Dunes Blog

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They’ve been re-doing the bridge on Calumet in Liberty Township all summer. They worked pretty fast and now it’s all done. That was two weeks ago. The road has been sitting there done, still closed. What gives?

I’m tired of wasting gas taking the annoying detour.

I read in the paper this morning that Porter County Fair attendance was down this year. It’s being blamed on the tough economy.

This does not surprise me. There was no one there when my wife and I went (last Friday night), which was actually nice.

One of the things we were looking forward to before we moved back to Valpo from Chicago was the Porter County Fair. Lame, I know. But we always have a good time and enjoy hometown feel. The hometown feel is one of the reasons we moved back to Valparaiso from Chicago. We were almost not able to go (being poor and all - tough times will be over soon), but we scraped together the cash and were able to go.

We had a smashing time, but it cost an arm and a leg.

Attendance was down because it’s $7 per person to get in, then you have to eat. My wife and I went with $40 thinking that would be plenty to have fun.

By the time we ate (yummy burgers and fries and elephant ears), we were out of money. We were not able to ride any rides, play any of the games (which are a scam anyway) or buy anything from the shady dealers.

Since when did two people need $100 bucks to have a good time at the fair? Hell, we could have went to Kelsey’s and had steak for dinner for $40.

We had a great time anyway. The food was fantastic, the free entertainment was fun. We also enjoyed going through the animal sheds and seeing all the local businesses in the Porter County Expo Center (the Lego’s in the 4-H were impressive). Got a free map from the Porter County Democrats table (can’t pass up a free road map). We also ended up seeing all the friendly horses then watching some of the girls perform with their horses.

We also greatly enjoyed the quality time we spent together, even if we didn’t have money to do anything else at the fair, at least we were with each other. Check out my NWI photoblog for some of the pictures I took.

If the fair organizers are so worried about dropping attendance, maybe they should rethink what they charge for admission. After all the place is plastered with sponsor after sponsor.

I can’t wait until next year and I hope we have that $100 to have a little extra fun.

Lunacy.

That’s one word describes the plan. I’m an not in support of the closure of the Miller South Shore stop at all. I think it will be a terrible mistake that will hurt commuters and damage long term growth on the South Shore line. If anything the South Shore needs to be adding stations, not removing them.

This is just the latest attempt at building a Potemkin Village in downtown Gary. The logic behind closing the Miller Station is that it will force people to go to the new Gary Metro Center that’s being built by private developers. I want to know what the developers are smoking.

Do they really think that people will drive an extra 10-15 minutes to a new station, pay $3 a day to park, risk their car getting broken into or stolen just to take one for the team and support the new station? Nope, they most certainly will not. The current Gary Downtown South Shore station is underused and in perfectly good nick. The inconvenienced commuters will just drive over to Ogden Dunes South Shore stop, which is already at capacity or simply stop using the service all together, which is the last thing the South Shore needs while it’s trying to gain funding for it’s Valpariaso and Lowell extension. Mass transit needs encouragement for environmental reasons and congestion reasons, don’t give people a reason to ditch it for their cars.

Thankfully, the NICTD is rather dubious about the whole plan and that much was clear this past Friday when the consenus seemed to be that they won’t support closure of the Miller station but are going to have a vote on it at a future date. Miller residents and rail enthusiasts are making their voices heard and it looks like the powers that be might actually listen to them.

If this development of downtown Gary ever actually comes into fruition, let it stand on it’s own merits, don’t hold commuters hostage for the benefit of a private developer. Either way, Gary is a graveyard of failed revitalization efforts. The current downtown Metro center was the last attempt to draw people downtown and it didn’t work. Just look at the abandoned supermarket next to 80-94 for more proof.

Lunacy. I hope better heads prevail and commuters win on this one.

Again, sorry for the long absence folks. My wife and I have finished our headache inducing move back to Valparaiso and are loving being back home.

Now that things have settled down, I can get back into the blogging habits I’ve let lapse. There’s a lot of exciting stuff going on and I hope to keep up with things from now on.

Also, I’ve started a photoblog that focuses on NWI and will be updated everyday with a picture taken from my trusty iPhone. Check it out!