A little followup on yesterday's excursion to the west side. I was so intrigued, that when I had a free hour yesterday afternoon, I took a jaunt over to Northwest Crossing.

First thing I noticed is that there are a hell of a lot of ongoing construction sites there -- I hope they all get finished, or it's going to look really lousy. All the streets leading to unhooked utilities and juniper trees and all the empty lots already look pretty crappy. It looks like it will be years before the place will look settled. I guess if you like living in the midst of perpetual construction.....

There are also quite a few houses that didn't look for sale and yet weren't occupied.

I wish I remember who wrote an essay on the phenomenon of the rich having multiple houses. Whoever it was said that it was a very bad development for any community; that the rich tend not to take ownership or responsibility for any secondary residences. His main point was that empty houses really took the vitality out of any community. He said that the houses will sit empty most of the time. The rich make lousy neighbors.

I know that Northwest Crossing isn't the ultra rich, but it looks to me like the same phenomenon.

The other amazing thing was to see retail and restaurants! In what looked like the middle of nowhere! I noticed lots of empty tables......

I live on the eastside, in the Williamson neighborhood. It's a nice neighborhood, much nicer in my opinion than all these Craftsmans monstosities on the West Side. It is also probably a third less pricey for the same quality. Not to mention that I have a third of an acre for property, and so do all the other houses in this area. It just feels like every house is its own thing, instead of lined up in little rows.

Frankly, it is pretty strange to go from all the rows and rows of low income Craftsman homes on the east side, especially east of 27th, and then drive to the west side and see rows and rows of high income Craftsman homes. Same concept, at a higher level, just bigger boxes with a few more angles. Where's the individuality?

I mean, I like the 'Craftsman' style as much as anyone. When I first saw one in Bend, say a dozen years ago, I thought it was neat. If I'd been in the market, that's what I would have bought. But really, does EVERY house have to be in that style? Would it hurt to have the occasional southwest, or victorian, or gothic or....even a ranch style? Does every house have to be in earth tones? Can't there be the occasional solid color or pastel?

I especially feel sorry for the early adopters. It would be like naming your kid Amadeus, thinking it's different, and then finding out that every other kid in his first grade class is also named Amadeus.

Is it really much of an improvement that if you go into an ice cream shop, and instead of only having chocolate or vanilla, they now only have coffee nut fudge, or fudge coffee nut, or nut fudge coffee?

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Got my Comics and Games Retailer trade publication yesterday. It has steadily shrunk over the years. The strange thing is to see that a two thirds of the magazine is devoted to gaming, when gaming is the smaller industry. Because comics are a distributer monopoly, and because none of the publishers have much money to advertise, the advertising is done by gamer companies. And yet, for example, only 1/3rd of the respondents for the polls are gamers, and 2/3rds are comic retailers. Just goes to show you can't tell what's happening by the amount of coverage.

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I read once that the Japanese were astounded by the level of creative destruction in the Silicon Valley. The idea that we would let 90% of the companies fail in order to create one viable company was something they just couldn't fathom.

I think the same sort of thing happens in retail. Lots of dreamers, opening up businesses that probably will fail, but which create vitality in the meantime, which improve the physical structure -- leaving a 'beautiful corpse', if you will, that that next guy can build on. And every once in a while, a dreamer actually succeeds.