Thursday, November 11, 2010

Flint Photos: Joel Rash's Room With a View

Joel Rash, a longtime advocate for downtown Flint, has an office with an impressive view of Saginaw Street and a great collection of Flint memorabilia. (What's more valuable: A Rick Leach highball glass or an AutoWorld tumbler?)




20 comments:

  1. wait a minute... there's a Flint Film Festival?

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  2. Not sure the film commission is still up and running these days.

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  3. I've got nothing but respect for Joel. He was all about Flint before it was cool to be. I don't think we've ever had a conversation, but I always get a friendly nod anytime we see each other. That's a bitchin' view of downtown.

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  4. I wish Joel would reengage the local music scene and create a live music venue once again. He did it better than anyone else. With the restoration of the Capitol Theatre seemingly mothballed, the youth of flint need him to step up... or yet another generation will go without a live music venue in Flint.

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  5. Two related, yet unrelated questions:

    Since when has it been cool to be all about Flint?

    When as it not been cool to be all about Flint?

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  6. Its like the ying and yang, y'know, Two opposite things that fit perfectly together that still got a little bit of each other in them.

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  7. Facebook Friend - I think that's the yin/yang tag line for this blog. Perhaps in time, we will all find out the answer to those questions. In the meantime I think they are both true consistently and constantly... take your pick. :)

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  8. What came first the chicken or the egg? Just when you pick one then you think about it and then pick the other. Kind of like if the glass is half empty or half full. I guess it depends if it is the Rick Leach or the Autoworld glass. Haha. I use to have both of those glasses but the Autoworld one broke and I had a set of four Rick Leachs but they are long gone. I also had some Towne Club bottles, but I didn't appreciate them and ended up throwing them out. Hey, "consistently" and "constantly" is kind of ying yang too, right? I got to go walk the dog now. See ya.

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  9. That was Facebook Friend, ladies and gentlemen. Let's give him/her a big hand!

    That was the best string of comments we've had in a long time. Come back soon.

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  10. I'm back from walking the dog. Earlier I asked two questions. They were not rhetorical. There is an answer to both and the answer is the same. I will share the answer with you if you are interested. To review, these are my questions-

    Since when has it been cool to be all about Flint?

    When as it not been cool to be all about Flint?

    The last one has a typo in it, but you probably can figure that out. Anyway, the answer is kind of philosophical or "meta" as people say nowadays.

    Do you want to know what the answer to both questions is?

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  11. The Guts And Glue Of The Maize And Blue has to thank the late Bob Ufer. Bob was Rick's biggest fan!

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  12. Facebook Friend, of course we want the answers! Let's hear it.

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  13. The answer is: Burton.

    If you are confused, just hear me out. If you look at a map Flint and Burton are right next to each other for many miles. I know this is a family website, but you could even say they are in the 69 position together. The number 69 is very close to ying and yang, however they are not the opposites they would seem. Both 6 and 9 can be divided by 3 for example. Also Flint has a bit of Burton in it, such as Burton St. and Burton has Flint in it such as Greater Flint Janitorial Services located on Court St. The perfect answer to such a question may seem unexpected or even confusing, but that is the nature of Flint and Burton. Both places are full of mystery and wonder.
    Did you know that according to online there is a Burton in Shiawassee County? I wonder what that place is like.

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  14. ...and then the sidewalk ended. I got nothing.

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  15. As a dislocated former resident and advocate for renewal in the city of Flint, I am glad to see there are people like Joel that have stayed and are making a difference, however it may be, in implementing strategies for economic and social improvements in the downtown area. As anyone whom has lived within a 100 mile radius knows, there is an identity shift taking place, from industrial center to college town in efforts to restore population and build density. From a long term planning perspective however, there needs to be more. That is, something that will attract people and KEEP people living there; e.g. When students graduate, where are they going to look for employment? Walmart? Not likely. Flint hasn't much to offer for those outside of the field of health care or retail. We need a NEW master plan in Flint; zoning, commerical development, and better mass transit to keep consistent traffic flowing in and out of the city to foster a better social and economic environment, that is, over time.

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  16. Relative to Anonymous's comment relative to better mass transit, I've always thought that a high speed rail line between the University of Michigan-Flint and the Ann Arbor campus might be a practical way to connect the two, allowing the university at large to open the door for future expansion, utilizing comparatively cheaper land around their established Flint campus, while preserving the historic scale of their Ann Arbor counterpart, (a 21st century solution comparable to the buses that have run between the north campus and the main campus for decades). The spinoff benefits of bringing in these academic tourists could be substantial. Flint could do much worse than fostering such a symbiotic relationship, (and maybe borrowing panache by association), by literally connecting itself with Ann Arbor.

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  17. By the time that happens, GaryG, there will be Star Trek Transporters.

    Ann Arbor has looked down its nose and eschewed Flint for decades. Part of this no doubt had to do with Flint's past success outside the walls of academic incarceration. I had an English teacher who was a graduate of Ann Arbor, who referred to the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor as the "Academic Mafia".

    That said, I think the more autonomous the Flint campus is, the better. They have a much better relationship with Kettering. I think I'd grow that symbiosis instead.

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  18. A transit connection to Ann Arbor would reinforce the parent/child relationship, and make it even easier for Ann Arbor to direct what happens at UM-F. Who would that benefit?

    It's said that historically, the top dogs in Ann Arbor have blocked proposals to evolve UM-F's offerings and faculty structure to include hard-science/engineering PhDs because such offerings would compete with Ann Arbor.

    One of the musings over the years has been whether Flint would be better off if UM-F became University of Flint, and began its own MBA and engineering PhD programs.

    It's likely of course that many undergrads who value UM-F's lower costs, easier admission and apparently equal diploma would be dismayed, and undergrad marketability would suffer. On the other hand, there's no doubt that little or no regional economic-development energy results from an undergrad-oriented university, especially one without significant science and engineering offerings. Undergrads almost never start the kinds of businesses that create substantial numbers of good paying jobs.

    Even a cursory survey of the past fifty years' US economic hotspots reveals an obvious geographic correlation to high quality engineering/hard-science PhD programs. PhD faculty and students *do* start important businesses.

    Maybe Flint needs that kind of economic development more than it needs lots of happy undergrads.

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Thanks for commenting. I moderate comments, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. You might enjoy my book about Flint called "Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City," a Michigan Notable Book for 2014 and a finalist for the 33rd Annual Northern California Book Award for Creative NonFiction. Filmmaker Michael Moore described Teardown as "a brilliant chronicle of the Mad Maxization of a once-great American city." More information about Teardown is available at www.teardownbook.com.