Category Archives: Cities

Alexandria, Cities, Issues and Ideas, Politics of Place, tips for urbanist living, Transportation, What is urban planning?

Identity Crisis- When Your Suburb is Really a Town

9 Comments
Sorry Alexandria, you’re really a city, but I think we all knew that deep down(Photo Shot by me in August of 2008)

What makes a suburb a suburb? It’s one of the major questions that is at the center of the battle for how governments or independent communities of people should regulate and create public space.

This issue has been on my mind quite a bit in the last few months. First, it was Emily Badger’s Pseudosuburbanism as a resident of Alexandria, VA. Then it was this article I shared on the social media pages about how diversity is changing the old rules of what constitutes suburbia. Ultimately, some of this debate is the old civic inferiority complex rearing up its head again.

Ultimately, I’ve found a few things make a town an actual town. They are as follows:

-You have an individual or several individuals who govern your affairs as elected officials. This government is recognized in the town charter.

-You have your own post office (However, this one is becoming less prevalent with many rural towns losing their post office)

-Your population is heterogeneous. Diversity is the rule, rather than the exception.

-Organic community creation (non-governmental entities such as fraternal organizations and neighborhood associations) includes and embraces the diversity of the community.

-Your school system services children from birth to the end of college. This is done through Head Start, a vibrant public K-12 system and a community college. Bonus points if your town is a college town.

-You have either a traditional or a created main street apparatus. This apparatus does not count if it’s really just the suburban mall that’s been grafted into the form. Old Town Alexandria is a good example of having national stores, but under multiple owners and with public streets, sidewalks and parks.

-Once again, there are multiple owners, renters and the like. The community wasn’t planned. If it was planned, it has long ceded into having multiple private owners of buildings and public control of infrastructure.

You may note that this list does not address form, outside of having a true main street. I am not excusing places that do not have a good urban or town form. Yet, this post is to highlight that not all main cities have a monopoly on good urban form. Unfortunately, in many cases in the U.S. today, you are either a town or a city.

If you don’t recognize that, it’s time to act like one.

apartment living, Durham, Greensboro, Issues and Ideas, tips for urbanist living

Actually Being Urban #2- Finding Diversity and Cleaning Clothes At the Laundromat

4 Comments

So your clothes are dirty. The hamper is overflowing. No big deal right? The washer and dryer are in the closet. Or maybe you have to lug them downstairs, but nevertheless,  laundry machines are never too far away. Unless you are me and living in Downtown Greensboro, without the rental machines that cost way too much to rent. I tried to put it off, but I knew eventually I’d have to trek out to the laundromat.

Most bonafide urban dwellers either have machines in the basement or they have a nearby (read: walking distance) laundromat that they can use. Yet, here in Greensboro, there are no real downtown laundries. The closest one, near a gas station, with free dryers, just happened to be out of order on Sunday. (After this revelation, I took advantage of being out in the car and got a breakfast biscuit- another only-in- a-car-dependent-place “luxury.”) I then went to the laundry/bar near campus. It looked dreary, so I drove on past it. After circiling through another laundry parking lot where I saw questionable looking men(as a woman, I don’t take too many chances. I hate to label folks on looks, but these men looked like prunes and not in a good way). I finally settled on a place with older machines, but next door to an Ace Hardware store. It was a very diverse crowd, the machines were very clean to be so old and it only cost me $9 to do the bulk of my laundry.

As you can see with this paragraph above, there are a lot of issues and lessons when it comes to doing laundry here in the city of Greensboro. Here are the major ones:

–Non-drivers with no laundry machines are really out of luck– Not completely, there’s always loading laundry on the bus. I’m sure folks do it in other places. However, where I live, going to a public laundromat (versus one in the basement of a building) signals even more than the act of being on the bus in the first place that something may be amiss. None of these stereotypes should even be a factor. Going to do laundry should just be going to do laundry. Only, instead of owning machines, you rent them and not for $45 a month.

–Assuming that everyone living downtown is affluent enough to have their own machines is a failure in logic.– There should be more chances to share machines at my apartment complex. After all, laundry is for many, not just myself, a bi-monthly or monthly exercise. Also, if enough people have dry cleaning, a managed apartment complex or condo building could either operate it’s own dry cleaners/laundromat or make special arrangements with a nearby one. I think it’s great that we have the option to hook up machines, but the $45 per month rental fee for those who don’t could be better used to provide professional laundry services or self-serve laundry. Or even better, provide dry cleaning and automatically provide laundry machines, like my old apartment in Durham did.

–The laundromat is one of the most diverse spaces of commerce– I consider it a space of commerce because I had to pay for the use of my machines. However, this is more of a service than a place that encourages mass consumption such as a Walmart or even a mall/lifestyle center. Anyway, you can meet all types of people from all walks of life. You can also take time away from your busy schedule and dig into a book or writing as you wait for your clothes to wash and dry. It is this part of the experience that turns the laundromat into a great third space and what I enjoyed most about my experience.

Ultimately, I learned that there is no shame in going to the laundromat. I knew that anyway, but being in a place that cultivates that shame makes it tough. I did my laundry in 3 short hours(as compared to 5-10 when using home machines). I caught up on reading. I saw people that I wouldn’t normally see. And I got one step closer to actually being urban.

The picture above is the actual laundromat I patronized. Share your laundromat stories, theories and ideas on my Facebook and Twitter pages.

Arts Districts, Greensboro, tips for urbanist living

Strengthening and Creating the Urban Arts District

9 Comments

From my observations, downtowns across America live and die by their arts institutions. I know this is the case in Greensboro. We are currently debating the need for a new performing arts center downtown, thanks to the need to update our current civic center auditorium and the opportunity to pay down debts.

Yet, if we are not careful, this will become a misguided initiative, much like Nathaniel Hood has stated in his tome against entertainment districts. I believe that arts districts must be organic and cater to already established needs. Thankfully, there are arts leaders in Greensboro who are also like-minded.

This past week, (July 8-14 of 2012) I ran across an article in the News and Record, our local major paper. A former mayor of ours, Keith Holiday, is now  the executive director of the Carolina Theater, a historic venue that hosts old movies, the Greensboro Opera and a few other local dance, drama, and music productions. Occasionally the venue gets national performers such as Roberta Flack for intimate theater style shows that can’t quite fill the civic center auditorium.

In this article, he touts a plan to build a bigger theater space, similar to the Durham Performing Arts Center (DPAC), directly behind the Carolina Theater space. This space is a parking lot owned by the City of Greensboro. The article above has a rendering of what this space would look like. Also included would be a new black box theater on the top two floors of the facility and an outdoor performance space between the two venues.

While this does create a large scale complex, management would be in two hands. These hands are the Carolina Theater(which is nonprofit) and the City of Greensboro Parks and Recreation Department(government). Also, there are two other theater companies, that also operate as nonprofits, downtown. Combining these with the existing art galleries, dance studios and live music venues, Downtown Greensboro already has an organic arts district. This arts district also incorporates public space and public engagement.

Honestly, because of the abundance of these spaces, we really only need the DPAC sized venue. In addition to the downtown spaces, the universities in town have performance venues. Although not considered traditional arts venues, the NewBridge Bank Park (home to our minor league baseball team), as well as Center City Park, are also worthy of being considered performance space in the downtown area. And then there’s the coliseum complex where the aforementioned civic center auditorium, as well as an arena and several flexible event spaces also reside.

Still, as stated in the News and Record article, there is need for more arts space. There are many people creating and crafting and there can never be enough space for them. In addition, they are generating jobs and a new economy. Coupled with the growing crafters movement, bloggers like myself and traditional creative fields such as architecture, Florida’s creative class is actually alive and well.

Ultimately, an arts district:
– Builds from the bottom-up
– Incorporates and take stock of existing venues, uses and companies
– Thinks ahead, but incorporates all performers and connoisseurs past and present.
– Entertains and feeds the soul

Note that none of these factors mention economic development. I know that this is the cause célèbre of arts venues right now in light of being harassed and pressed by government entities and funders to be self-sustaining. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t be a good financial steward. Yet, I am charging cities to think about creating cultural capital and cultural value, then watch the money pour in.
And as I’ve stated before, you cannot be willing to create unless you are willing to fail first.

Since this article was first published, a plan was enacted to use space formally utilized by the YWCA, adjacent to the central branch of the Greensboro Public Library, after a public charette was held to solicit feedback from residents. Many resident-generated ideas ended up in the final recommendation from that charette.

apartment living, Greensboro, tips for urbanist living, Traveling as An Urbanist

Please Excuse My Absence…I’ve Been On a Journey

2 Comments

I had no intention of leaving the blog idle for this long. Yet, occasionally, living the actual life of an urbanist gets in the way of being able to write about it.

Yet while away from my urbanist pen, I was able to experience two key events that I think have major significance in the creation of community on a micro and a macro level.

The first is that I finalized my move into Downtown Greensboro. The picture above is from my balcony window. Every day I witness all manner of trains and buses ferry people and things across the state and potentially across the country. Just beyond the train depot (which has been beautifully restored in the last few years), the skyline buildings of Greensboro and our main street slant out and appear to dance before my eyes.

Ok, this is where I stop and admit I have an unnatural love for good urban architecture. But so do a lot of you reading this page, so I’ll carry on.

On the other hand, there’s the instance of travel, the journeys we all undertake in life. At work it is a focus of a traveling Smithsonian exhibit we are sponsoring. I went down to rural eastern North Carolina to help promote the new exhibit last month. I had a great time getting to know my still new colleagues and seeing how it’s really going down in what we call “Down East”. I found a charming main street in one town and the appearance of suburban sprawl like development in the other. There was also a healthy dose of jingoism. The hotel where we stayed was built by the Murphy Family, a pork dynasty that wanted to have a hotel and state-of-the-art Irish bar to entertain people. There was also a master planned upscale retirement community nearby.

Now that I’m finally back home, settled and almost unpacked, I can really soak in what’s going to come next in my chapter as a black urbanist. I see five new elements of my urban experience.

  • Gentrification– I am a professional black person, living in an area that was targeted and won slum clearance just a few short years ago. Now although the neighborhood resembles the French Quarter and also appears to have similar dynamics of race (who lives there, what people do, etc.)
  • Gated communities– When I signed the lease, I forgot that our buildings have controlled access hallways. I appreciate the layer of safety, but I am still not in favor of gating communities down in lieu of dealing with why people feel the need to steal. Are we providing a good economy so that people can have their own stuff and let people have their own stuff?
  • Walking as a primary mode of transportation– I’ve looked forward to this the most. However, in reality, there are many days where I regret having elected to make the 15 minute walk in the 90 and sometimes 100+ degree heat. Yet, I know that once the weather gets cooler, walking is going to help me arrive at the office settled and help me shake off the office when I get home. Plus, my gas hand has sat at a half tank for over a week now. Walking will become less and less of an issue as time goes on. I’ve also noticed how little people actually walk around here too. I’ll be addressing that in a future post.
  • Biking– My dad worked some magic and my old bike is now fully functional. Looking forward to riding it to work and to going out on trails with family and friends. I’ll also be able to advocate even better for bike and pedestrian safety and I’m fully engaged in these modes of transportation.
  • Trains– At least 10 trains come right in front of my house daily. Some I love to see, such as the Amtrak trains. Others are just noisy and I’m thankful that they don’t wake me up. I often sit on my balcony and watch them go by, as well as the city buses coming into what is our multi-modal depot. They also serve as the foreground for the background of our city skyline you see above. I hope to take the train again one day soon to points north, south and east, since it’s now right in my front yard and will add to my urban experience.

Now, that’s settled. Let me get back to living and I look forward to a greater richness in my writings now that I’m finally in the environment I’ve written on and loved on so much.

Greensboro, Issues and Ideas

The Real Failure of the Creative Class Is the Fear of Failure

9 Comments

Seeing Richard Florida speak at CNU 20 last month, all I could think about was one thing and one thing only:

He rated Greensboro, which in addition to being my current city is my hometown, 41 of 49 in his original list of large creative class cities.

No, it’s not the bottom of the barrel, but I have friends in Memphis who are just as discontented with him for being 49. From what I’ve heard of them, their number could be misguided as well. It doesn’t matter that those numbers are eleven years old. They still hurt.

That hurt has me doing a lot of work to prove Florida wrong. Hence why I always come down on city rankings. I’m still somewhat insecure about my city, but I know I’m wrong to be. I write this blog to help clear my head and keep it moving.

At the end of the day, thanks to this self-reflection, I don’t think I’m the problem. Nor is Greensboro in itself. We have art, we have theaters, and we have vibrant gay and immigrant communities. We are gaining jobs among young professionals. We’ve assessed our arts impact. And our alt-weekly newspaper has put this creative class issue front and center this week and will continue to do so at least for the next two years.

So what is the real failure of the creative class?

It is the fear of failure.

A colleague of mine (and friend of the blog) stated this fear so eloquently in a meeting this week. Basically, he reminded myself and others that we should not be in the business of not wanting to create or present ideas just because they could be rejected. He went on to say we should be mindful of how we let opinions and attitudes into our organization that discourage creativity and the creative process. This process includes failure.

I want to take his words a step further and apply them to the community as a whole.

We have to be willing to create and fail, along with our success. We are so focused on making sure our reputations, our money and the illusions of both stay in tact so much that we miss the need to mess up sometimes.

When we talk about a creative class, we must first look introspectively and be willing to support a true creative process.

We must not laugh at our city’s shortcomings (or at least not laugh for long). We must not abandon our properties or let them become slums because we are too cheap to make them any better. We must not assume that a property is a slum because the house is painted purple and the grass spray painted orange (that is if you do have a single-family home, same goes for odd windows, apartment buildings and signage).

We do need to put our money where our mouth is. If you have abundance, be willing to give to create something better. Realize though that not all of your money will be a good return on investment. However, that’s not to say that it never will.

And finally, remember that on paper, any F can be turned into an A. Let’s start doing that in our communities and fortifying the true sense of the creative class.

The photo above, taken by me on Elm Street in Greensboro, is one of the alt-weekly’s newspaper containers. I think it illustrates perfectly what we need to do to get over this creative class hurdle. Let’s talk about it on Facebook or Twitter.

Greensboro, Issues and Ideas, tips for urbanist living

Does PseudoSuburbanist Equal Hipster?

1 Comment

As we all browsed Emily Badger’s Atlantic Cities post on her own civic inferiority complex last week, the question above was in quite a few heads, namely my own. Now, I attempt to sort through all the good and bad things that this idea provokes.

First, a primer to this discussion. Take a look at the Urban Dictionary’s definition of hipster and pseudo-hipster. The former is admittedly a new word for what was once known as bohemian culture in decades past. In essence, there has always been a counterculture and hipster is just a new name for it. Yet, the latter definition really intrigued me. I had no clue that it was on the site before I went there. However, upon a closer inspection, I find that this type of person may also be our true Pseudosuburbanist.

This person is going along with the hipster trend because it is the thing to do, no different than how people fell into the suburban pattern of living. Chuck Marhon has a good post up about this type of thinking and how it created and continues to perpetrate the suburban pattern.

While Badger may have defined herself as a pseudosuburbanist a little differently than I will here, the concepts that she discussed can also be identified as pseudosuburbanist problems. If one is comfortable with where they live, no matter what people say about the place, then the technicality of suburb vs. city vs. rural town vs. town-that-used-to-be-independent-until-a-bigger-city-sprouted-up-beside-it is irrelevant.

Let me insert a quick reminder that the real problem with our cities is that walkability, transit connectivity and safe housing are not available for everyone, no matter the income level and the skinniness of jeans.

However, to get back to the idea of PseudoSuburbanist=Hipster, we also need to address the trendiness of coming back to the city. This weekend, I attended a cultural festival that had over 5,000 attendants in a city of 270,000. That’s a picture from it at the top of the post. I think it was great that so many people came downtown, including my own mom, who hadn’t been down there in some years. Yet, are these people coming downtown for the right reasons? Would they come downtown even if it was only quirky stores? Would they come down in some places if it didn’t look like the Design District or SoHo? Will these same people who love this “downtown lifestyle” stay past their children growing older?

In some cases people are staying behind. They are improving their schools, adding playgrounds and also interacting with multiple cultures and generations.

Yet, there are far too many people who are gentrifying areas to the point that some slums now have a neo-suburban feel. Not all of this is the fault of the people themselves. It’s the fault of the old real estate adages, some of which are still codified into housing covenants. The most offensive of these adages is that Anglo=value and non-Anglo group= poor and less valuable. Also, a clean neighborhood isn’t bad, unless clean means more white people and less people of other cultures, no matter their income level or style of living.

I think this is the pseudosuburbanism and pseudohipsterism that we really need to concern ourselves with. Otherwise, here’s to hipsterism. It’s high time the mainstream culture start to accept that it’s a salad bowl and not a melting pot. And this PseudoSuburbanist concept? That wouldn’t even exist and that’s not a bad thing.

Photo above was shot by myself, with my new hipster toy of the moment, my Apple iPhone. Want to challenge my logic? Start by visiting me on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

Brooklyn, Greensboro, Issues and Ideas, The Thursday List

The Thursday List: News and Views for the Week of May 21, 2012

I’ve wanted to do this for a while, but came up with all kinds of excuses. No more. Even if this is just a public way for me to clear my thoughts on a few articles that have come past my inbox, news feed and stream, then here it is.

However, before I launch in to everyone else’s news, here are my two shameless plugs for my latest post on when it’s ok to quit a city and my e-book on how to make things better. Thank you for supporting both endeavors. For those of you still scratching your heads on what all this means, subsequent editions of the book will introduce more concise definitions and straightforward action steps for your community. I’m not going to put a timeline, but do expect a bigger edition sometime before the end of this calendar year.

Now on to the news:

It’s really sad that going to school on a bike is grounds for suspension and in some cases jail. Many of us saw the Grist article, but it’s this Bicycling.com article that really drives the point home that something needs to be done. It also exposes how little people in the government sector want to collaborate. Holding a master of public administration, I know that in theory this is not the way things should be, but it’s the way we have chosen in recent years to get things done. Yet, I commend anyone who seeks to take public action who’s just a private citizen trying to do the right thing.

The Huffington Post yesterday highlighted just that. Aurash Khawarzad, who I had the pleasure of meeting at CNU 19 in Madison, is the focus of a wonderful article on Do Tank, the tactical urbanism organization and a new organization called Change Administration, which seeks to deal with gentrification by hipsters dead on. Like it or not, even some of the tactical projects can be disruptive to already existing community norms and rituals. However, that doesn’t have to happen. Khawarzad cites his neighborhood and surrounding areas in Brooklyn as examples of how diverse many of our communities are, but how we also have an obligation as privileged people to do what we can to help save communities. I hope to lend my support to this effort and similar ones across the country that are dealing with distressed areas.

Lastly, my home state continues to exhibit examples of my 12 Legit reasons to leave. Case in point, a man who after peacefully demonstrating his desire to not have a Confederate statue replaced in his town, this man’s tires on his business vehicle were destroyed and his car and business were also vandalized, with obscenities related to the president sprayed on them. The man is still pushing on, showing that sometimes, even when it’s past time to leave, you have to keep soldiering on.

Have a great Memorial Day weekend everyone. Be sure to follow me on Instagram and my soon to be revived Tumblr to explore the environment in my own eyes.

Food, Greensboro, Issues and Ideas, tips for urbanist living

Twelve Legit Reasons To Leave Your City (#urbanism #cities #cplan #tacticalurbanism)

Last week, I presented the case on Killing the Civic Inferiority Complex at CNU 20. I also released a companion e-book. It is part picture book of my hometown of Greensboro, NC and part self-help book for those who are having serious issues with the municipality they reside in. All of it is my case for people to find the lights and stop looking at the negatives on the ground in their city.

However, I wanted to go ahead and address reasons why you should NOT remain in a place. Some negatives(and one lone positive) are too much to overcome. Those twelve reasons are as follows:

1. You do not have a job or the job you have does not pay the bills.
2.You cannot start a legit business or the one you have is going bankrupt.
3. Your civil rights (ethnicity, religious, sexual, property) are constantly threatened.
4. Your children’s schools and community activities are failures, no matter the location or operators or actions taken to change these situations.
5. Your parents are treated poorly at their senior centers, despite constant reports and calls and action taken at their facilities.
6. No one, not the police, not the neighbors, not even the code of the street, is keeping your home and your family safe.
7. Your home, be it rental or “owned” or owned is costing you more than it is worth to live in and there are no other affordable areas that are safe, walkable and near jobs and transit.
8. Transit, walkability and other things designated as good placemaking are non-existent and will not be without significant financial burden, or wholesale government changes.
9. Everyone hates you and no longer wants to listen to your ideas for making changes.
10.Your physical and mental health are endangered to the point where you are spending more time popping pills, going to doctors and hospitals and avoiding certain ailment triggers than going out in the community and being happy.
11. Your attempts to find unknown lights failed or are severely thwarted by one of the above.
12. The most positive of them all, you are granted educational, career or some other once in a lifetime opportunity in another municipality.

So, I want to know, could someone still kill a civic inferiority complex in one or more of the above situations? Let me know via The Black Urbanist Facebook Page, @blackurbanist on Twitter or the comments section below. You may end up in the next edition of Killing the Civic Inferiority Complex, in which I’ll discuss these reasons in more detail.

Blog image courtesy of Blush Printables under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Greensboro, Traveling as An Urbanist

CNU, Seeing the Future

Three major things are going on with me right now. The first is that I completed my masters of public affairs! For the last two years, I’ve been studying urban policy from the inside out with a wonderful group of classmates and challenging teachers. It was in an urban policy class that I decided that it wasn’t enough to wax philosophical about placemaking, I needed to tell the world that I was a proud black urbanist.

That declaration led to an article in Grist, which led to a week of sharing ideas last year in Madison, Wisconsin that changed my life. This year, I’m about to get on a plane to West Palm Beach, FL to do it all again.

That gathering, the Congress of New Urbanism, is celebrating its 20th gathering this year. Anyone who has been knows that this is not your average trade show. From bringing back the traditional small town to putting a tent over a bus stop to make it a more humane place to wait, to people who recognize the public health benefits of a more vibrant, dense lifestyle, this thing we call urbanism or placemaking extends past the bricks and the sidewalks and into the hearts of many attendees.

That’s what I will be talking about on Saturday morning in a session on Tactical Urbanism, Economics and Community. My presentation, Killing the Civic Inferiority Complex, will offer steps to help communities of any size and stature take the resources they do have and put their minds together to make them awesome. I’m presenting with a number of place-making rockstars. I’m not sure about video for this session, but if you are in West Palm Beach, you should come to our session after the Saturday plenary at 10:45.

I’ll also be keeping a journal of my experiences at CNU 20 for Next American City. Be sure to bookmark the site for my twice-daily dispatches from West Palm Beach(and the various destinations in-between). I’ll also post teasers here so you won’t miss a thing. And check out this CNU 19 recap while you are at it.

After I get home from WPB, I’ll start my tenure with the NC Humanities Council on the 15th. Looking forward to helping communities find the funding to bring museum exhibits, neighborhood histories and neighborhood book talks alive, among other things. This job will also allow me to live, work and play in Downtown Greensboro.

So here it is, three weeks, three life changing events. Thanks again for reading folks and I look forward to seeing many of you later this week!

Food, Greensboro, Issues and Ideas

Maybe It’s Not the Food Itself, It’s The Way We Eat

1 Comment

This morning I saw not just one, but two articles on the food desert issue. Both articles talked about previously hashed arguments on food deserts, as well as new research that suggested that the accepted solution of more supermarkets in poor areas does not work as planned.

I think it’s more than the presence of food, but how we eat. This goes for people who eat everything in sight, as well as people who nearly starve themselves or only eat a certain type of food.

I’m not saying that we shouldn’t have healthy diets. In fact, that’s exactly what I am saying. But we should stop policing only those who are poor who often eat what’s in front of them, just like we do.

Plus, who really wants to admit they are poor. Eating for some people may be a form of upward mobility. It may be because stuff just tastes better. It may be emotional. It may be cultural. Not all these reasons have to do with the fact that there is or isn’t a Whole Foods around the corner.

Side note of the day: I may be getting fat off of Spinach Artichoke Hummus and Sweet Potato Biscuits, but that’s just me

Still,just as I did above, I can admit that sometimes I eat or drink too much. If that stat that was sited in both articles about poor people eating better than rich in the 1950’s, maybe it’s more than the location and even the cheapness of food. As a whole, despite all our healthy living efforts, we still prioritize and celebrate eating what we want, as much as we want, whenever we want.

If people are wanting to be rich and they see how “rich people” act and that is stuffing their faces, then they will stuff their faces. They will go to Whole Foods with EBT cards. As they have already done, they will lobby and get farmers markets in their communities.

Instead of saying that healthy eating is good, maybe tell everyone that it’s bad. Or, use whole grain cookies or something else that’s delicious and healthy as bait. Maybe we could go back to tilling fields or walking blocks or between cul-de-sacs, depending on which tradition you grew up in.

Ultimately, I think the time of blaming only poor people for their food choices is over. Unless we are doing it all right all the time, let’s just make sure we all go to the doctor, get in our 8 glasses of water and mix in some fruit today.

The photo above is of an establishment that has finally decided to make itself known in Greensboro. I repeat again, this place can also make you fat(and broke)  if you aren’t careful. Keep up with me on Facebook, Twitter and now Instagram, where the lovely image above originated.