Kelcey's Law at work in Miami (City of)
Was @stateofthecity on Twitter. Veteran of a B-Grade, Film Noir genre of politics known as "local government." Current gig: second tour of duty in the Winnipeg Mayor's Office. Hometowns: Victoria, Winnipeg, Toronto. Working on 'Debt City' (see debt.city)
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Kelcey's Law at work in Miami (City of)
Thinking about how I'll explain days like today to my son, if I live long enough to do it when he is old enough to look at me with our raised eyebrow thing and shake his head in wonder.
Chicago, IL. Dan has been tracking the helicopter traffic from his abode in DC, so he knows of what he speaks (as always)
Los Angeles, and short-term rental regulation
The surreal part is the suggestion that Pritzker, making observations that should seem obvious to anyone paying attention, is somehow the one doing the escalating.
Transit - and air raid shelter - in Kyiv. H/t @paulkuligto.bsky.social. For those of us working in a world of buses and parks, development permits and city budgets, the sight of the Metro running smoothly in the background (usually unseen in photos of Kyiv taking shelter) seems especially poignant.
Key word: "retaliatory"
But I always stop for Juba. Now *that's* a classic political portrait.
I don't really notice Sam, now that you mention it, because the *blazing* bright blue of Brian Bowman's portrait background always catches my eye first, and then hey WTH were you really doing, Glen? and then suddenly it's Susan looking sternly beside Bill Norrie's sideburns.
So you're sayin' you had it comin'
It's a verse, but the verses are all the same. The music is, in retrospect, somewhat similar to the tune for "Sing a Nice Song," which I made up on the first night after my son was born (a nurse snapped at me to start singing something when he was bawling, and that's what came to mind)
"Tired old man, Tired old man. Tired old man, Tired old man." Lyrics of the song "Tired Old Man," composed by Brian Kelcey in 2021.
"In defiance-?" Hell, they can parade in Beijing all they want; I actually can't think of a thing that's better for the West than if their army is busy doing parades in circles around their own capital. Go right ahead!
As a Canadian who has long been a friend and ally of the United States: one of the things I admire about Governor Pritzker's voice in recent months is that he, more than anyone else, has made it clear that it is President Trump who is proving to be an anti-American leader on so many national issues.
Philadelphia is now a petri dish for what happens if you kick big city transit service in the teeth. www.inquirer.com/education/ph...
🤔
So you're saying I look suspicious
In our case, we are severely limited on what we can do with speed cameras by provincial legislation, which is so micromanaged that it actually locks us into a specific vendor, dating back decades. The issue is raised often is all I can say for now. :)
I don't like the way Charles Gray is lookin' at me today. Seems more suspicious than usual.
New York City mayoral race
I've been at work for 17 mins in a crisp navy suit and I stop to remember a student I overheard in the hall on my first day guest-teaching at the U of W. She saw my suit jacket, then said to a friend, "Profs start the year dressing like that, but you should expect it to deteriorate pretty quickly."
Wu has her ballot question. Does Kraft? Boston mayoral race...
Alternative lede: Chicago law-abiders are getting slammed by too many speeding cars; new speed cameras prove that traffic laws are being observed in Chicago about as well as the Constitution is being observed in Washington.
Russian air attacks on Kyiv are usually at night, presumably to deny a free people their sleep even if Putin can only murder a few of them on any given night. Here, President Trump's friend is literally timing attacks to disrupt the school year for those children he hasn't been able to kill yet.
NIMBYism, in Toronto. I know this stretch of Ossington, near Dupont, well and this is exactly the sort of housing they should be approving there.
The "easy" way, sort of, was a couple of years ago when he could have blamed the one-time money damage on Lightfoot instead of carrying it around with him while the burden got heavier and heavier.
Newcastle, UK.
Housing policy, in San Francisco, CA www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/l...
New Orleans fiscal www.byteseu.com/1340588/
City A/I use, in Cleveland, OH www.cleveland.com/news/2025/08...
Chicago fiscal chicago.suntimes.com/city-hall/20...
Me in Honey. And I actually kind of dislike Losing My Religion so that wasn't hard.
You're confused... you and about a half-million other people, give or take, because no one else has an answer to that blindingly obvious question, either.
They tried that already
Total chaos, in Philadelphia transit
The Troubled Canadian (Self-Portrait, 2025)
President Trump will be better in two weeks.
National Guard will be processing development permits
You've made me wonder what happened to that other guy who tried to ride the blame-the-Chinese-names wave to fame. The young 'progressive' who insisted speculation was *the* problem... unless it was done by (implicitly white) Canadians. What was his name again?
Yup.
Or to put it another way: over time, what is going to build momentum? A few court cases that they lose and (temporarily?) respect, or the many laws, constitutional requirements and court orders that they have already bulldozed past without the slightest systems resistance or political consequence?
With all due respect, the straw man is really taking a beating here. I haven't seen anyone say he has "fully" consolidated power. I've seen a lot of people take what also happens to be my view: *in the absence of additional resistance* he is well on track to *effectively* do so at some future point.
Defend transit from attack! ;)
BlueSky already IS that bot
I've been there twice. Perth barely even qualifies as being "near Ottawa" for God's sake.
The lack of all caps makes this message suspect. Reads more like JD.
Sure, but that's a problem to manage, not an excuse to choke off all new supply and turn Metro Vancouver into a luxurious prison for the status quo.
Transit fares, in Ottawa, ON. H/t @seanyyz.bsky.social
That too!
There's a triangle here rather than a continuum, and "how the hell do we escape the fiscal trap by actually growing the damn economy more broadly?" is the forgotten peak of it.
I love that you're one of maybe 20 people I know in the country who'd appreciate the irony of you making this point, right after multiple posts noting the scale of cuts the govt needs to hit that target (given tax commitments so far). "Big cuts... But also big deficit target." Says something, no?
The Third World War has already been underway for some time, but only one side knows it's fighting it, Exhibit #800
They stopped giving out the little finger bowls? OMG
Well, now I get to say that snow in October, November, January and March and even April is, too. (I can handle it in December, morally speaking).
LOL
(I'm more used to the Island, of course, where the concept of "today's weather" is an ever-changing blur, and Toronto, where fall starts late and drags on beautifully as long as it can, until the world's cruelties catch up with it and choke it to death in an act of November or December murder)
One thing that cracks me up about this province is the degree to which the calendar is an accurate weather gauge. May 1st hits and suddenly it's like a lightswitch got flipped into a full spring. Sept. 1 hits and like clockwork, suddenly the breeze turns to gust and leaves start turning. Etc.
Probably for the best
So, now it's September, 2025. I watched some ducks float on the lake this morning, but I suspect it's gonna go downhill from there. Thanks for trying, ducks. 🦆
I'm more interested in the 51% gap with independents
Basel & Geneva, and rent control
More like this! Thx.
Ottawa, ON.
Huh? 🥺 H/t an equally baffled @gregshill.com
Tom Thomson came paddling past / I'm pretty sure it was him
Current mood youtu.be/LZyhrQpZ9-M?...
You're moving too fast!
Intercity transport, Windsor <--x--> Detroit H/t @jb
Springfield, IL
"Yes, absolutely I can focus on one public policy problem or project at a time."
Housing, in Seattle, WA
Los Angeles transit ridership, h/t @stephenjacobsmith.com
Philadelphia's transit ordeal
And if it was not "explicit," there is already a clear answer as to whether it might be implicit:
Ottawa, ON. H/t @lukelebrun.ca
(no filter, FTR)
OpSec
Another derivative Tom Thomson post
"Richard said - Withdrawal in disgust / Is not the same as apathy."
Me in Honey What's the Frequency, Kenneth Orange Crush A completely different list
Today, in unusual local events
The Warning (2025)
In the 1980s Cold War miniseries "Amerika," Russian troops massacre Congress with machineguns. In the Tom Clancy novel "Debt of Honor," Congress is crushed by a jetliner in joint session. Did anyone write a script/novel where Congress is destroyed simply by the President pretending they don't exist?
In John Tory's mayoralty, the City started to refer to new programs as ----TO. As in CreateTO, CafeTO, ModernTO, etc
Ok
As opposed to everything else TO
Ok so this is really travel writing, but it's a smidgeon more than that and plus it made me hungry, so f-it. San Francisco, Madrid, et and major restaurant streets.
He doesn't need $3m. He needs about $350k and a shit-tonne of somosas-in-kind until on or about Sept 7, 2026. And *then* he needs to have a million-plus incoming over the following two weeks to scale up.
That's the idea!
Good news: it's not moving away. They will just be shifting the configuration of the depot to use the space a little more efficiently.
That's one reason (among several) why we proposed it! On the bright side: I assume the leafleteer is ashamed, given that they don't even have a contact point on the paper.
Chicago, IL
No. This is wrong.
Part of what makes mayoral races a special breed is that the back end often doesn't look remotely like the front end. (See NY's last two races as just one example). They're marathons, not sprints. Mendo might plausibly win a sprint, but this isn't that. Which explains my answer, for now. ;)
There's a future business for me: "straight talk polling." "Bob wants to run for President. Tell us how you really feel. Is this: - a great idea - a really bad idea - even answering this question is a waste of my fucking time."
My prediction is if he runs, his vote will hold until Labour Day and then collapse to Bradford. But there's still a chance Tory wins, which will be DriftTO. And even if my prediction holds, it'll be a huge waste of time re-litigating the 2010s instead of having a real debate about possible futures.
Toronto mayoral race. I still think this is a really bad idea for everyone involved - John included among the approx 3 million involved.
(Under normal circumstances, with density, a couple of those sites could house many more, but these supportive projects are deliberately small in order to ensure sufficient attention/capacity from onsite staff & support service).
Someone offline raised the issue of "lost parking" to me. Pains me to reply to it, but we are talking about roughly a dozen slots once it all shakes out. In other words, every lost slot is housing 1-2 people.
Winnipeg, MB. And I'm glad @yesinwpg.bsky.social is speaking up - unlike the anonymous leafleteer. The proposed supportive housing site under attack here would be less than two dozen units, with staff onsite 24/7, taking up a fraction of what is now a parking lot for a recycling depot.