Gosh, I've been browsing and wondering why the threads looked weird and there were no updates.
I just saw this somehow. This is a sad development, I also appreciate what everyone brings to this forum.
Agreed, sucks to lose the involvement of one of the old timers here. We need more engagement, not less. I will say that leaving without saying anything and deleting one's account in a way that removes comments and threads is not terribly respectful to this little community we have here. I cannot commentate on this and not mention that at all.
MichMatters was the most on-point with scouring the meeting agendas and packets. I'll do my best to keep everyone here updated on that stuff, I just may end up a week or two late sometimes. Things have been slow lately, nothing of note going through Lansing and with no Council meeting next week then no planning meeting until the end of month, I don't think there will be much new to report on in the immediate future.
...And with that I'd just suggest to anyone that if you find something that's not posted about that you want to share, please share it! I err on the side of not posting stuff like business openings/closings, relevant community events or too much local political news. That sort of stuff is right up the alley of this site's intended use, at least IMO, as are off-topic and/or non-local discussions (in the appropriate threads).
I'm out on the west coast now, so I don't really post anymore, but I lurk.
I'm pretty sure Michigander is also LMich on SSP, but it looks like he hasn't been active there for almost 2 years.
Related note- since he left I noticed that threads no longer show the specific update date/bold font when there are new comments. I'm also sure I used to be able to click on the comment count to go to my last read comment in a thread.
Just tossing that out since it's something that seems off.
Yeah, I've noticed that too about the threads not working. My guess is that they're related. I was able to talk to MichMatters. He's alright, just doesn't want to participate here anymore and didn't intend to cause any issue with the work of others.
Cool shots! One makes Lansing look like a small clearing in the woods, the next cast Lansing in a much better "light" the Capitol Building looks so nice surrounded by green lawns not parking lots.
So, I was in Las Vegas earlier this week for Bitcoin 2026. Of course when you're in any other place, you reflect on how the design there is different than the design in Lansing. Here are some things I noticed. (I seem to be having problems embedding images here, so I'll try to attach them in a reply.)
**Public Transit**
1. I took The Duece bus that runs between the Strip and Fremont Street a couple of times. It was obviously a mix of tourists and locals, but I had a fine time, everyone was well behaved. The bus was SHOCKINGLY slow, had you the stamina to keep it up for a few miles you could have made the trip in the same time by a slow jog, a comment about Las Vegas traffic there. Fares were higher than in Lansing, $4 one-way, $6 for a two hour pass, $8 for a day pass.
I was struck by the more aggressive posture of announcements on the bus. One was "don't have a fare? Then you aren't allowed to ride." Hard to capture this in writing, but it was not "just a friendly reminder!", there was a note of threat in the voice. Another warned that committing an assault on the bus could lead to being banned from transit. Another warned that cameras were watching you (and screens on the bus actually displayed what the cameras were seeing, during that message).
There were also dedicated transit security, observed at many stops (also helping tourists operate the ticket machines), and at one point, one got on our bus and just looked around. This is not a new point, but you feel bad that the bus drivers in Lansing (and many other small cities) are expected to be both "driver" and "rule enforcer", how much much of the latter you actually get seems to depend greatly upon driver personality and inclination.
**Not walkable**
2. I was also surprised, given how much money is flowing around, just how pedestrian un-friendly is the Las Vegas Strip. If you're there long enough, you start to learn which casinos are connected inside, and where the best exits are to make it to the next place. But much of the sidewalk along Las Vegas Boulevard itself was a mess. For one, the sidewalk it appears and disappears, there are dead-ends that aren't obvious dead-ends until you actually walk down them (can't we at least put up a sign to warn people?), because maybe the intended path of the sidewalk has gone way east to twist around this building and give places for automobile traffic to go underneath. Or, there are lots of elevated walkways to get over busy streets safely, which are nice but, as we also know in Lansing, kind of a pain. Certain access routes to the elevated walkways had escalators in Vegas, but (per usual) about 10% of them weren't working. And then sometimes there were actual crosswalks that were either very long (over the whole boulevard) and felt dangerous for that reason, or short crosswalks parallel to the boulevard, but you had to contend with impatient vehicles that wanted to dart into the hotel areas, and the "islands" for pedestrians were sometimes too small to fit all the pedestrians. It felt to me like a car-pedestrian accident just waiting to happen. Even the way the signals were signaling sometimes didn't seem to make sense (if the cars this way have a red, it sure seems like I should have a walk sign, so why don't I? Oh well, let's all just go anyway.)
Inside the casinos was nice, but felt like, as I said, there was surprisingly little attention given to making it safe and easy for people to go between them. Probably a crazy thought, but I wonder if some day, long in the future, they could bury the boulevard or something... felt dangerous or inconvenient in too many places with all those people moving about.
Bitcoin 2027 is in Nashville at the Music City Center... a more more walkable environment.
**Rules on the Strip**
3. Finally, to my surprise, and especially given the reputation of Las Vegas, I saw, not zero, but remarkably little marijuana smoking, panhandling, or vagrant activity on the Strip itself. I don't know what the city rules are, but I suspect all three of those would be in abundance on the Strip if they were not being actively excluded (and indeed, I did see some "move along" activity, though it seemed to be casino security undertaking it, not the police, which also made me wonder about what the rules are). When traveling between the Strip and Fremont Street, I did see some quite desperate looking homeless camping in the "between" areas, which is all the more reason to believe the city is actively keeping it out of the Strip and Fremont Street proper.
Now I'll try to attach some photos to the next reply.
Comments
I just saw this somehow. This is a sad development, I also appreciate what everyone brings to this forum.
MichMatters was the most on-point with scouring the meeting agendas and packets. I'll do my best to keep everyone here updated on that stuff, I just may end up a week or two late sometimes. Things have been slow lately, nothing of note going through Lansing and with no Council meeting next week then no planning meeting until the end of month, I don't think there will be much new to report on in the immediate future.
...And with that I'd just suggest to anyone that if you find something that's not posted about that you want to share, please share it! I err on the side of not posting stuff like business openings/closings, relevant community events or too much local political news. That sort of stuff is right up the alley of this site's intended use, at least IMO, as are off-topic and/or non-local discussions (in the appropriate threads).
I'm pretty sure Michigander is also LMich on SSP, but it looks like he hasn't been active there for almost 2 years.
Just tossing that out since it's something that seems off.
**Public Transit**
1. I took The Duece bus that runs between the Strip and Fremont Street a couple of times. It was obviously a mix of tourists and locals, but I had a fine time, everyone was well behaved. The bus was SHOCKINGLY slow, had you the stamina to keep it up for a few miles you could have made the trip in the same time by a slow jog, a comment about Las Vegas traffic there. Fares were higher than in Lansing, $4 one-way, $6 for a two hour pass, $8 for a day pass.
I was struck by the more aggressive posture of announcements on the bus. One was "don't have a fare? Then you aren't allowed to ride." Hard to capture this in writing, but it was not "just a friendly reminder!", there was a note of threat in the voice. Another warned that committing an assault on the bus could lead to being banned from transit. Another warned that cameras were watching you (and screens on the bus actually displayed what the cameras were seeing, during that message).
There were also dedicated transit security, observed at many stops (also helping tourists operate the ticket machines), and at one point, one got on our bus and just looked around. This is not a new point, but you feel bad that the bus drivers in Lansing (and many other small cities) are expected to be both "driver" and "rule enforcer", how much much of the latter you actually get seems to depend greatly upon driver personality and inclination.
**Not walkable**
2. I was also surprised, given how much money is flowing around, just how pedestrian un-friendly is the Las Vegas Strip. If you're there long enough, you start to learn which casinos are connected inside, and where the best exits are to make it to the next place. But much of the sidewalk along Las Vegas Boulevard itself was a mess. For one, the sidewalk it appears and disappears, there are dead-ends that aren't obvious dead-ends until you actually walk down them (can't we at least put up a sign to warn people?), because maybe the intended path of the sidewalk has gone way east to twist around this building and give places for automobile traffic to go underneath. Or, there are lots of elevated walkways to get over busy streets safely, which are nice but, as we also know in Lansing, kind of a pain. Certain access routes to the elevated walkways had escalators in Vegas, but (per usual) about 10% of them weren't working. And then sometimes there were actual crosswalks that were either very long (over the whole boulevard) and felt dangerous for that reason, or short crosswalks parallel to the boulevard, but you had to contend with impatient vehicles that wanted to dart into the hotel areas, and the "islands" for pedestrians were sometimes too small to fit all the pedestrians. It felt to me like a car-pedestrian accident just waiting to happen. Even the way the signals were signaling sometimes didn't seem to make sense (if the cars this way have a red, it sure seems like I should have a walk sign, so why don't I? Oh well, let's all just go anyway.)
Inside the casinos was nice, but felt like, as I said, there was surprisingly little attention given to making it safe and easy for people to go between them. Probably a crazy thought, but I wonder if some day, long in the future, they could bury the boulevard or something... felt dangerous or inconvenient in too many places with all those people moving about.
Bitcoin 2027 is in Nashville at the Music City Center... a more more walkable environment.
**Rules on the Strip**
3. Finally, to my surprise, and especially given the reputation of Las Vegas, I saw, not zero, but remarkably little marijuana smoking, panhandling, or vagrant activity on the Strip itself. I don't know what the city rules are, but I suspect all three of those would be in abundance on the Strip if they were not being actively excluded (and indeed, I did see some "move along" activity, though it seemed to be casino security undertaking it, not the police, which also made me wonder about what the rules are). When traveling between the Strip and Fremont Street, I did see some quite desperate looking homeless camping in the "between" areas, which is all the more reason to believe the city is actively keeping it out of the Strip and Fremont Street proper.
Now I'll try to attach some photos to the next reply.