Saturday, April 15, 2006

It's about time...two really different accounts

The two daily morning papers here are reporting on Phoenix becoming a much bigger player in attracting commerical airline service to Williams Gateway Airport.

There's this. And this.

It's about farkin' time. Maybe it's because I grew up in a city with two major airports (Houston), but the size of the Valley and the congestion of Sky Harbor combine to make a secondary airport sensible.

Plus, I am relishing the opportunity to fly out of the airport closer to me, with free parking to boot! I know, enjoy it while it lasts.

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Saw this article the other day, courtesy of Geogal.

For those of you not familiar with Arizona geography, Eloy is almost dead center between downtowns Phoenix and Tucson on Interstate 10.

But there's more than that. Most folks in the Grand Canyon State have a perception (dead-on accurate) that Eloy is a poor, ugly, rough town.

That it should snag a Starbucks (the first stand-alone one in the entire area) just ranks up there in irony with.....

I need some help here. Geogal suggests the spectre of Glendale opening an NFL venue this fall.

OK, that might work.

I'll go in another direction here, since my humorist tendencies seem to be a bit lacking today. I've lived in Arizona since 1994. In just the last few years, extreme growth has taken some towns that might rank right up there with Eloy for "armpit of the state" status to new directions. Even my home of Chandler is still considered by some old-timers to be nothing more than a small cotton-growing town "way out there."

So what's next? A new mall in Gila Bend, with Neiman-Marcus as one of the anchors? A Six Flags park to be built in Yuma?

We'll see.

Thursday, April 13, 2006

Clear the cobwebs...

No, I am not dead.

No, I haven't skipped out on the blogging world.

I've just been preoccupied for a while. There are other things in life and occasionally my life demands I give attention to matters that are not online-world related.

But I'm still here and still thinking.

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Perused a copy of PC Magazine a couple of days ago. Their article about the car of the future was interesting. Don't tell me satellite radio won't be a part of the whole digital schema.

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Coca Cola Blak.

I have only one thing to say. Remember Crystal Pepsi? You probably didn't until I mentioned it just now. I believe Blak will suffer the same fate. Look for Blak in your local closeout store in about six months time. American consumers don't seem to like their caffiene-and-corn-syrup-laden beverages to deviate from the traditional Coke and Pepsi.

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The Diamondbacks should thank the game-scheduling gods. Their home opener was this past Tuesday. Can you imagine if their opener at Chase Field had been on Monday, with the large pro-immigration protest march taking place just blocks away?

A congestion nightmare.

Granted, their home-opening night game didn't draw a huge crowd, but it could have been much worse. Now the guys in the suits need to figure out how to draw some respectable type of gate this season.....