Marquette Neighborhood Eats Its Own

A brouhaha is brewing over the Willy Street Co-op's decision to put in a driveway that allows ingress & egress from Jenifer Street. Willy Street is going to be reconstructed next year and businesses along the corridor are bracing for the worst. But the driveway is causing consternation among many Marquette Neighborhood residents who don’t want any more traffic on Jenifer Street. (And, generally speaking, don't want any traffic on the side streets at all.)

The Marquette Neighborhood Association Yahoo Group is seething with anger over what many members perceive as a betrayal by the Co-op and some of the comments are just classic.

There's this from Fae Dremock: "I suggest that when we buy at the coop we protest, whether by telling our cashiers our disagreement or simply wearing black." Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens clad in black can change the Co-op. I'm sure wearing black will go a long way towards getting the Co-op to change its mind. (Indeed, is the only thing that ever has.) While I don't pretend to speak for the cashiers at the Co-op, I just have this nagging feeling that the last thing they want when trying to do their job is be grilled by countless people eager to emulate their hero Michael Pollan by paying $8 for a dozen eggs or $4 for a single peach on a subject that should instead be directed at management. Perhaps instead of pouring your wrath onto the cashiers, you can take your gripe to Anya Firszt, the general manager where it belongs.

Woe betide the middle class who live on the traffic bottleneck of a growing mid-sized city!

Ted Voth, Jr. is always great to read because, to him, every neighborhood problem is the result of capitalists in some smoky room plotting away against us plebs. He writes: "The Coop is acting like a big business, expanding into an additional location. Gone corporate capitalist at heart." Yeah! Stupid capitalists! What have they ever done for us?





But this is the best part:

The access is about making it easier for people to drive…

No one should be driving anything anywhere.

That Willy's gonna be torn up, and threaten all the small businesses on the street is an artifact of 'America's love affair with the automobile.'

Remember, no one should be driving anything anywhere. That means you policemen and emergency responders. They'll be responding to 9-1-1 calls on horseback or horse drawn carriages. Yeah, let's go back to horses. Everyone in the neighborhood will waiting forever when their loved one is having a heart attack. That'll go over well. And so will the natural smell of the natural horse shit. Just how great were the pre-automobile days of yore?

The normal city horse produced between fifteen and thirty-five pounds of manure a day and about a quart of urine, usually distributed along the course of its route or deposited in the stable. While cities made sporadic attempts to keep the streets clean, the manure was everywhere, along the roadway, heaped in piles or next to stables, or ground up by the traffic and blown about by the wind.

Nineteenth century urbanites considered the stench or miasmas produced by the manure piles a serious health hazard, but cleaning was sporadic at best. Manure piles also produced huge numbers of flies, in reality a much more serious vector for infectious diseases such as typhoid fever than odors.

Although not as serious a problem as the manure, the noise created by horses' iron shoes and the iron-tired wheels of cars and wagons on cobblestone streets was a constant annoyance.

Just imagine the bitching on the MNA group about manure and hooves. At that point, Voth will proclaim it all to be a plot by the capitalists of the horse cartel. Then we can switch to bicycles. Of course, Voth will bitch about all the oil used for lubrication and the bearings and decry the use of petroleum for Spandex.





Tim Wong accuses the Co-op of promoting auto use by its customer: "It is especially ironic that the coop launches its assault at a time when more and more people are aware of the twin threats of peak oil and climate change--both of which are exacerbated by the coop's promotion of driving."

Really? Apparently that the Co-op might be trying to accommodate its customers that arrive via car never occurred to him. Why hold the Co-op responsible for the decisions made by those who travel by car to get their fix of organic potato chips and herbal penis enlargement pills?

This whole driveway thing has proven that the Co-op is a horrible neighbor. This incident shows without a doubt that they promote capitalism, global warming, and more traffic. Can there be any doubt that Firszt is agog with excitement over being able to watch pedestrians and bicyclists get hit by cars from her desk in Capitalist HQ? Hell, they can't even accommodate the waste sensitive. I mean, what good are you if you can't accommodate the one waste sensitive person on the whole planet? (And just think of the hell this person would endure when we rid ourselves of cars and return to the horse.)

From now on, instead of "Willy Street Co-op", the preferred title is "Adam Smith Store". Everyone should boycott the co-op and instead drive over to Whole Foods.