The Meek Fail To Speak At Fairgrounds

Although I spoke out against the Noise Exemption Zone for the Maingate nightclub at city council,  I decided not to attend the LCB hearing at the club itself. That decision was based on the fact that I would be again speaking for people who were still too meek to do so for themselves.

Candida Affa lobbied the 19th Street Civic Theater not to oppose. The West End Alliance also didn't say one word about the noise exemption zone. When two such groups won't speak out, let them endure the consequence of their timidness.... and there will be consequences. I do however feel bad for the numerous elderly living in the neighborhood. The city failed to inform the neighborhood, and the Morning Call's reach is less and less.

If the zone is put into effect, the Maingate will become one loud place. For those elderly living nearby with hearing impairments, they'll be able to feel the beat.

The livability of the neighborhood still has a couple of chances. The LCB must approve the zone. Although almost no opposers showed up, perhaps the LCB saw through the charade. Furthermore, the Maingate license is still under review, because of its previous history of noise complaints.

For the city to have lobbied for a Disruption And Noise Zone is almost beyond belief.  Candida herself previously advocated for a nuisance ordinance, after the shootings on lower Hamilton Street.
If everything goes the Maingate's way, they will no longer be under the LCB noise levels. Although the city says that they will use the same noise level, it's naive to believe that the same politics which sponsored a special exemption zone for them, won't likewise turn a deaf ear to any complaints.

Hootchy Nights At The Allentown Fair

Morning Call columnist Bill White had a piece earlier in the week where he lamented that  Bobo the dunking clown was no longer at the fair. Although that's about as funky as it got for Bill in his era,  we older Allentonians remember much hotter nights at the fairgrounds. Up to the late sixties the fair had girly shows. I'm going back to the era of Gooding's Million Dollar Midway and Benny's Bingo. I'm going back to three midways packed between the Farmer's Market and Chew Street. I'm going back to when the fair only started after Labor Day.

I mentioned in one of my previous fair posts that Fred Schoenk and I made and sold printed t-shirts at the fairs during high School. At the Kutztown Fair we were hired by the burlesque show owner to letter a new banner for his show tent...as high school boys we would have paid him for the experience.

reprinted from September of 2018

photocredit:molovinsky...Black rock and roll review with strippers, 1969 Allentown Fair

Wildlands Conservancy Responsible For Fish Kill

reprinted from July of 2014

In their indiscriminate haste to remove all dams in the Lehigh Valley, the Wildlands Conservancy is responsible for the massive fish kill this week at the Fish Hatchery. When General Trexler had the trout nursery expanded, they also revised, just upstream,  a small dam, to insure and regulate a water supply for the nursery. Last fall the Wildlands gleefully demolished that dam, removing an important component of the trout nursery. Although the heavy storm Monday night occurred hundreds of times in the last century, this time the dam wasn't there to regulate the fast moving water. Over 1,400 fish were flooded out of the holding pools and died. Last summer, I watched the Wildlands Conservancy give a power point presentation to Allentown City Council on dam removals. When I invited City Council to Lehigh Parkway to defend the Robin Hood Dam, the Conservancy crashed my event, and asked the council members instead to come with them to the trout nursery dam, to see their wonderful plans. I hope yesterday that the Conservancy had the decency to help pick up the dead fish.

The lesson here is that not all dams are without purpose.

The Morning Call article on mcall, Tuesday afternoon, contained a paragraph describing how the fish hatchery workers believe that the dam removal factored into the fish kill. That paragraph was edited out of both the hard and soft copy editions Tuesday evening.  I have no doubt that that the deletion was done to shield The Wildlands Conservancy.

Reggie Rickard an Allentown resident who has been volunteering at the hatchery for 45 years said the fish kill is probably the worst in the hatchery's recent history. Initially, he estimated as many as 2,000 may have been killed, but the final tally was about 1,400.

Fish have been lost in other heavy rains storms, but Rickard said this was a major fish kill. He and other volunteers who joined city workers in collecting and counting the corpses Tuesday believe the death rate may have been exacerbated by recent upstream dam removals on small streams.

photo:April Bartholomew/The Morning Call/July15,2014

ADDENDUM: Above I have combined and reprinted two posts from July of 2014. The fish hatchery again experienced a massive fish kill in this recent storm of August 2018. The former fish hatchery dam, and its removal in connection to the fish kills, has been removed from the Morning Call archives and the memory of its news' reporters. However, this blog knows the truth, and so will my readers.

reprint from July of 2014

UPDATE JULY 23, 2020: The Morning Call continues to protect the Wildlands Conservancy, and will not report about the Conservancy's back-channel with Pa. DEP to demolish Wehr's Dam, nor will allow any opinion pieces about it.

Hearing On Maingate Noise Exemption

Tomorrow the LCB will hold a public hearing on the Noise Exemption Zone, in essence spot zoning, to accommodate the Maingate Nightclub. Because Allentown enacted this ordinance, the LCB is legally compelled to consider the ill advised measure.

I attended the council meeting last February, and it was city government at its worst. Club owner Dominic Germano had the meeting packed with supporters, designed to intimidate anybody there to speak in opposition. The City of Allentown, although proposing to alter the character of the neighborhood, failed to notify the neighbors.  One neighbor in attendance only learned about the council meeting that day from this blog. Such notification is usually standard in all zoning matters, and this is zoning. The sacrifice of the neighbors' quality of life, for one businesses' profit, was supported by the mayor and city council. Some council members seemed especially committed to Germano's business interests. The meeting even accused and demonized the residents of senior high rises and the hospital for complaining about the noise.

Police Chief Glenn Granitz made it clear that although he would enact whatever council decided that night, that the police department was already spread thin, and certainly didn't need any additional responsibility.

The Maingate was never told by the LCB that it couldn't operate, but that it has to conform to the normal noise limits governing all other establishments. We don't need a city hall to make exceptions, but for a city to enforce the rules in a equal manner

LCB   Noise Exemption Zone Hearing 
                                              
Thursday July 23,  11:00 AM at  Maingate Nite Club
                           

Nap Times At The Morning Call

I have become a public critic of the Morning Call. Some of you may be surprised to know that although my name will only be seen in that paper for an obituary or crime victim report, neither of which I'm anxious for, their staff and management regularly read this blog.  I communicate with the reporters and the management, and occasionally, one of them even starts the dialogue. Recently I emailed a reporter to complain about some choice of topic being reported upon, and got this reply.

Thank you for your email. I've been furloughed by Tribune Publishing for the week of July 19-25, during which time I cannot check or respond to emails or work-related phone calls. If you have a news tip, please email news@mcall.com. I look forward to responding when I return.

Tribune mother ship seems to be imposing a financial time out more and more on the paper's staff. Some readers of this blog, and of a facebook group that I also administer, hope that some local investor(s) will take over the paper, and make it more reflective of their perspective...That's not going to happen. It may be eventually purchased by another national media chain, but I doubt that their modus of operation will be any different. I also doubt that there would be a change of personnel, except perhaps even less employees. As in marriage for better or worse, we are stuck with this local paper. I for one hope that it continues in business. I am informed by the local coverage and realize that far too many cities our size no longer have a local paper.

New Comment Policy In Effect: Anonymous comments are again permitted. All comments must be approved.

Morning Call Dreams

Current and former employees of The Morning Call are circulating a petition to protect the paper from a hedge fund that buys newspapers. The petition states that;

THE ALLENTOWN MORNING CALL HAS BEEN OUR REGION’S SOURCE OF LOCAL NEWS AND THE WATCHDOG THAT KEEPS GOVERNMENTS AND CORPORATIONS ACCOUNTABLE.

While I certainly hope that the Morning Call stays in business, and I appreciate the local articles and news they report, they overstate their role in keeping government and corporations accountable.

Currently they are running an opinion piece criticizing Easton's Columbus statue, even calling it a public health hazard for minorities, because of its infrastructure carbon footprint. They include no less than 16 photos with the nonsense piece of woke tripe. Meanwhile, their opinion page uses the same cast of contributors year in and year out, and routinely rejects material questioning the status quo, or their selected, protected sacred cows.

Recently, the CEO of one of the largest institutions in the Lehigh Valley was refused space on their opinion page, and had to sent a private letter to the community. They refuse to print my exposé on South Whitehall's conspiracy to demolish Wehr's Dam, despite the voter's referendum to save it.  They were a decade behind on Pawlowski's shenanigans, and never scrutinize their current landlord, City Center Reality.  They are more of a lapdog, that dreams it's a watchdog.

New Comment Policy In Effect: Anonymous comments are again permitted. All comments must be approved.