New and Old #180
Friday roundup and commentary
Pondering the city’s development pipeline, The Frederick News-Post, Matt Edens, May 25, 2024
For most of its history, Frederick was no exception. Spend even a little time studying old photographs or Sanborn Fire Insurance maps and it can be quite surprising how much of downtown was torn down, rebuilt, or remodeled before it became “historic.”
Which isn’t to say things still don’t change downtown. It’s just that for the last couple decades, that’s largely meant renovation of existing buildings.
But while that’s led to a lovely, vibrant downtown, existing buildings are a finite resource and downtown’s success has only increased demand. As a result, even fixer-uppers start at a quarter-million dollars these days – if you can find one — and it’s not unheard of to see even one-bedroom apartments advertised for $2,000 a month or more.
This piece begins with a link to a neat dashboard the city of Frederick has where you can track development projects. I wish every city had that. Information is good, and everything you can do to make regular people feel included—without giving them veto power—is good. Then Edens writes about how development no longer takes place organically within developed areas (he quotes me, as well as Aaron Lubeck, a great urbanist writer in North Carolina.) It’s a very good statement of urbanist priorities in plain, relatable language.
Mutton’s Big Comeback, Taste, Arabella Paulovich, August 12, 2024
You see articles like this sometimes. I’ve seen it about goat. I’ve seen it about dairy cow meat. There’s an element of marketing or trying to create buzz with this “this thing people don’t like is actually really great” frame, but there’s also probably something to them.
Imported lamb and mutton has come to fill culinary gaps caused by this slump in domestic sheep [following World War II and the growth of synthetic fibers over wool]. According to the USDA, over half of all lamb and mutton bought and sold across the country today has been imported—mostly from Australia and New Zealand. The two oceanic countries produce around 610,000 tonnes of sheep per year, dominating the market not just in the United States but globally. Their higher exchange rates provide them an advantage in selling to supermarkets and distributors at lower prices—sometimes at half the cost of domestic counterparts. This savings in cost, however, is being paid elsewhere. “It’s not just that you lose a locally grown product, but you lose shepherds, ranchers, and farmers,” says Boeken of the dwindling domestic sheep market. “Raising sheep doesn’t just produce sheep, it also produces shepherds.”
Shepherds are leading the charge to return to eating US-grown sheep, with support from like-minded chefs. Follow the movement and you will come across some of the brightest and ecologically sound methods in shepherding and cookery.
This is a point I often think about, especially in regard to the knowledge we lost about city-building when we squeezed out small builders and organic, small-scale change. Eventually, it becomes chicken and egg and you lose the things that allowed you to do the thing. It only becomes clear what went into it when it’s gone.
But is mutton any good?
Older meat like mutton, which is made from sheep that are a minimum of two years and a maximum of eight years old, sometimes has a stereotype of being too tough or gamy. This is quickly disproved by the legacy of slow-cooking mutton methods across the globe.
Wherever sheep have been raised for wool, you’ll find time-honored recipes for mutton….
When the legendary NYC steakhouse Keens first opened its doors in 1885, mutton was ubiquitous across the country—and appeared on the restaurant’s very first menu. Executive chef William Rodgers is carrying on the legacy of the kitchen’s 26-ounce mutton chop today. He’s seen diners make a pilgrimage to try the iconic dish, which is made from the saddle cut of whole pasture-raised sheep, purchased from Colorado and broken down in house. “I don’t care what anyone else says about [sheep] meat from Australia and New Zealand—for quality and taste, the difference between that and this is night and day,” says Rodgers.
There’s a fine line between “We know what’s best for you” and “Try it, you might like it.” There’s also the question of quality and preparation—of knowing what to do with a thing. Maybe it’s a good thing not to shortcut that effort.
Well, this is nice to see. Almost every time there’s a zoning reform somewhere, somebody sues and gets it tied up in litigation. These suits don’t always win, but they can make it risky for anybody to start projects, in case the new zoning is reversed in the middle. Or, as here, they can freeze it and stop it from taking effect. But the Montana Supreme Court unanimously reversed that injunction, finding that it was wrongly granted.
The Supreme Court opinion, written by Justice Beth Baker, notes that though the Montana Constitution grants a fundamental right to acquire, possess and protect property, the court has also held that those rights are subject to the state’s police power to protect public health and welfare.
Baker wrote that while plaintiffs have won other court cases challenging zoning approvals by showing material harms could occur, MAID [Montanans Against Irresponsible Densification] “offered only generalized fears and supposition” about the effects of the two bills.
I wrote about this earlier in the week, and how absurd it is that one could cite “more people” as a harm, which is how a case in Alexandria, Virginia went forward. But it seems like maybe MAID did cite something like that and it didn’t cut it.
This is both a bit of a legal piece and a local piece. Give it a read if it’s your thing.
Amusing Ourselves to Deadpool, Eight By Seven, Timothy Burke, July 30, 2024
This is a really long piece that gets into some pop-culture minutia, but it’s a fun read, and this is one of the main points:
The multiverse became the answer to both problems: guarding intellectual property and telling stories where things actually happened. If you created intellectual property and then stopped using it for a while, never fear! It’s still there, in a parallel universe. Every once in a while you do a story in that universe, or let your regular characters visit it via time-travel or a portal. The lawyers are happy: the claim remains staked, even on characters nobody wants to use right now. And you can do anything to characters in parallel realities, time-travel alternatives. The Blob can kill and eat the Wasp. All the X-Men can die at the hands of the Sentinels. Spider-Man can have a daughter who becomes Spider-Girl. You don’t have to tell a linear story that unspools and eventually all your characters retire, die or break under the burdens you’ve placed on them. You can always undo everything, always reset everything.
In other words, much of what presents itself as storytelling/creativity is not only for profit (of course it is in the case of film and TV) but fundamentally economic in nature.
Related Reading:
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Here in the orchard & vineyard country, many people wanted a piece of the view. There were developers who accommodated. They built in every swale and on every hillside and ridge top. The view was lost but the civilizing continued. Fruit trees and hop fields went, but now there were car washes and pizza shacks and nail salons and duplication of every other imaginable brand and service. The ground will never return to that state of "first love," first attraction.
Thanks for the plug. There's some interesting stuff happening in Frederick - much to some folks horror...