Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Meanwhile in Lodi...

Meanwhile in... is an idea we just thought up where we take the focus off of Stockton and take a look at the stories coming out of other cities in San Joaquin county. Like the quick links only focused on one city. Today's city? Lodi.

It seems like we've been hearing about downtown revitalization since the dawn of time. Before Stockton got the itch to reclaim the youthful memories of the 60s when one could roam the streets of downtown, laugh, drink and smoke a joint while crime stayed the court ordered 30 miles away in Modesto; another city decided they needed to put more money in their dilapidated downtown district.

It's hard to believe it's been so long since Lodi started it's downtown revitalization. First came a brand spanking new movie theater, then a parking garage. Then came businesses who successfully flourished in the vacant space made available around the theater and parking garage. Or not.

While the businesses surrounding the movie theater have been an impressive revolving door of failed franchise attempts (we blinked and missed Slices' tenure in the current Starbucks spot), the parking garage's available space has been surprisingly consistant. Unfortunatly that's consistantly empty save for a "World of Wonders: Coming Soon" sign. Looks like "soon" actually means "about 8 years".

The lesson? While downtown Lodi has improved drastically, it's still just barely getting it's shit together and following through with it's downtown plans. Stockton's should take a little bit longer, like forever.

Oh hey, that Grape Festival thing happened. The Grape festival is one of those events you look forward to because, as we've stated before, there's absolutly nothing to do in this area. Which we assume is why so many people buy into the whole wine thing. It's like heavy drinking for classy people. But for those of us who didn't watch Sideways, it gets kinda boring pretty fast. We were supposed to go see Foghat but Bris got distracted by Ohio State's sucking and Duke opted to go to Deja Vu's. Presumably to also be distracted by some sort of sucking.

Speaking of sucking, you may have forgotten that Delta College sucks at spending money. Lodi's pissed that Delta's pretty much completly scratched the proposed Lodi satellite campus. They're calling it a "huge miscarriage of justice" which is probably overselling it just a little bit.

Everybody's known this bond measure has been on shaky legs for a while, so it's kind of a stretch to hear Lodi squawk shit like "it would be a very long time before another bond measure would be passed in Lodi if we were passed over." Guess what? The rest of SJ County reached that point at least a year ago. Catch up with the times and quit acting like the Canada to Stockton's America. Delta has spent all but $66 million of the $250 million they were given. Mountain House is going to cost $90 million just to complete. Yet you still held out hope for a Lodi campus? Come on, nobody's that fucking gulliable.

The Mountain House campus is/was their baby and they don't even have enough money to finish that. We get it, you feel fucked over. Welcome to the club. But crying about future approval of bond dollars isn't going to make much of a difference when us real cities have already decided that Delta's not getting nay bond money unto 2025. And President Rodriguez's "We're still looking at all of our options" is just a nice way of saying "Fuck you Lodi, we only picked you for the abundance of farm land that Spanos has yet to pave over."

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