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Peace and Tranquility
Over at www.leftinlowell.com there’s a gathering discussion about the condition of the quality of life after dark in downtown Lowell. A comment by a reader named Jane stands out. She reported that she changed her mind about moving into the downtown after reading/hearing about recent disturbances on the streets and complaints by residents.
In the interest of equal time, as a new contributor to Gerry Nutter’s blog I posted the following:
“a ‘Share the Streets” group for downtown?”
on January 23 which also addresses this issue.
The post is located at http://gerrynutterslowell.com/2012/01/23/share-the-streets-group/
Probably for the best that this person was scared away from moving downtown. From her comment, she is a Boston based blogger looking for a retirement community who reads the Left in Lowell blog and accepts as gospel their message that Lowell is a terrible place to live. If she had read the more productive blogs, she would have loved what Lowell has to offer, but clearly she is more drawn to the “Lowell After Dark” type of negative blogging that is prevalent on Left in Lowel. More Negative personalities are not needed in Lowell.
I am not so sure Doubting Thomas has this thing from the proper end. I don’t see Left in Lowell as being a negative blog and I don’t see it as painting Lowell as “a terrible place to live”.
I am sorry that Jane and her husband are not moving to Downtown Lowell, and not considering other options for living in Lowell. On the other hand, we cannot bury our heads in the sand. The blogs are the place for other voices to speak up and say that things are not as good as they could or should be. Calling or EMailing one or more of the members of the City Council is also good.
I do like the fact that Left in Lowell, and more importantly, Kad Barma have been on this issue. We need to take a stand for a better Lowell, each of us. It won’t be easy, but Lowellians are capable of doing the hard work. We need to call on our various commissions to do better. Thanks, Kad. Thanks, Lynne.
Regards — Cliff
I assume Paul did this post to extend the discussion already happening on Left in Lowell, not as a landing pad for some phantom commenter to do a drive-by on another website.
While no one should have to tolerate the fights and other crude behavior that take place (mostly) after the bars close, the essence of a lively nightlife is happy people emerging from pubs not using their inside voices. If you’re going to live upstairs, across the street, or around the corner from such places, you ought to expect that kind of late night buzz just as someone who buys a three bedroom colonial next to Route 3 shouldn’t be surprised by the noise coming from the highway.
Where the “acceptable level of noise” line gets drawn has to be the outcome of an ongoing discussion among the residents, business owners, police and other officials. Easier said than done, of course.
One thing that seems suspect to me is where all these broken beer bottles come from. I don’t think people are taking empty’s from the bars. Bouncers hate that. I don’t think people that drink and drive are throwing them out the windows. Too risky,even when wasted.
Maybe it’s from people who live in the Downtown. Or maybe it’s been exaggerated by people who don’t like noise late Saturday night.
But I do think more dance clubs downtown is bad for the city. They attract idiots.
Most of the beer bottles come from idiots who drive to a package store on their way downtown to buy beer cheaply, drink while driving and passengering, finish up their brews in their parking spots or random parking lots they find, and discard the bottles anywhere but in their cars. Also explains why bars downtown can’t make money on a steady enough basis to run themselves in a clean manner. These morons get lubed up on the cheap elsewhere and only head into the bars for a pick up.
A little generalization and simplification to be sure, but a lot of truth there.
Thanks for crediting me with a “drive-by”. Damn it feels good to be a gangsta! But I have been posting under this name for a while… not everyone has the luxury of not answering to an employer.
While the Left in Lowell hosts may not necessarily be the negative types (besides hating God, the Salvation Army, and Rodney Eliot) the posters on that website seem hell bent on telling everyone just how much Downtown Lowell sux and why no one should ever move there. They managed to project so much negativity that an anonymous “Jane” (no relation to Dick) decided not to retire there.
Bravo LIL posters !!… you have continued to depress the downtown real estate market by chasing another buyer away (and some dude named Bad Karma brags that it is a good thing to keep real estate prices in the toilet so he can keep getting cheap draft beer at Furey’s). Keep up the good work of badmouthing Downtown and you’ll depress prices and make the market more attractive to divorced men who swill cheap beer in dive bars. Perhaps that is the strategy – attract men who fail in relationships and have them populate downtown and make young women too uncomfortable to go in any bars lest they be leered at? More creepy old guys chugging draft beer is the answer!
I wonder if anyone recalls the block-busting scams of the 1960s and 1970s. Back then, unscrupulous types tried to imply that blacks were moving into your white neighborhood to coerce whites to sell out cheap. Maybe in 2011-2012 Lowell the scam is to convince Downtown owners that the neighborhood is unsafe and disorderly so that prices will be driven down and speculators can buy up condos on the cheap.
Just my drive by… but maybe we can get a report showing who owns what and how cheap they got it?
I don’t know about a report of who owns what, but you’re free to look it up yourself. It’s all public record freely available on the internet. Just go to http://www.lowelldeeds.com and click the yellow search box. The default search is by name but if you click the “search criteria” command on the upper menu bar, it allows you to search in other ways such as by property address. Of course, to search by name you have to know the person’s real name . . .