Tag: neglect
Walk like a Sabal
Jenna’s got something going for her and going against her at her apartment in central Clearwater. She happens to live in the Sabal Walk apartment complex which is near the corner of Highlands Avenue and Union street.
The complex is close to shopping, which is a plus. It’s not far from Clearwater Beach or the Intercostal Waterway which is also excellent. It’s at a central location close to her parents and her friends (such as this Artful Dodger) and it’s got a hell of a lot of floorspace for a one bedroom apartment. It’s also reasonably priced.
…but there’s a reason for that.
Jenna moved in when we were dating in February and before she moved in, she found a huge piece of sheetrock removed from the ceiling. The Office Manager said there had been a leak but it was fixed. It only took a couple of days in the apartment to find out it wasn’t however.
And Jenna waited, and complained, and waited for the roof to be repaired. The only means of repair that Sabal Walk employed was poking a hole in the sheet-rock so that water would flow out more easily… That and vacuuming up water that accumulated in the bedroom.
It took until just this past week to get the roof repaired — four months?! And yet there are other incidents around the complex where the apartments are leaking.
Of course, this is disregarded by the powers that be. I didn’t mention that the majority of the Sabal Walk populace is minority. Anywhere else and there’s a media sensation about slum-lording at Sabal Walk.
But down in central Clearwater, also known as Crackwater, it’s simply written off.
SO just for future reference — Sabal Walk happens to have pretty good prices if you’re willing to deal with poor maintenance. You also better not be some bigot or you might not enjoy your stay.
Sports MEdia Whoring
The NFL Draft begins todays and like usual there is a wide net of coverage all over the Internet and throughout the media…
The St. Petersburg Times introduced their city editor as a blogger — Kevin McGeeve — to help cover the draft… That or to increase online readership?
McGreeve points to a couple of Times articles by staff writers and neglects several things that make bloggers different from traditional print media. One of those things is relying on a derth of sources, personal opinions and holding people’s attention.
While I continue to monitor the blog and see if there are any updates, I can’t help but agree with someone who commented on Kevin’s first post — Why is anyone showing up at this blog? There is better coverage at ESPN.com or on another media site. McGreeve hasn’t really blogged anything worth reading. Maybe that will change today. We’ll see.
Denial and Dehumanization
Saturday, letters were published in the St. Petersburg Times trying to justify mistreatment of those detained at the Abu Ghraib prison. They tended to be immature, at best, and evidence of how Americans will see only what they want to see.
One letter writer thinks “I’ll take a leash without any close compared to” being dragged through the streets and hung and burned. Of course, everyone is going to chose humiliation over death, but the letter writer neglects to bring up the sodomy and other mistreatment of prisoners, nor the duration of how long these people were exposed to such treatments. Death over long term humiliation is a tougher choice to make. The fact an exact date hasn’t been put on photos showing also factors in.
Another letter writer also makes the comparison to security personnel being dragged and hung last month and then claims, “how easily people forget.” The problem is, no one forgot that happened. We, as Americans, are supposed to be better than what has been revealed at the Abu Ghraib prison. Can you so easily justify sinking to an unmoral level?
One last letter writer states that last month’s horrid events in Fallujah need to be placed in front of these horrid events in a time line sense. I believe this is to justify the attacks against prisoners as “an eye for an eye”. Well, L. Paul Bremer stated on Friday that he had heard of abuses in Abu Ghraib by American Soldiers beginning in January… January certainly comes before April.
Don’t try to justify what US Soldiers have done in Iraq. We’re supposed to be better than that as a country. If our soldiers and citizens can justify dehumanizing citizens of the world for selfish reasons, than I want to know what happened to the America I grew up in and the land that I love?
Hearing Beyond the Door
Sometimes you never want to face up to someone’s argument when you are on the opposite side of the door of an issue when it’s full of bullshit speculation. At least that’s how I am feeling right now. I do not want to put up with someone trying to argue for an outlandish plane system in order to save Albert Whitted Airport in downtown St. Petersburg and at the same time the guy keeps sending out his opinions to me (his desires) as facts. His bending of the facts to give people the idea that they very much should support his effort.
He wants to piggy-back a space-age-plane-transit idea on the Florida amendment for High Speed Rail. An amendment that is already neglected, maligned and considered a waste due to lack of support from the government.
He’s a pilot that doesn’t want his airport (personal airport) in downtown St. Petersburg closed. He wants political support to save the airport… Yet the airport isn’t anything grand. In fact I learned to detest it when I went to the Tall Ships festival last year (and got buzzed over and over again by private planes)….
The city of St. Petersburg is losing tons of money with this airport and if they need / want to close it – so be it.
Yet my new “friend” wants not only the airport to stay open but a new “Mega Airport” to open in Florida to FURTHER support air transit.
Right…
In a state that’s already bowed to too much development and has not centralized it’s cities, air transit and complex air plans are only going to further encourage sprawl by letting distant places seem closer. That’s the last thing I want. I’d like to see city centers become just that with RAIL connections to the suburbs. Not distant suburbs several dozen-to-hundred miles away get connected by a plane-taxi like service.
It’s groovy, it’s space age, it’s a plan that everyone would have wanted for the 2000’s to be — easy travel by air — but it’s not plausible. Not now. Not in this state. Not in this ms-developed county.
