I teach middle school on the south side and I'm working on my masters in professional counseling.

Where do you all play basketball at? I know a few people on here play. I want to go somewhere that I don't have to worry about getting jumped for my shoes, and also where there are some unskilled players like myself.

I used to play a lot at Clark Park near my place in Tempe, but most of my basketball playing friends have moved. Sadly theres not a lot of good places to play in Central Phx. City Square Sports Club is good, but you have to be a member or a guest of a member. Both University and Verde Parks are pretty sketchy. Townsend park is OK, but its just a half court. Monterrey Park can feel sketchy, I was there once playing alone at night and didn't feel comfortable b/c of some of the other people there.

I really wish that surface lot just South of the YMCA/North of the Valley Metro building would go away and become some sort of small sports park. Theres probably room for at least one basketball court, a tennis court and a volleyball court (and maybe some smaller stuff like Bocce ball) That would be a great location and serve the ASU students and the rest of downtown well and perhaps become our Rucker Park.

EDIT: Also Jaycee Park in Tempe is excellent. From what I can tell they leave the lights on 24/7 and sometimes there's some good street ball going on there. The Y is good too, but same problem as City Square, gotta be a member.

I dont mind leaving downtown.

If you find some place near downtown let me know, I rarely have time in the evenings to make it all the way to Tempe. I have played at Encanto because it is so close, but I haven't done it in awhile. It seems there are A court games there and C court games, but nothing in between. I don't know if you would consider that a place where you wouldn't get jumped for your shoes though.

Encanto could be alright. I'm gonna go there tomorrow to check it out and see what kind of group is there. I just won't wear any of my Jordans.

I was screwing around and found this neat website that'll calculate the size of the planets in our solar system and the distances if you give it a diameter for the sun:

http://www.exploratorium.edu/ronh/solar_system/

I got to thinking a neat public art project might be to make a say 5 foot in diameter sun in Heritage Square near the Science Center somewhere, then throughout Central Phoenix you could have kiosks with the rest of the celestial bodies, showing their size and giving info about them.

If you had a 5 foot sun, the whole thing would have to be spread out over about 4 miles from the Sun to Pluto which would actually work out OK here in Central Phx, it would basically cover from the Science Center to Camelback/Central quite nicely.

I think that would be a neat/educational art project...so uh...someone get on that.

EDIT: Got bored, made a map showing how you could lay out such a thing. It would stretch from in front of the Science Center to in front of Central HS.

Any luck? The best games I ever ran was when I ran with a group of friends every week. Then we didn't have to worry about all the nonsense and we knew we would have a good time.

I went this afternoon. Had a good time. Only games going was a 10 man full court. Im not in shape right now and they were all black... My buddy and i played a few games of 21 and the courts were well maintained.

I'm a little disappointed that my newest kicks were terrible to play in, thats not the court's fault though.

So what you're saying is, they dressed the part, talked a lot of shit, but there were probably 3 talented players that had good jump shots?

lol. Actually, I didn't observe any great players, but they were fast and were running full court. I could have probably played 4-5 posessions.

So over in the discussions area theres a small thread on Urban Farming. Its very frustrating to me that Phoenix isn't a leader in this area. Once irrigated the Salt River Valley was one of the greatest fertile Valleys the world has ever known with 4 strong growing seasons, shouldn't we be all over this?

The City needs to first figure out how many vacant lots exist in the Valley. With leapfrogged lots, yet to be developed lots, etc. Id imagine Phoenix has more square acres of empty lot than any other city in the country. We also have dust, blight and urban heat island problems, urban gardening would help relieve all of those issues.

Obviously Id love for all the empty lots in Phoenix to be replaced with more urban uses, thus the zoning written to allow urban gardening should be temporary in nature. Using raised box beds for most vegetables seems to be a logical solution, and any citrus groves that are planted can have the trees later moved and used in another grove or ornamentally.

At the very freakin' least, the City can make this possible on the numerous lots that they own. Why not start with the City owned lots that will someday be the BioMed campus.

Hoover,
I read a couple of years back, that the owners of vacant lots get federal tax rebates if they plant crops on their fields. However, its a loophole that developers use. They don't have to cultivate the crops, just plant and grow them, receive tax breaks and plow it over.

There used to be a small dirt lot on Guadalupe Rd between Rural and McClintock that would plant corn.

It's no excuse for the lack of small scale gardening here, but a large part of the dropping farm acreage here is on purpose. Agriculture uses vastly more water per acre than any other use, and a large part of why the valley is in such good shape with water is because as we've been adding housing subdivisions we've been dropping farm acreage. I don't have a link to the presentation, but a few years ago I sat in on a presentation on water planning and at least at the time the plan was to completely phase out farming around the valley by 2050 or 2075 (where the sate can control it, obviously the reservations will keep farming if they want to). Phoenix may have 4 good growing seasons, but so does Saudi Arabia... farming isn't going to be big in either because it is extremely water intensive. Of course we could mitigate some of that by finding some less water intensive crops to be growing. I have no idea who decided it was a good idea to grow so much cotton here.

Also, it may not look like a farm because they're not in a nice, neat little grove, but I'd say Phoenix does plenty of urban citrus farming. Everyone has a fruit tree here, there are orange trees all over the ASU campus, and many of the roads around here are lined with orange or lemon trees.

^I can understand concerns about water, but Im not talking about filling the entire Valley floor with farms like it once was. Im talking about just filling in the dirt lots in Central Phoenix to start with, I can't imagine that being a water issue. It would help relieve the Downtown Urban Heat island a bit and would make the walk between the Arts area and the downtown core seem much more pleasant and safer, which would help businesses.

Anyone wanna get a beginner/sucks/out of shape basketball game going? Its $10 for the day to play indoors at north phx baptist or we cpuld do maryvale rec center they have indoor as well as ymca.

I qualify :D move it closer to the east valley or do it on on a weekend and I'm interested.

I wouldn't have to move it to a weekend. I don't care what day it is...

I'd be down to play. I suck really bad though. Haven't played since I left the LDS church.

How would a Saturday morning work for everyone? If we could get PHX31 we could do at least 2 on 2.

I generally work Saturday afternoons so I would want to be done by 10-11.

Obvoiusly my preference is the church, but YMCA would work as well.

I can't do this saturday (softball and then a Sounders match) but a future saturday morning would be okay. Tuesday evenings are best for me though.

Tuesday evenings are best for me as well. I'm almost always off tuesday/wednesday. That rules out Mwadsworth though. :(

Tuesday evenings are no good for me. Wednesday evening would actually be perfect for me now that I think about it though.

Glenn, Wednesday evening? either one is fine with me. dont make me go two nights in a row.

A couple of my friends and I are playing every Tuesday evening. Usually at Encanto. If there is a better option that is indoors and available/lightly used, that would be even better. The YMCA is usually packed with people, unless you just want to join in on their pick up games.

NPBC is deserted every time I go, and there are 6 hoops soooooooo ya. $10 for the day you should go there this week I'll join ya. I loathe playing outside.

$10 per day every day we play there?

Or $30 for a month... After a month your membership just turns off and you pay again if you want to keep going or you just stop. With it being over 70 in the evening, I'm just not interested in it. Climate control, no dirt, and yeah I just like playing inside.

I'll talk it over with them, but I doubt we're going to pay. I have a YMCA membership and a "membership" to the City's facilities where I play bball at both. I don't like playing that much to also pay at another place.

I used to play with a group of guys at a middle school on like 16th Street and Indian School. One of them knew the P.E. teacher/bball coach, and we'd play on their court after the kids had practice. That was the best: free, nice court, no one but us. I'll see if I can get that going again if anything.

Maryvale has indoor courts and our city "memberships" would work there.

So does the city rec center at 14th St and Indian School. We played there a couple weeks ago, but now they have zero open gym due to kid team practices.

well... if you guys aren't very good and need another player, I'm down tuesday evening. Then if Glenn is free he can join too.

My only stipulation is it has to be indoors.

Edit, just remembered the basketball game is 7:30PM

Holy shit, so the lord may have just smiled upon me. Not only are the Suns playing in Portland where I have friends I can stay for free with, but this is going on:

http://bridgetowncomedyfestival.com

I was previously unaware of it, but damn does it look awesome. Im currently trying to find my way on to at least one stage there for a few minutes, so wish me luck.

Im now insanely jealous of PDX and wish we had something like that here. By next year when "Stand Up Live!" is open at CityScape I think Downtown Phx could easily host something like this. Between "Stand Up Live!", Majerles, Cooperstown, Coach & Willies, the Orpheum, the Dodge, the Herberger (though do they have food/booze there?), the Turf, and some of the First Fridays area venues on Grand and/or Roosevelt it could be a pretty rockin' event.

Perhaps Ill come back from PDX with the inspiration and know how to get such a ball rolling.

Why can't we cover our freeways and surface streets with shade structures and solar panels to lessen the urban heat island effect?

--don

/\ $$$$

Beacuse you dont make enough money.

Arizona is making headlines, in a bad way, lately. I won't go off on a tangent on the immigration bill (because I could). Will be interesting to see how the the passage of this bill will affect an already troubled economy. Wonder if there will be boycotts, if MLB will threaten to pull the 2011 All-Star Game, etc. There could be a thread on this topic alone, so I'm trying to keep it in the frame of Phoenix Development...this doesn't seem to be a positive step for attracting industry, and growing your economy, IMHO.

There does seem to be a lot of backlash...at the same time...one might argue that we are on the cusp of developing a new Racist Tourist segment. Klan rallies , Republican National Conventions, etc.

we are going t olose a lot of tourism money from this. I can guarantee that much.

c'mon man, take this crap elsewhere. I'm a registered democrat and don't agree with republican views either, but do you really want to go down the road that comment is going to lead to?

^Sorry John. I was unaware of the massive bi-partisan support for this bill. I must have imagined John McCain speaking to Congress today lauding how this bill was NECESSARY. Seeing as he is a senior Senator in the GOP and their most recent presidential candidate, I guess I missed the part where Republicans are going to be turned off by our state. One might argue that Arizona is a PRIME EMBODIMENT of Tea Party ideals. We require no permit or registration to carry a gun or carry concealed, there is no waiting period on guns manufactured in Arizona, and we now use local police powers to enforce immigration. If there was ever an anti-federal government (post Civil War), it would be Arizona. If you don't think that will attract the attention of Beck, Hannity, Limbaugh, and the rest of their followers then you must know something I don't. Arizona has become almost the perfect conservative state.

http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=180727

There is.

Yep, the state that exists in its current scale due entirely to the Federal government sure hates it, come on, don't be silly. If you're anti gun/whatever issue, whatever fine, but this isn't the place to discuss that, the SkyBar is.

Thanks for the link mwadswor...although it will probably make my blood boil even more if I start reading it :-)

No doubt. It gets better if you skip to the end, but there's a whole section in about the first third that might make you stroke if you have a pre-existing medical condition. You have been warned :notacrook:

So what place gets your vote for favorite coffeehouse in central Phoenix?

I'm partial to Grinders, the place on 10th Street and Glendale (name escapes me at the moment), Lux and Coffeehouse on 7th Ave north of ISR. But, my fav is probably Lux. The way they serve it up cafe mochas...yummy.

In other news, I just sold my signature photo of downtown Phoenix's skyline at sunset for $3,000 to Skyy Vodka. Let's just say the actual cost of the transaction was $500, plus $2,500 for a "stupid fee." :D

:cheers:

--don

'Grats, but, does that mean you can't use it anymore?

I don't know that i've seen that picture.

X2. Don, post it up...unless you can't anymore :haha:

From CNN's Cafferty file segment on The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer:

http://caffertyfile.blogs.cnn.com/20...n-laws/?hpt=T2