Buses, Statues, Theaters, and Condos

Spectator

By Stephen Tuttle | Aug. 31, 2024

It is again the time of year when those giant yellow school buses will be on the road mornings and afternoons. And once again there will be unthinking, uncaring people driving by stopped school buses endangering our children.

According to the National Safety Council, there were more than 10,000 accidents nationally involving school buses resulting in 104 fatalities in 2022, the last year for which they had complete data. There were 1,041 such accidents in Michigan with four fatalities during the same period. The most common type of accident is a passenger vehicle running into the back of a stopped school bus with resulting predictable injuries.

School bus drivers have a difficult enough job without passenger vehicle drivers acting dangerously and irresponsibly.

When a school bus is stopped with its red lights flashing, you MUST STOP whether following or approaching it. This is not a suggestion—it’s the law, and your pocketbook and freedom are at risk when you don’t obey it. Much worse, you’re also risking the lives of the children getting on or off that bus. Just stop.

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“Vandals” is a bit too gentle a word to describe the ignoramuses who recently destroyed some art installations along the Boardman Lake Loop of the TART trail.

While defacing art has become a popular if wildly ineffective means of protest in some circles—protesters have splashed paint on art, glued themselves to sculptures, and generally done their causes more harm than good—it appears there was no cause associated with destroying two standing sculptures at the ankle other than wanton destruction. (One of the four sculptures in the installation may have been broken unintentionally, per The Ticker’s report on Aug. 23.)

Defacing or destroying public art isn’t especially uncommon, unfortunately. The combination of damage to existing art and “art” itself considered damaging (like gang graffiti) does about $12 billion worth of damage every year according to alpolic-americas.com. It is disappointing there are those who see public art as a target to destroy rather than enjoy.

Equally disappointing was the decision to remove the remaining statue in the series lest it be damaged, too. In other words, the numbskull or numbskulls actually won. This decision will only encourage more destruction since we’ve now established a precedent.

(Has no one heard of a trail camera? Relatively cheap, easy to hide, easy to operate, fairly high resolution, good way to catch ignorant fools taking down statues.)

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Whatever happened to the Bijou by the Bay? As recently reported in The Ticker, the facility which is owned by Traverse City and operated by the Traverse City Film Festival (TCFF), has not shown a movie since May 16, and those in charge seem unwilling to talk about it with local media or the city, which in turn seems unwilling to force TCFF’s hand.

They are not yet in violation of their agreement with the city, which requires them to show at least one movie a day for 200 days per year, but they are beginning to approach it.

The State Theater, which is owned by TCFF, seems to have cut back on first-run movies, did not produce the “Best of the Fest” or other activities as promised, and their latest budget bugaboo involves their old marquee, which is apparently in need of nearly $90,000 of repairs. Over-promising and under-delivering is a bad habit to fall into, so let’s hope this is a temporary circumstance for TCFF and their operations.

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Zillow now lists 172 condos or apartments for sale in Traverse City, or what they consider Traverse City. Realtor.com goes even further and puts the number at 217. Yet we’re almost constantly made to think there is virtually no housing to be had, or at least none that’s reasonably affordable. There is a disconnect here somewhere.

If those condos for sale are downtown, then most of the buying market is priced out of consideration. Local media recently reported that two previously planned mixed-use developments that were going to include some “workforce” housing will now be all condos with prices starting at $1.2 million in one building and $2 million in the other. We sure hope that pencils out for the developers.

For all the talk about the “missing middle” and housing for families, the obsession with downtown might be the wrong approach altogether. If there are families with children yearning to live in a downtown condo with no yard, then let them come forward. An urban lifestyle is not what typically attracts people to the region.