Can we build a few around the edges of Bridgeport? Sam Smith writes in the September 8 “Progressive Review” that “to bring an end to ethnic conflict one need only place a Wal-Mart between the combatants. The reason…is that [Wal-Mart] destroys whatever culture it is near. Thus centuries of cultural enmity can be wiped out as though it were just one more main street dress shop falling victim to Sam Walton’s megalomania.”
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News you won’t read on the business pages. Tireless Maxwell Street preservationist Steve Balkin points out in a September press release that the Viacom-CBS merger brings together two companies saved or founded by two Maxwell Street alumni, Barney Balaban (born in 1887 and raised in an apartment behind his parents’ grocery store in the Maxwell Street area) and William Paley (born in 1901 a mile west of Halsted and Maxwell; his father’s cigar shop and home had been within a block of the intersection).
From another city’s file–I’m not making this up. At the International Symposium on Wearable Computers later this month in San Francisco, sessions will include “Indoor Navigation Using a Diverse Set of Cheap Wearable Sensors,” “Situated Documentaries: Embedding Multimedia Presentations in the Real World,” and “Electric Suspenders: A Fabric Power Bus and Data Network for Wearable Digital Devices” (http://iswc.gatech.edu).
