigsaw.
Has anybody ever tried walking into a raging college party and giving the kids a Pepsi?
One problem with having kid-friendly complexes is that I'm guessing the NIMBY folks don't want the sort of family that lives in an apartment complex either. Like if they have to choose between college kids and low income families, they'd choose the former.
There is definitely some of this, but there are some neighborhoods that already have a fairly wide range of economic means that would strongly prefer families.
44.1 Don't you need 2 or 3 breweries in close proximity for that to work? Either that or sell very high ABV beers.
Off to do the thing I do! I'm enjoying the thread quite a lot and look forward to catching up.
One thing that would help is simply decent soundproofing. There's no reason I should be able to hear my neighbors playing loud music. Simple sound insulation would help a huge amount, let people be as noisy as they want in their own places, and keep people like me from going postal. Shit construction standards allow companies to get away with selling houses and apartments that are made of spit.
I'd also formalize some kind of sonic neighborhood watch. Give them the authority to issue fines for excessive noise.
Sonic watchers would have to be bats.
Definitely agree with 55. OTOH one of my worries is a family will move in above my apartment with a toddler who plays with billiard balls. Not much you could do there other than going postal.
The Internet of Things That Can Hear You.
Amen to 55. I think I really lucked out with a top-floor back-of-building apartment. As is all I hear is a neighbor's jolly drunken laughing most weekends.
Or maybe she's just jolly. One shouldn't assume.
I think it's pretty tough because the students just have so much money that they want to spend on rent relative to locals. You can carve out one convenient neighborhood as very expensive large faculty houses (but it won't have working class housing), but otherwise undergrads are just going to take over all the convenient locations no matter what you do. I think the best thing you can do is try to get the undergrads to think of different neighborhoods as convenient. E.g. here there's a large concentration of dorms and frats plus the stadium all to the north of campus away from town. So the students generally prefer to live on the north half of town, and that means the south side of campus has fewer students than it otherwise would.
Don't scare students away, attract them somewhere else! Build better gianter beautifuler enormous party palaces beyond their wildest dreams in a brand new party neighborhood located far away from where people live and then the students won't want to live too far away from there.
I miss my old neighbors. They had two screaming kids so I didn't have to give a shit that we might be noisy. Also, the old guy before them was far louder. He was half deaf and would fall asleep with the TV going and the volume up.
I think it's pretty tough because the students just have so much money that they want to spend on rent relative to locals.
Cannot compute this. Once they've paid tuition and textbooks, do they have enough money left to eat, let alone be competitive in the housing market? If so, where do they get it? Are they all dealing?
Student loans? They can borrow a whole lot of money, very easily, and have no sense about how much trouble they're getting into.
Their judgment is also warped, because they were probably required to live on campus for their first year or two, where they were charged the same rent you'd pay for an apartment to live three to a room and share a bathroom with a dozen people. So everything looks comparatively cheap.
63: apparently American students are simultaneously near bankrupt from inflated tuition costs and absolutely rolling in disposable income. You know, like how immigrants are simultaneously taking our jobs and sponging off our welfare system.
" where they were charged the same rent you'd pay for an apartment to live three to a room and share a bathroom with a dozen people"
Wait, what? Surely the point of university halls of residence is that they're cheaper than the market price?
Here at least, the students are willing to live 1-2/bedroom, so that you can get enough students into an apartment that they outbid families--- You can get more rent from 6 students than from a family with 2 kids.
I may have been hyperbolic (all right, I was hyperbolic), but they're definitely more expensive like for like (that is, if you crowded people into an apartment to approximate dorm-room conditions), and I'm pretty sure generally absolutely more expensive for how people generally live. I definitely saved a whole lot living off campus three out of four years, and I think dorms have gotten comparatively more expensive most places since my undergrad years.
But people should check me on this -- I'm pretty sure, but I'm trying to think where I should be looking it up to check and I'm not immediately sure of that.
63. I lived by what I'm guessing is a similar school. The students are roughly speaking puppies, overgrown children who understand only their appetites and very loud noise, baseline of very limited and unfocussed good intentions for many. Their parents are delighted to foot the bill because they can say that the puppy is at University instead of visible and audible and at best working at flipping burgers. There is no solution for large numbers of them. Dilution and small universities, no big complexes if that's who will rent them.
Failing that, restrictions on hours and if possible mandated alcohol:food revenue limits maybe?
And now I'm trying to figure it out for UC Santa Cruz (where Sally will be going to university in the fall), and getting stymied by the fact that they don't break out housing cost from the required meal plan. But grad students don't have to buy a meal plan, and their campus housing is 1,136/month for a single room in a four-bedroom apartment. Looking at ads for apartments in the town, it looks easy to find two-bedrooms under 2,272/month.
70.1 is right. Dorms were cheaper back when they were un-air conditioned cinder block bunkers where everyone shared a bedroom with 1-2 other people. I'd rather live in dorms like the ones today, but the more humane living conditions come at a cost.
The parents pay rent. Sometimes they buy their kids condos instead. But yeah, parent-supported undergrads live in new fancy housing and the rest of us make do with cheaper, older places. It actually works kind of nicely for poorer students because the rich students get shuffled into the newly built housing leaving fairly nice but older housing that is relatively reasonable priced. During my PhD, when all these complexes were built, there was suddenly much nicer places available.
I looked into the prices of these new places and they are expensive. In my mid-western town they're over $1000/bedroom for a shared place. Many also require guaranteers (i.e. parents) to sign the rental documents for students.
Not that I have direct experience, but I think the parents feel the kids get a better (safer, cleaner, more private) experience renting in these complexes. Parents get a place to stay on game day (which is worth $$$$). I mean, universities are building tons of new dorms because student expectations of dorms have sky-rocketed (lazy rivers, yoga classes, climbing walls, internet included (gah, I'm so old)).
they're definitely more expensive like for like (that is, if you crowded people into an apartment to approximate dorm-room conditions), and I'm pretty sure generally absolutely more expensive for how people generally live.
Huh. That's very different from my own university experience. You either stayed in university accommodation (cheaper and closer, but more communal, and less independence) or in a rented private flat (where you got to live a bit more independently, but you paid a bit more and maybe were further away). The limit on staying in halls was generally the limited supply of rooms; first-years got priority because they needed a bit more in loco parentis stuff. Universities forcing people to stay in halls and charging them above-market rent is not the way it worked.
Ah well, another UK/US divide.
if possible mandated alcohol:food revenue limits maybe?
Mandated for consumers or suppliers? Either way I can't see it working.
Alcohol is food. It has calories on the label and everything.
76: She's contemplating learning to surf. I may never get her back to the east coast again.
72. Congrats. No idea about her interests, but let me mention that the genomics group there is both good and composed of decent people.
Definitely not bio. Physics for now, but could drift. (Possibly with an econ double-major.)
Santa Cruz is great! Go banana slugs!
If she wants some birding tips, let me know. I saw my life phalaropes in the bay there. They have a fascinating life history where the females are more brightly coloured and lay eggs in a bunch of nests, while the males are dull and incubate the eggs and raise the chicks.
By the time she's ready for Wall Street I'm sure surfing will be available in New York.
Here they mostly don't share rooms, in fact an easy way to tell the difference between an apartment that's aimed at undergrads is that the price is often listed per room instead of for the whole apartment. But still, you can get three students to pay $700 each for a 3 bedroom and a family who could afford $2100 is really rich here and isn't going to live in an apartment building.
I don't quite know how to square the circle in 66. One thing is when there's 40k students, you only need a small fraction to be obscenely wealthy to cause a big affect on housing (e.g. Upshot says more than 1/8 come from families in the top 5% of earning, and I don't think that study includes international students). The other thing here is that it's often parents who are unhappy with college cost, but it's the kids picking housing and getting their parents to pay for it.
85.1: That's what we have there, except it's maybe three students with $500 each vs. a family with $1,500 and they are both competing for a house near me where they can park like assholes.
The international students are, I think, the reason one bedroom apartments got so expensive in my neighborhood. That's partially because they want to be close to the bus routes because they don't even have a car to park like an asshole.
77. For many US localities, keeping a liquor license is conditional on a certain fraction of revenue being food rather than alcohol. This effectively limits the size the bar that is possible.
I would guess that the state we're talking about has its own passionately held local traditions about regulating alcohol businesses. San Antonio had some areas that managed a balance-- maybe their regulatory structure is worth looking at? Different state, but Albuquerque in the center allows restaurants with alcohol but not actual bars. Also different-- the only suggestion I have for those undergrads is dilution, and if they have more money, then I do not see a great way to manage that short of 61.1's suggestion of creating a slum to attract the worst away from adults.
Over at the Udder University, after you're first MIP* you're in the dean's office explaining that you really do want to be a college student. After your second MIP you're home explaining to your parents that taking the semester off is actually a good thing, and maybe if they know someone who's hiring they can help you out.
* Arrest, not conviction. Applies to arrests anywhere in the county, i.e., not limited to on-campus conduct.
Wow. I had a roommates arrested(not convicted or even tried)* for assault and two others for semi-serious property damage (while really drunk) who didn't have that kind of trouble. Nearly everybody had one M.I.P.
* The other guy had actually asked him to step outside for a fight and then lost.
81. About 80% of computational biologists were trained as physicists or mathematicians.
I think 85.1 nails it. Students who come from $ are also more likely than in the past to go state universities, where more students live off campus.
91: Dunno? She could end up interested in anything? But for know bio and chem are both unattractively squishy for her tastes.
As long as she doesn't end up in law school, I'll feel that I've done my job.
When I was in college dorm pricing was mostly high because of the required meal plan. The required meal plan was only expensive because we were comparing it to eating frozen pizzas with imitation cheese 6 nights a week and the dorm felt obligated to offer actual food.
Assume a spherical bird. A kiwi is pretty close.
But not as less so than your typical bird.
I wish my students' errors were as interesting as that.
Have you tried deliberately teaching them wrong things that would make for interesting errors?
Try telling them that "homo" is a prefix meaning "man" so "homosexual" means a heterosexual woman or a gay man.
It's not like parts of English aren't stupid enough that almost any absurdity is possible.
They would just fuck it up uninterestingly.
I mean, the most sophisticated I've seen is a classroom described as containing "eight dicks".
LBJ and LB did a great job of hammering out a lot of good things above.
Per togolosh @ 55, requiring soundproofing could work, and handles some of the problems at the time of development so there's less to face down the line. A handout for acoustical design: http://www.usg.com/content/dam/USG_Marketing_Communications/united_states/product_promotional_materials/finished_assets/acoustical-assemblies-en-SA200.pdf
If your town's zoning is similar to mine's, various shopping centers and neighborhoods should be already be zoned "Neighborhood Commercial", "Residential Multi-Family, Medium High Density", "Commercial - Regional" or similar. Have the various zones incorporate a corresponding minimum STC. Your neighborhood commercial [ie, small strip mall] STCs should be lower -- say, 40 -- with higher soundproofing at community (45) or regional commercial (50) zones. Then incorporate additional additive requirements, like Assembly Occupancies require +10 STC, or only +5 if they lack a liquor license. [I suppose, psychologically, you could state the requirements as the full amount, then discount: so Commercial - Community STC 50, -5 if not assembly, -10 if not assembly and no liquor license.]
The main flaw is that this handles sound from bars, etc., but not from people outside--partying in the pool. The idea of greenspace "moats" around complexes--with shrubs and hedges, or similar, might be all that you can do on the zoning end. (I mean, you could require sound walls, like those lining freeways, but that's a pretty big imposition.)
You could require those outdoor sound walls to be in a Mission Revival style. Nobody expects the Spanish Imposition.
I spent a couple of days around UCSC last month, and man is it ever not-New York. If Sally is interested in physics, maybe she ought to just make it astrophysics. They're good at that, and maybe she can do some observing in Hawaii and learn to surf where it's warm.
On the main topic of the symposium, wouldn't it be easier to soundproof the undergraduates rather than the buildings? A couple of wraps of duct tape around knees, arms+torso, and mouth should do. You could remove the tape when it's time for feedings or classes.
They'll just steal the tape so they can play Edward Forty-Hands.
Hmmm. It's almost as if the problem isn't really the buildings.
(I lived in a big house in a residential neighborhood with five housemates my senior year in college. We were, at times, loud, obnoxious, and oblivious, and most of us were relatively quiet for college students.)
The surfing in Santa Cruz is good, but you want to watch out for the great white sharks.
114: So, you're suggesting a neutron bomb?
Huge congrats to Sally, and 93.2 is exactly how I feel! My most important accomplishment as a step mum.
I lived in a big house with 7 housemates my sophomore year. We were pretty bad. The police were there often and once showed up with a bus so they could realistically threaten mass arrests. We had a "Discarded furniture" pile in the back yard.
For the worst of the stuff, we were mostly just abetting.
108: actually to 106 but, yeah, the election too.
We have a couple of flats in our building that are groups of students, and one of the 4 bedroom houses directly opposite us* is rented to students. They are fine. The ones in the house have had I think three parties in 6 months, and while they were mildly irritating not obnoxiously so.
I don't remember being obnoxiously loud when I was student, either. Maybe, though, because we could drink in pubs. And student unions with nightclubs were a better bet for meeting other members of the appropriate sex, or socialising with friends, than a flat miles away from any good pubs/clubs.
* owned by friends of ours who moved abroad
Is the problem maybe that American undergraduates are dicks?
Hugely so. But I think the bigger issue is that they can't legally drink until 21.
In Mossheimat the government has introduced 'communes' near universities, which AFAIK act essentially as licenses to slumify* houses and reputedly make neighboring houses uninhabitable for noise.
*As in, take more tenants than a house was designed to hold.
121, 122: Here, I'm being all grumpy about people who can't handle urban living. But there's a strong presumption in American culture that anyone who can't afford or doesn't want their own detached house is undesirable trash, and students are obviously mostly going to be apartment dwellers. That is, I'm sure lots of them are bad neighbors, but I wouldn't be surprised if the actual stress they impose on their neighborhoods is a little exaggerated.
Like, the coop I lived at when I was in MIT didn't piss off the neighbors at all, I don't think. I remember some back and forth over our compost heap, but not about noise.
I'm glad you composted using quiet worms.
I didn't know of many students living in actual, purpose-built apartments when I was in college or graduate school. Mostly it was houses, either subdivided or not.
It was sometimes not turned over often enough, and grew smelly. Thirty-two people eating in a house make a lot of food waste.
126. Disagree. I grew up mostly in Chicago. The first time I ever saw a car upside down was the day after the football team had won where I went to grad school. Burning furniture is a fairly basic party activity. The kids aren't monsters exactly, but in large groups and a festive mood they are really bad.
Yeah, there really is something to a critical mass of partiers that takes on a different tone.
So, uh, UK snap elections. How much is the vote directly about May and Corbyn personally (other significant personalities?) and how much about Brexit? Other big questions for framing?
I read the Gaurdian columnists, do not feel enlightened.
Burning furniture in our main university neighborhood used to be a problem here until 10-15 years ago, when the city clamped down on it by IIRC forbidding porch couches there. Generally, I dunno. I live on what I think is the louder side of the neighborhood from Moby and the college students don't bother me much. Then again I don't live near any party houses--the main complaint is them stumbling drunkenly home (or to cars, ack) after midnight.
A coffee shop should be able to sell alcohol and stay open all night long.
Sometimes, I forget how much not-Pennsylvania is a different place.
132: Since the Tories are the Tories, as long as Corbyn is leading Labour isn't really an effective opposition, and the LibDems don't seem to have any hope of turning this to their advantage (due to the coalition?), now's the perfect time for a Monster Raving Loony protest vote.
Congrats to Sally! UCSC has a very good linguistics program, one of the best in the country. (As I'm sure I've mentioned before, a bunch of my friends from undergrad went there for grad school.)
134: I've been thinking maybe the SNP should start running in England.
133.2: When you go to Lincoln and they have a wine tasting in the grocery store, it hits you. Not as a special event, but just passing out small glasses of wine along with the samples of nachos or whatever.
UCSC is not lacking trees, I hear.
Ban Shiner and Lone Star.
Cash me ousside, howbow dah
What UCSC is lacking is any lack of trees. It looks like you'd pretty much spend four years lost in the woods, occasionally stumbling over classes and pot patches.
136: Hell, could we get them here?
137: My favorite bit of Moby canon is that there are only three places, Pittsburgh, Lincoln, and Elsewhere (Columbus, mostly).
And congrats to Sally! Also worth mentioning is that UCSC appears to have an active comedy scene.
There's lots of connecting in Chicago.
Congrats Sally! Bringing the thread together, my main UCSC experience was going to a big Alice in Wonderland party in a house there. So that's another way to solve the problem, put houses in the middle of the woods where they aren't near any other houses and you can have loud parties.
122: I think perhaps you're just miscalibrated because all people in the UK are stumbling around drunk at night and the undergraduates don't stand out as much?
133: of all the things that drunk people could be doing in my street, "stumbling home" seems among the most preferable.
Congrats to Sally! Get ready for four years of ceaseless snark about Bay Area natives. Traffic jams on Hwy 17 are the pits, scenic though it may be. I'd be willing to put a small amount of money on her ending up in computational neuroscience and/or at the Santa Fe institute if she comes in as a freshman physics major thinking life sciences are too squishy, but a) I am not a quant myself and b) this pattern may be done repeating itself with the rising generation.
I learned to surf in Santa Cruz. Such a beautiful place.
Dammit, I've been too busy with taxes to stop by all day. I have thoughts!
And yes, I know people are talking about other things. My thoughtful, productive comments will traffic-calm them back into discussing the OP.
On jello-shot-bars, I'm honestly not sure anyone's solved that problem. To some extent, it's a classic bubble-under-the-plastic problem: the demand for that kind of nightlife is, in our current society, inextricable from large undergrad populations. So I think all you can do is try to channel it, or at least to actively discourage it in certain places.
How to discourage? First thing that comes to my mind is small floorplates. 800 square feet is great for a coffee shop or even a nice local. It's impossible for Party Planet™. You can't necessarily write zoning that makes bars over 800 sq ft illegal*, although you can usually say "no bar over 1000 sq ft within 500 feet of another bar over 1000 sq ft". That would prevent a critical mass of Party Planet™s. Which is really the issue. The fear of Party Planet™ is that it will be joined by Club County™ and JelloShot Junction™ and BingeBurgh™**. If you spread them out, they can just stay normal restaurants with liquor licenses.
*maybe you could in certain districts? Like, typically there's a district like Neighborhood Commercial, which is geared towards classic Main Street development. But that would be too restrictive for NC, so maybe you need Local Neighborhood Commercial, which would be for businesses that just serve the immediate environs (e.g. coffee shop, dry cleaner, bakery). There you could be really restrictive about uses, because the goal isn't a vibrant, flexible business district, but just a few storefronts to serve neighbors.
**note to self, find funder for BingeBurgh concept
Santa Cruz's campus is so freaking beautiful.
As for literal traffic calming with the complexes, I don't have fully formed thoughts, but what occurs to me is that people coming from afar will be concerned about getting lost*. In some extraordinarily large states, the roadways tend to be big and straight, which sends a certain message of vehicular freedom. Areas that are distinctly not-that will read as insular and unfamiliar and unwelcoming. Point being, perhaps you could create a situation where a would-be partygoer is simultaneously forced to drive more slowly (because "detail work") and encouraged to get somewhere comfortable (like the easy, broad drives in front of the partyplexes).
Again, I think you can't keep the parties form happening: all you can do is to limit their scope/location. And part of the way to do that is to make it super-clear to partiers when they've left the Party Zone. Maybe different lighting schemes is part of it: fairly dim and small-scaled in family neighborhoods, brighter and highway-scaled in party neighborhoods (which you'd also think would help with public safety). Also relatively arcane access into the deeper neighborhood, so that partiers are discouraged from exploring/parking (in the '50s sense)/etc. So, frex, asymmetrical curb bumpouts (where, instead of just bringing in each corner by 8' to create a narrow throat, you bring one side in by 16', followed by the other side at 8', so it's almost a slalom). Not stupid complex, but enough that outsiders would pause before diving in.
OK, time to feed my family ham. Sorry if this all repeats comments 1-150.
*is that still a thing with phones and GPS?
On jello-shot-bars, I'm honestly not sure anyone's solved that problem.
In a word, Florida!
So, is 'going to North Korea' the new 'going to Lincoln'?
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Ossoff's at 50.4% with 53% reporting. Suspenseful!
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It's 10:30 pm. Do you know where your aircraft carriers are?
It sounds like part of the problem is that you want the ability to build some apartment complexes that are attractive to locals and less attractive to students. As JRoth said, you can make those complexes less convenient to campus and other student housimg, with maybe more direct routes to major employers.
Also, the kinds of students I think we're talking about want (or expect) a staffed front desk, gyms/weight rooms, pools, BBQ grills, volleyball nets, common areas (including party rooms), the ability to pay per room, and integrated cable/wifi. Most of those things are less important for local affordable housing, especially if there are municipal pools and parks they can use instead.
There may also be a way to require the building to start offering leases in the middle of school terms instead of right before each term.
Damn it, I swear I left it RIGHT HERE.
Congrats to Sally!
The campus looks beautiful.
156: Maybe I'm too much of a pessimist, but I have a hard time seeing a Democrat win a run-off because Republicans will fall into line when there's only one line to follow, and there's no greater concentration of followers than in the contemporary Republican party.
161: Yeah, I have no idea if he can actually win a runoff. He's now slipped below 50% with 84% reporting, so I guess we'll see.
My speakeasy does not have JelloShots. FOMO !
Physics gets pretty squishy, or at least probabilistic, which probably amounts to the same thing, at its largest and smallest scales.
Last year, I failed to win a commission to translate a book about some of the mathematicians who were trying to sort out the squish in the early 20th century. It was pretty neat stuff. (And if anyone can do set theory, physics, physical chemistry and a couple of other things I have since forgotten at the doctoral level in both English and German -- preference for native English speaker -- the American Mathematical Society is still looking for a translator.)
Moby, what are the main weapons of the Spanish Imposition?
Students in the UK have cheap college/uni student union bars in which to drink. Or almost-as-cheap club nights in rotation around the city. Or in the case of Newcastle, Sinners world famous trebles bar, offering three trebles for a fiver.
Halls of residence tend to be either on campus or in more urban areas (which are assumed to be noisier I guess), rather than the suburbs. (Have the Imperial halls in Acton disturbed locals?) Private student accommodation might take over streets or areas, but generally in already existing houses - not that I know every university town, but I can't think of anywhere that's been developed like San Marcos.
Kid A's college rent was cheap, but only for 27 weeks a year! Her house (this year, and another one next year) is about 5K pa, it's fairly shitty, and there are six of them in it - a good money spinner, methinks. Kid B is currently in fairly luxurious halls, ensuite shower room, flat of 8 with big communal area, for about £4800 for 38 weeks. She'll pay less next year for a house for the whole year, which is much nicer than Kid A's. But that's the north for you.
As for the fucking election. I heard yesterday at one house and then drove to the next repeating "fuck" like Bunk and McNulty in that scene from series 1. And then went to bed early to avoid watching a million analyses of it. There's no good outcome though, amirite?
Burning furniture is a fairly basic party activity.
This I think points to another transatlantic divergence. Here, wilful* damage to fixtures and fittings will cost you big time (replacement cost plus a month's rent in most cases), so if anybody at a party thought it would be fun to set fire to the couch, they'd be talked out of it or thrown out of the building unless literally everybody else was incapably drunk or stoned.
*Most landlords suck up the cost of replacing cookers etc. every couple of years, because they realise the kids have been sent to college with no idea how to use them, so the fact that they're unusable due to not having been cleaned for eighteen months is "accidental". Beds, chairs and tables, not so much.
Burning airlines gives you so much more.
There's no good outcome though, amirite?
I'm not even sure what a good outcome (in the realm of the possible) would be at this stage.
168: I think around here when people would burn couches they were burning their own, not their landlords. Get a cheap ratty one on Craigslist or wherever and keep it out on the porch for warm-season drinking with the understanding it's going to go up in flames when the Stillers win the big one. Or lose the big one, for that matter.
Upholstered porch furniture is a good way to tell undergrad houses from grownup houses. (That said, in my big grad school house we had some porch comfy chairs.)
Yes. Landlords don't provide couches. When you have a shitty house with a porch, the universe will provide one. As I said above, we had a "discarded furniture" pile in our yard because shitty furniture appeared as if by magic.
If you like couch on your porch, you always have the option of burning your neighbors' couch. It's right there on the next porch.
166.3: Nobody wins if we take this too far.
Hot take: There has never been a better time for an ambitious young person to join the Labour Party than today.
Some time in July, August maybe if the weather's nice, Jeremy Corbyn will issue a statement conceding the election and blaming the media. After some further interval he will resign and be replaced by Chuka U or Dan Jarvis. At this point the party will have 100-150 MPs, no policies no hope and no clue. Anyone reasonably confident and charismatic could seize that moment and mould it to their heart's desire. Because they had joined now, and shared in the moment of maximum humiliation, they would be acceptable to the other survivors. On the other hand, they would have no record in the horrible civil wars of the sixty-year-olds which have consumed the party over the last two years.
May would not be calling the election if she didn't know that things are going to get very hard when Brexit gets real; even against Corbyn she would probably do worse in 2020 than she will now. There will be a huge surge of rage and disappointment for the unTories to exploit in 2022. Who will constitute the future unTory coalition and how isn't clear now -- but some combination of Greens, LDs, and Labour will have to be involved, and the Labour leaders will have a big role to play.
Is 45 still "young" for these purposes? And do you need to be a citizen of the U.K.?
Also, I want to reestablish all the monasteries and restore abbots to the House of Lords.
176: you don't have to be a UK citizen to be a member of parliament; you could be a Commonwealth or Irish citizen. (Don't you have Irish ancestry? Could you claim an Irish passport?) We've even had non-British PMs before; Bonar Law was Canadian (though back then it was all the same thing, he was a "British subject").
Congratulations to Sally. I'm sure there's a more beautiful campus somewhere in the world, but I'm struggling to think where it could be. The surrounding area is just sublime. I miss CA.
I don't think I can claim an Irish passport. It's been 167 years or so since my ancestors came here.
Some time in July, August maybe if the weather's nice, Jeremy Corbyn will issue a statement conceding the election and blaming the media. After some further interval he will resign
This, I think, is a bit of a leap, though. Why would he resign? Why would he ever resign? He didn't resign when he lost the confidence of the parliamentary party, and that was so unexpected that no one had even thought of putting in a rule to make it happen. But there's no rule saying you have to resign if you lose an election, and it's only recently that people have felt the need to. Churchill didn't resign in 1945 or 1950. Attlee didn't resign in 1951. Wilson didn't resign in 1970.
As long as he has the support of the Momentum bloc, he'll stay as leader. He'll leave when (if) they ditch him, or when he dies.
I think Tony Blair is still alive. Maybe he'll do it again?
More to the point, Kinnock didn't resign in 1987.
Kinnock may have lost, but his speeches were good enough for Joe Biden to steal.
182. What will he do again? He's alive and well, AFAIK, but he's neither an MP nor a life peer.
Kinnock was the 2nd best Prime Minister we never had, after Denis Healey.
I thought you guys could just make somebody an MP if you wanted. Something like a "by election" or a "rotten borough" or whatever.
187: John Smith belongs on that list, possibly at the top.
Don't they make you use your real name when you run for office?
Just appoint Corbyn to the House of Lords. Problem solved.
181/183: I'm very ignorant about this stuff, but even if his supporters in Momentum are finally forced to acknowledge that Corbyn is a liability rather than an asset and push him into resigning, aren't the leadership contest rules basically rigged so that someone from their bloc will be elected to replace him? Given that many of the centrist Labour MPs are going to lose their seats anyway, how can anyone who wants to rebuild Labour stop this from happening?
176/178: You need to have had a grandparent born on the island of Ireland. I have a friend whose grandparents were all Irish immigrants (and being a yinzer, mostly steelworkers) and for years I've been telling him to apply to citizenship in case shit hits the fan. Reality is helping my argument. My closest links are g-g-grandparents, and I'm not rich enough to get a Maltese investor visa. Oy.
192: well, as long as Momentum members form the bulk of the party (while doing no actual work to help campaigns, etc) then they're going to be able to elect a leader. The filter is that each candidate has to be nominated by 20% of the parliamentary party. There are not, at present, 20% of MPs who want Corbyn to be leader (as we learned last year), so presumably there are not at present 20% of MPs and MEPs who would nominate a Corbynish successor (Diane Abbott? God help us.)
But the killer, as you rightly point out, as the "at present". I haven't seen any projections of who would be likely to survive this summer. There were 19 MPs in Corbyn's "core group", according to a leaked document last year, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/mar/23/labour-mps-hostile-corbyn-leaked-party-document but that's not enough to nominate a Corbyn Mark II unless the party goes below 95 MPs (which surely it won't) and all of them retain their seats (and I don't know which they are).
Just appoint Corbyn to the House of Lords. Problem solved.
This is known as being kicked upstairs, and it would indeed solve the problem, which is why Theresa May won't do it.
Can't the queen just do so on her own?
There's something called "the House of Lords Appointments Commission." Maybe call them.
Can't the queen just do so on her own?
The stability of the British Constitution depends in no small part on no one ever answering this question too precisely.
If there's ever been a time for the monarchy to earn its keep...
The momentum kiddies will get bored. The movement is already having its civil war. And though Corbyn is armoured in smugness, he'll tire of the job before 2022 and not even Seumas will be able to keep him propped like a corpse at his loophole forever
I do like the idea of a rogue monarchy ruthlessly embaroning politicians. Surely there must be a BBC drama about that.
If there's ever been a time for the monarchy to earn its keep...
Indeed. I picture HMQ saying "Well, you put up all those posters saying 'Take Back Control', so I did. What?"
I do like the idea of a rogue monarchy ruthlessly embaroning politicians
Forced ennoblement is a sort of internal ostracism, I suppose.
I really have to stop thinking I know things about how UK politics works from remembering things from 19th century novels. I looked at the suggestion of enobling Corbyn to get him out of the way, and instantly thought "No, that wouldn't work, you can be a peer and be Prime Minister, you just can't be a peer and be Chancellor of the Exchequer." I think it's a plot point in one of Trollope's political novels? But apparently no longer valid.
The tempting solution to the problem of Lord Lundy is sadly no longer available.http://monologues.co.uk/Childrens_Favourites/Lord_Lundy.htm
...The Duke - his aged grand-sire - bore
The shame till he could bear no more.
He rallied his declining powers,
Summoned the youth to Brackley Towers,
And bitterly addressed him thus -
"Sir! you have disappointed us!
We had intended you to be
The next Prime Minister but three:
The stocks were sold; the Press was squared:
The Middle Class was quite prepared.
But as it is! ...My language fails!
Go out and govern New South Wales!"
OT: Rep. Chaffetz won't seek reelection in 2018, possibly because he wants to devote his full attention to fucking with Utah, but maybe because he's going to be a total shit in blocking an investigation of Trump.
207 is wonderful. My third favourite poem,and absolutely on point.
But apparently no longer valid.
I don't think anybody's actually made it illegal, but you'd have a hard time being Prime Minister in the Lords because all the most important work in Parliament is done in the Commons. The last time a peer was appointed PM was in 1963, and he renounced his peerage in less than a week and stood for a seat in the Commons. The last guy to actually try running the country from the Lords was in 1902.
Not at all. It's the tragedy of the Lords
One more endorsement of UCSC from someone who played rugby and took a surfing class for credit there. I hope Sally has a great time.
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