New and Old #164
Friday roundup and commentary
When I was at the Strong Towns/CNU conference last week, at one point a couple of people and I were talking about fragmented municipal governance and metro areas, and one of them brought up the term “boroughitis.” I’d never heard the term itself, but it hails from New Jersey, as I do, and I’m not surprised. New Jersey is famous for its strong “home rule” culture and its hundreds of municipalities, which inefficiently duplicate many functions of government. Even Chris Christie wanted to consolidate some of the state’s redundant localities!
While New Jersey and the Northeast/New England have this general tendency, “boroughitis” was coined in reference to Bergen County, which alone is home to 70 distinct municipalities. The article is mostly about history—this goes back to the 19th century—but a bit at the end on the current era (there have been a few municipal mergers in recent years, for example). Interesting read, on a bit of trivia that actually matters.
How Coffee Became a Joke, The Honest Broker, Ted Gioia, May 5, 2024
When did they get so clueless in Seattle? I’ve heard many explanations.
Some complain that coffee got too expensive—and that’s true. Others will point to the declining quality of the Starbucks experience—and I can’t disagree. I’ve seen things go down in front of the barista straight out of the Battle of Stalingrad.
But the biggest problem is one Starbucks created.
They turned coffee into something ridiculous.
This was fun to read having just come from Seattle and seen the ridiculous lines for the fake “first Starbucks”—mostly for the tourist activity and not the coffee, since it’s the same menu. But then there’s the “Starbucks Reserve” shop with a bunch of complicated sweet drinks that go for about $13. Different doesn’t mean better.
We’ve actually just sort of gotten into coffee—buying whole beans, grinding them each time we make it (with a pretty nice Oxo grinder that was a free gift from my wife’s company). And I’ll tell you, semi-properly made decent whole-bean coffee, black or with a splash of real cream, is as good as or better than almost any standard coffee-shop coffee. Even the good ones. Even the roasteries.
A little more Starbucks fun:
The most recent idiocy is the Oleato, a drink that mixes coffee and olive oil. Hey, I love both of those things separately, but putting them together is like mixing oil and….well, like mixing oil and coffee.
It gets worse. They want you to drink this dubious hybrid with enhancements. Starbucks recommends that you enjoy your Starbucks® Blonde® virgin olive oil coffee with Golden Foam®, infused with “notes of warm toffeenut and creamy oatmilk.”
Fun fact: my parents used to buy the brand of olive oil that Starbucks uses for this drink, and not long after the partnership was announced the quality of the olive oil on the store shelves dropped. What a waste. That good stuff belongs in sautéed broccoli rabe! Anyway.
This is a fun read on a light but nonetheless serious topic.
Small Town America, A Nomad on the Loose, August 29, 2017
This is a pretty short blog post, but I’m always interested in commentary about/impressions of small towns from people who aren’t necessarily urbanists or land-use people in any deep sense. I think this qualifies.
Interestingly, he combines “rural” and “small town,” which I actually think is a correct understanding of what small towns often are—tiny examples of urbanity in rural areas.
Despite growing up only in large cities, I’ve always been fascinated with small towns. Small town America, in particular, is a very interesting concept to me. Although the majority of our country’s population lives in urban areas, the expansive rural areas dominate in land ownership.
They are:
quaint little areas with families that have lived there for generations
places with diners that are never going to be Michelin-star restaurants, but feature something special and are the social apex of the community
communities that support small businesses such as family-owned pharmacies
Also this:
Nowadays living in Nebraska….well, let’s just say Nebraska really is a state with lots and lots of small towns (the population 300 type). Having been to many of them either on my own time or for a story, I’ve really learned just how much pride residents of small towns have in their communities. It’s not a New York or Hollywood dream for everyone. Some just want a place where they know all their neighbors.
Check out the post.
The fall of the frontons: What happened to jai alai?, Palm Beach Post, Hal Habib, May 17, 2022
In trivia that doesn’t matter all that much, I found this article because I had no idea what “jai alai” was or meant—I knew it only from the pretty good IPA you may have seen. Turns out it’s a sport whose player base has steeply declined over the years:
Few people care about jai alai anymore. Many under 30 haven’t even heard of it.
Those are easy conclusions to draw by anyone who wants to sweep jai alai into a pile with horse racing and boxing as sports that belong in a museum or a memory.
But look closer at that heap and you’ll see not just a few dozen men with strange wicker baskets attached to their hands. You’ll see slivers of Miami itself, and Fort Lauderdale, and West Palm Beach.
What kind of sport?
There was something romantic about this centuries-old Spanish sport that resembles a distant cousin of racquetball played on a three-walled court some 175 feet long and 50 feet wide. Something quaint about betting on these spider men who scaled the protective screen and the walls in relentless pursuit of a pelota soaring fast enough to shatter bulletproof glass.
I guess that’ll mean something to someone.
Another fun read, and the sort of thing I naturally find interesting: things once common that have become rare.
Related Reading:
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Boroughitis is interesting because it's very inefficient to have so many governments/school districts/water utilities for relatively few people. The Northeast and upper Midwest have lots of this and the higher taxes that go with it.
I suspect the lack of townships, boroughs, villages has helped Northern Virginia and Maryland grow. I imagine it's also, in part, why the Sunbelt has thrived. Having the county be the provider of most services allows for economy of scale and probably lower taxes historically.
However, the upside of boroughitis is that those places are actual places - a random North Jersey town is more charming than a random part of unicorporated Northern Virginia or North Carolina. There are other factors of course, but I'd say the difference between Fair Lawn and Ho-Ho-Kus is probably more noticable than Burke and Centreville.