Cap’n Ken’s Homespun Wisdom

With the 2007 football season a scant month away, I need to think about refreshing the old LSU merchandise closet. And with not having been in Louisiana since … I really can”t remember, I turned to lsushop.net for help. What I saw in the hat section disturbed me. No, not this:

Or even this:

… although both of those are pretty disturbing. What got me was this:

It”s a baseball hat featuring Mike the Tiger wearing a baseball hat. Too bad he”s wearing it backwards; I”m curious to know if his hat has a smaller version of himself wearing a hat.

Worse yet are the above hat”s brothers:

The camo (note, camo has no place in college athletics gear) hat with Mike wearing a purple hat:

And the mind-boggling white hat with Mike wearing a camo hat:

Can”t we just be happy with a simple hat with “LSU” on it?

So in hopes of getting their merger to go through, Sirius and XM are now pitching the idea of ala carte packaging of channels as a subscription option. As stupid as the idea of buying TV channels ala carte (ads and carry fees still pay the bills on most of cable, kids, so ESPN would cost you a whole heck of a lot more than Outdoor Life Network if all channels were optional), it makes perfect sense in commercial-free music.

Off the top of my head, I can rattle off maybe 20 channels (music and not music) on Sirius that I”m passionate about. I”m real passionate about a few (Underground Garage, Outlaw Country), but probably 60% of the music channels hold zero interest for me. Give me ESPN radio, etc. plus my favorite channels, and I can come up with 50 that”ll do me just right.

Of course, low take rates for those non-mainstream stations I like could spell doom for them, but I still hold my opinion that somebody looking for crap Top 40 or mainstream country ain”t the one looking to pay a monthly fee for music.

As many loyal Wisdom readers know, the wife is about to release a new human into the world. Due date is July 28. So I”ve got my hospital bag together and want to make sure I”m not missing anything. So any new dads out there - let me know if I”m lacking something. I have:

- Video camera (I broke down and went HD; my child shall come into the world at 1280 x 720)
- Digital camera (Did not upgrade from 5.1 megapixels)

- Gorillapods for each of the above
- My iPod loaded up with video (first seasons of The Office and The Sopranos, Napoleon Dynamite, Elvis “68 Comeback Special, etc.)
- Accouterments for the above (chargers, batteries, iPod video cable, extra media for the cameras, etc.)
- I”ll have the iPhone and Helio Drift for mobile communications and PowerBook for production.
- Lindy”s, Athlon and Sporting News college football annuals (not to be opened until the hospital).

And things like toiletries and a change of clothes; but those are pretty inconsequential.

For those of you wanting to keep up on developments, I”ll be Twittering updates and posting pics to a Flickr account that”s restricted to friends and family. Write to capnken at gmail if you”d like to be looped into the Flickr thing.

It has been suggested to me that an update is in order about some of the positive things Jeff Notrica has done in East Atlanta recently. Fair enough. Notrica owns the block (except for the Graveyard Tavern) on Glenwood Avenue between Joseph Avenue and Gresham Avenue and has been active in bringing new business in there. In the past couple of months, two new restaurants - the vegan place Cenci and the great new place The Glenwood - have opened as has a real estate office, Origins.

And Notrica apparently (it”s not showing up in online property records yet) purchased the former Good News Cafe space on the corner specifically to bring the well-known lesbian bar My Sister”s Room to East Atlanta. It opened a little while back as well.

So Inman Park Properties does deserve credit for getting businesses open in what had been a troubled strip. The previous owners had bought it out of bankruptcy, I believe. I would argue, though, that all of these spaces were pretty much ready to go and it”s an easy thing to lease out existing spaces in a desirable commercial district. That”s Notrica just doing business as one would expect. It”s his reputation for letting buildings rot that makes this notable.

In the case of My Sister”s Room, though, it seems the bar”s owners were working directly with Inman Park Properties to find a new space somewhere intown. I suppose the bar could have just approached the previous owners of the Good News space (the same group that owns the Graveyard Tavern space), but for whatever reason it worked out where Notrica purchased the space specifically to lease to My Sister”s Room. And the opening of My Sister”s Room is a very good thing for East Atlanta. The club has an existing customer base, many of whom I imagine don”t live in East Atlanta. So it”s bringing a steady flow of people in, which has to be helping the other businesses here as well.

Just down Flat Shoals, work is progressing at the former Tucker Auto Electric building, which is owned by Inman Park Properties and has sat vacant for years. It”s getting a major renovation to become a pub, and that”s a very welcome turn for a real EAV eyesore. Word is the place will open around September as the Midway Pub.

All good news there. There are still problems with some of Notrica”s properties, most notably the empty lot on Glenwood next to a day care center. It”s become a camp for bums, but attempts are underway to resolve that. We”ll see how serious Inman Park Properties is about fixing that problem.

If the trend is that Notrica realizes East Atlanta is a good place for him to do business (rather than just a good place to own property to maybe develop someday), that”s very welcome. As the biggest property owner in East Atlanta Village, Inman Park Properties has tremendous influence over the neighborhood”s future. And that”s why I watch them closely.