Wednesday Morning in Downtown Mesa: Groundbreaking for the Metro Light Rail Extension

We were privileged to attend the groundbreaking for the first Metro light rail extension in downtown Mesa this morning, an important step in improving the East Valley's mass transit system, rejuvenating central Mesa, and getting some of us out of our cars.

The canopy over the event at Robson just north of Main Street, where the four new stops (Alma School Road, Country Club Drive, Center Street, Mesa Drive) of the first light rail extension will run, made things cooler but it made our dumbphone pics basically indecipherable.

No disrespect is intended -- we will be having a talk with our camera -- and we were impressed with the speeches of Mesa's visionary mayor Scott Smith; Valley Metro CEO Steve Banta; Mesa Councilmember and Metro Board Vice-Chairman Dennis Kavanaugh; the gentleman from Valley Transit Constructors, which will be building the project; the event's MC, David Schwarz, executive director of Friends of Transit; and others.

Michelle Moyer and the Take Cover band supplied the music,

and there was a lot -- really a lot -- of food

for the crowd that attended the event, which started at 8 a.m.

We got a "METRO Breaks Ground" pin, the first in a series of six "Mark the Milestones" pins that will end with the grand opening, sometime in 2015. And then, hopefully, the light rail will be extended to Gilbert Road and beyond. We have fantasies that someday the light rail will come all the way out to Apache Junction and extend to many other parts of the Valley, transforming the area into the kind of urban environment more and more people seem to want to live in.

As a kid growing up in postwar New York City -- inshallah, we're heading back there next week -- we saw the choices for urban development in what's probably a simplistic way, with Robert Moses and his large-project, highway-driven environment (if you haven't read Robert A. Caro's The Power Broker, you should) one one side and on the other, the street-life, neighborhood ethos of Jane Jacobs, as explained in The Death and Life of Great American Cities.
For us, downtown Mesa is the one of the places in the East Valley in which we feel most comfortable, because it's walkable and it's got at least the start of a street culture that can attract what Richard Florida calls the creative class.

With at least three colleges coming downtown, along with other projects -- thanks to Mayor Smith and other enlightened leaders -- the light rail extension can really provide a way for a city with more people than Cleveland, Miami or Minneapolis to become something better than it has been. We're hopeful "Building a Better Mesa" is more than just another slogan.

2012 Best of the Capitol - Best Elected Officials: Greg Stanton & Scott Smith from Arizona Capitol Times Video on Vimeo.

Friday Evening in Downtown Mesa: 35th Birthday Party for Arizona Museum of Natural History

At 6:30 p.m. today we were back in beautiful downtown Mesa, walking up Macdonald past the music fans waiting online at the Nile Theatre to just north of Main Street, where the wonderful Arizona Museum of Natural History was holding its 35th birthday party, with the street in front of it blocked off for many fun activities for kids. Free admission brought scores of families inside the museum to see its many fascinating exhibits.

More coming. . .

We had a great time and learned a good deal at the Arizona Museum of Natural History this evening, and we're grateful we got to attend its 35th birthday party.

And we're sorry we didn't invite it to ours in 1986.

Early Saturday Evening in Downtown Mesa: Weird Is the New Cool at the Mesa Rocks Block Party

"Ain't shit to do in Arizona," goes the chorus of Weird Is the New Cool's terrific anthem, "Arizona," but at 5 p.m. today we were able to enjoy a very good hour's set by the smart, breezy local rock-rap hybrid band at the Mesa Rocks Block Party in beautiful downtown Mesa.

We had limited time today so, sadly, we had to miss the earlier acts - Catfish Mustache, Voodoo Swing, and Herb n Life - and had to leave before seeing The Veragroove and Iration,

but we're grateful we got to see the up-and-coming Weird Is the New Cool, whom we were introduced to by the popular video of "Arizona," featuring Authority Zero's Jason Devore, in a romp-filled song that name-checks a lot of what many of us like and hate about this hot place.

It was a pretty hot afternoon, getting close to 100 degrees, but we had our water and were able to be in the shade. The band - Kyle Collins (vocals), Tim Yokley (drums). Nate V.(guitar), Cash Murphy(guitar), Kenny Porter(bass) and Omni Rutledge(keys) - has been compared to Gym Class Heroes and Lupe Fiasco, among others, but their summery, high-energy sound has nicely raggy, intense moments, as on "Skateboarder" from their debut album, Girls.Love.Fun.Music!

There was an enthusiastic, if somewhat sparser than we expected, crowd at that hour of the block party.

But we were really grateful we got to see and here the band perform excellent material like the haunting "Baby Making Music" and their feel-good party song "Beer Pong."

The band finished its set just before 6 p.m., just around the time we had to leave.

On our way to our ancient Geo Prizm, bought used back when we lived here in Mesa in 2001 and still managing to cheat death despite being totally dilapidated (just like its owner), we passed kids lined up for the 6 p.m. shows at The Nile Theatre and Underground.

Anyway, we're sorry we didn't get to spend more time at Mesa Rocks, but as we hurried off to meet some fellow old people in Phoenix, we're glad we did catch Weird Is the New Cool, whose fine alt/hip-hop music was well worth the ninety-minute detour on our way from Apache Junction.