FOLLOW me on my popular Twitter feed. Just click this photo! @hbbtruth - David - Common sense on #Politics #PublicPolicy #Sports #PopCulture in USA, Great Britain, Sweden and France, via my life in #Texas #Memphis #Miami #IU #Chicago #DC #FL ๐Ÿ›ซ๐ŸŒ๐Ÿ“บ๐Ÿ“ฝ️๐Ÿˆ. Photo is of Elvis and Joan Blackman in 'Blue Hawaii'

Beautiful Stockholm at night, looking west towards Gamla Stan
Showing posts with label Hollywood (FL). Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hollywood (FL). Show all posts

Friday, May 14, 2021

“Don’t Trash Our Treasure” - Local10 News anchor/reporter Louis Aguirre recently brought his plastic pollution series to our area of Broward County, and... surprise! The plastic pollution problem remains as bad as you and I see everyday at the beach and along the Intracoastal Waterway. Fortunately for us, he had a chance to speak to our friend and fellow civic activist Catherine "Cat" Uden, someone who talks the talk and walks the walk when it comes to the environment and showing common sense. (Even while on her paddleboard.)


Local10 News anchor and reporter Louis Aguirre recently brought his “Don’t Trash Our Treasure” series to our area of Broward County, and... surprise! The plastic pollution problem remains as bad as you and I see every day at the beach and along the Intracoastal Waterway. 

See this screen grab I made of a recent tweet thread about our mutual concerns about the situation with respect to garbage and plastic pollution at Hollywood Beach, and when things are cleaned up:  https://twitter.com/hbbtruth/status/1384609513366441987


Fortunately for Louis Aguirre and us, he had a chance to speak to our friend and fellow civic activist Catherine "Cat" Uden, someone whom as I've recounted several times on this blog, always talks the talk and walks the walk when it comes to the environment and showing common sense. 

(Even while on her paddleboard.)

And as we know to our eternal chagrin, disappointment, and anger, common sense is anything but common in South Florida. It is ever thus...

Louis Aguirre's tweet thread on this subject are at: https://twitter.com/LOUISAGUIRRE/status/1392835191845048321




https://www.instagram.com/p/COtUPinn0sZ/

https://www.instagram.com/tv/CO0-8NLnVv3/?hl=en

Thank you @louisaguirre at @local10news for your coverage on the plastic pollution crisis. Watch his series “Don’t trash our treasure” for an eye opening look at plastic pollution in Florida. Then take action PlasticFreeFL.org (Yes, that’s a sky lantern I’m holding. They are illegal in FL and can entangle marine life. Don’t release balloons or sky lanterns). Thanks Emily Robinson for the photos. ๐ŸŒ #breakfreefromplastic #riseaboveplastics #plasticfreeseas #plasticfree #marinedebris @oceana @oceana_in_florida @louiswplg #southflorida #florida #broward #browardcounty #wplglocal10 #daniabeach #hollywoodbeach #oceana #oceanaflorida #protectwhatyoulove

If you aren't able to see the video on Cat's second Instagram post above, please see it here at Channel 10's YouTube Channel, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdlc9ttP3aA

A transcript is at: https://www.local10.com/news/local/2021/05/12/broward-beaches-are-suffering-and-plastic-is-top-culprit/

Local10 News, Miami, Florida
Broward beaches are suffering and plastic is top culprit
Louis Aguirre, Anchor/Reporter
Published: May 12, 2021 6:28 pm
Updated: May 12, 2021 11:28 pm


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Monday, June 11, 2018

More critical analysis about tonight's update re the awful #YoungCircle Feasibility Study that'll make #HollywoodFL #traffic #business worse, NOT better ๐Ÿ˜ฎ


More critical analysis abt tonight's update re the awful #YoungCircle Feasibility Study that'll make #HollywoodFL #traffic #business worse, NOT better 

Updated June 12th, 2018 at 11:45 AM
For some reason, even after trying to fix it, after this was originally posted on Monday June 11th, some of the sentences are changing their fonts or sizes. I apologize for the look if after I re-edit this the gremlins pop-up again.
Want more examples of what's not working in Hollywood in 2018, especially in Downtown Hollywood? Of people in charge not paying attention or improving as they should? 
If so then you need to get yourself to tonight's meeting from 5:30 to 7:30 at the Lippman Center, 2030 Polk Street, an update on the preposterous Young Circle road project, because I have a very strong intuition that tonight will be such an example. 

A perfect example, actually, just like it was last year, when I attended the last in a series of public meetings hosted by the Hollywood CRA to try to sell Hollywood residents and Small Business owners on the idea of making what in my opinion would be a tragic mistake that will have long-term negative consequences for the city and Downtown Hollywood in particular.





I put the final touches to an important subject in an email that I've been meaning to share with you all for quite some time.

An email that I could have sent to you back in January or last month or last week and predicted with 100% certainty. Just as I was 100% correct last year when I wrote about what I saw and heard at the meeting that i'd shown up to with a great deal of trepidation. 
And then saw the same familiar faces saying the predictable things that gave me the trepidation in the first place.

The larger issue:
I personally don't believe that it's acceptable for highly-paid city employees or city agencies or city-funded groups, parties with access to lots of city-funded resources, to continue operating in a completely unsatisfactory way and specifically, acting like city residents, taxpayers and Small Business owners in the city won't eventually notice that they are being taken advantage of by being kept in the dark when it concerns something as fundamental as the usefulness and utility of US-1 as it intersects Young Circle and the Downtown Hollywood area. 
US-1/Federal Highway is the spine of Broward County and remains the main road that brings thousands and thouands of customers to the Downtown business area.
It's THE reason that they locate there!

The issue in question:
Where are the fliers for tonight's Young Circle meeting in storefront windows or bulletin boards of Young Circle and Downtown Hollywood businesses?
Where are ANY of the city's sandwich boards in Downtown Hollywood and in and around Young Circle ITSELF advertising this meeting about a proposal that will (negatively) affect Young Circle's future and the daily routine of residents?

Well, just like last year, those informational fliers and sandwich boards are NOWHERE to be found less than a week before the meeting tonight.
Or days before the meeting.
Or today.

Which is to say that there is NOTHING letting people visiting the park for last week's Food Truck Mondays or the Friday night Funtastic Friday family events and film that always draw a crowd, know anything about it in advance?

Instead, the public engagement relies on the same handful of people who are very interested in civic affairs here attending and saying everything is great and sounds great when common sense and first-hand observation tells us that's ridiculous.
And where's the diversity, especially the diversity of opinions from people throughout the area?

Last year I went to several popular and prominent businesses on Young Circle and Hollywood Blvd. the day after the last meeting that I had attended to speak to the owners/managers in order to find out from them if they knew anything about the series of meetings.
I didn't want to make the mistake of assuming they didn;t just because they didn't have anything posted at their business promoting the meetings, since it was always possible that they'd gone to a meeting that I hadn't attended. 

Nope, they didn't.
They knew nothing about the meetings.

I went to The Radius condominium, the largest concentration of Hollywood residents to Young Circle and spoke to the on-duty concierge and ten residents in the lobby over twenty minutes, asking them if they knew about it or had heard about any of the prior meetings.
ZERO AWARENESS.

Yes, there is clearly a problem with public outreach and engagement on this plan, so when are things actually going to change for the better?
Without that change, the results of any study involving this plan are completely invalid. 

If you had a business on or near Young Circle and hear that it will possibly be undergoing major construction for a lengthy period of time, why would you not get angry at the public access to your business being adversely affected? And you not having been in the loop when the decision was made?
Why would you want to stay in that area if the project actually decreases your business's opportunities if the proposed changes makes it more difficult for customers to get to your shop or restaurant?

But then I wrote all of this last year, didn't I? 
Yes I did, per the link below.

My critical lysis of awful #YoungCircle Roadway Feasibility Study that'll make #HollywoodFL #traffic worse, NOT better ๐Ÿ˜ฎ = coming soon. This week! 
In my opinion, it's not acceptable for highly-paid city employees or agencies with lots of city-funded resources to continue operating in a completely unsatisfactory way, acting like residents, taxpayers and Small Business owners of the city won't notice that they are being taken advantage of and being kept in the dark when it concerns something as important and fundamental as the usefulness of US-1 as it intersects Young Circle and the Downtown Hollywood area.

But it would have been just as true for promoting the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce's so-called "Spark" entrepreneur event, both last year and this year.
An event that because of my own personal interests and background, in any other situation, I should have not only been attending but promoting on this blog.
But I didn't.

Last year, a week before the event and in the days leading up to it, I made a point of looking for promotional info about it where the public in Hollywood might actually see it.
Even the minimum - what one might see if someone in your neighborhood was trying to find a missing dog.
But the Chamber of Commerce didn't even do that.
There was nothing.

Nothing anywhere visible to the public at The ArtsPark at Young Circle itself where the event was being held. Even the Park Rangers there knew nothing about it when I came by an hour before the event started. How can that be?

As it happens, last year I even took photos of the non-existent signs and sandwich boards, that is, took photos of the areas of ingress and egress to the park wher ethose should have been but weren't.
I don't post those incriminating photos here now because it'd be overkill.

So, where was the promotional effort?
How do you explain that kind of attitude? Two years in a row?
Sorry, simply having an event is not the thing as it running it correctly.

For those of you who are curious, just a little under 8,000 people read that post of mine re this state of disconnectedness to the public last year, which, while far from The Drudge Report daily reader numbers and not even in the top five of my most-popular blog posts of last year, are still considerably more than most of the blogs in South Florida, even ones connected to local newspapers or TV stations.
Just saying...

When you do not perform up to the standards that Hollywood residents and Small Business owners have a reasonable right to expect and demand, then you need to understand that there are necessarily going to be genuine consequences when people who care about the area decide to educate all the people who were not being kept in the loop.

So what's changed in the past year?
Well, if facts on the ground mean anything, nothing, so far as I or any other Hollywood resident can see for themself, based on a walk around the area in question last week, less than a week before tonight's event.
Why?

Why is CONTINUING to do such a completely inadequate job of properly informing Hollywood residents, businesses and stakeholders about a transportation plan that could drastically and adversely affect them, their 
Quality of Life, and their financial bottom line, so acceptable to the Hollywood CRA, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce and the Hollywood City Commission?
It shows a real and continuing lack of insight about human behavior and failure to learn from experience, factors which continue to plague Hollywood and Broward County in the year 2018.

It's not my job or your job to do Hollywood CRA Executive Director Camejo's job or that of his staff -all of whom are well-compensated- for free. Period.
We have a right to expect much better than this.

Dave 

Snapchat: SoBeHoosier

This info below is from the Hollywood CRA's website.
Make of it what you will, keeping in mind that all conclusions are based on a very, very small number of self-selecting people, including those with some conflicts-of-interest, weighing-in on the subject. over-and-over.
In other words, draw your own conclusions but be smart and question the very premise of the project.




Young Circle Roadway Feasibility Study
The Hollywood CRA and Toole Design Group have initiated a Roadway Feasibility Study for Young Circle. This study will examine the feasibility of improving the public realm experience and functioning of Young Circle in Downtown Hollywood.

The goal of this project is to analyze the block structure and collaboratively develop and assess the feasibility of new street cross-sections and a new block structure.Presentation from May 15, 2017
Presentation from May 18, 2017 | Video from May 18, 2017
Presentation from June 20, 2017 | Audio from June 20, 2017

Sun Sentinel | Video from July 14, 2017




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Tuesday, January 9, 2018

New Year's Resolutions - My first blog post of 2018: Changes to look for in me and Hallandale Beach Blog in the year to come -and some clues about the upsetting past few months and why you haven't been seeing me quite so much

Above: Me, Dave, on Monday morning on September 11, 2017, the very deceiving calm day after Hurricane Irma hit South Florida. Looking north, just off North Atlantic Blvd. and NE 30th Street, Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Irma was the powerful storm that began some subtle-yet-unmistakable changes in my everyday life and the people I knew that soon cascaded and turned my life completely upside-down. And the following week, with no electricity during sweltering heat and oppressive humidity in Hollywood, was the least of it...

New Year's Resolutions - My first blog post of 2018: Changes to look for in me and Hallandale Beach Blog in the year to come -and some clues about the upsetting past few months and why you haven't been seeing me quite so much

Below is an excerpt from an email that I sent out between Christmas Eve and New Year's Day.to roughly 225 people, mostly friends, devoted Social Media Followers and the handful of honest news media members, around South Florida, the Sunshine State and back up in Washington, D.C.
(If you are new to the blog, D.C. and Arlington County, VA is where I lived and worked for 15 years until returning to South Florida in October of 2003.)

Think of it as a condensed list of some of my hopes, goals and resolutions for the next 12 months. 
Since it is relevant to many things that I have written about and commented upon in the past 10-plus years here on the blog when I lived in Hallandale Beach for 11 years, or for the past 18 months living in Hollywood -95% of the time in the Hollywood Lakes area east of US-1- where I will be living for the foreseeable future, I post it here so that those of you faithful blog readers out there who have kindly written or contacted me over the past few months expressing some degree of surprise about the lack of blog posts here of late, compared to the regularity that you'd all come to take for granted for so many years, will get a better idea of why that has been so.
I hope my words, however oblique, will better connect-the-dots on some matters many of you have been wondering about for quite some time, even as I try to maintain a degree of privacy about some upsetting recent personal news.
----

Though I am by nature a friendly and outgoing person, one of my big aims for 2018 is to actually be more "sociable" and "present in the moment." 
That's especially true with respect to Social Media, where I plan on doing a MUCH BETTER job of communicating my thoughts and concerns with so many of you than I did in 2017, where for reasons known to some of you, for the past few months, I was often VERY DISTRACTED by more important things than public policy, local government and politics in our area, South Florida and the Sunshine State.

 Which is, of course, why you saw a LOT LESS of me at Hollywood and Hallandale Beach City Halls, at Broward County Govt. HQ in downtown Fort Lauderdale, and at civic meetings and public events around the SE Broward area.
And when you did see me, I seemed not so much aloof as... distracted. 
It's for very good reasons.

The same reasons why some of you expressed such great surprise -and for certain local elected officials, even genuine shock- at running into me at my usual hang-outs in Hollywood, Hallandale Beach and Aventura the past three months, often while I was still wearing a suit and tie from earlier at work, which is a different look for me than many of you are used to, though for my friends in washington, D.C., it was hard to think of me without a tie execpt on weekends or when i was going to orioles games at camden yards seeing me in.
That particular reason being that, quite reasonably, you hadn't expected to run into me.
The last time you'd heard from me -that you recalled- you'd thought that I'd soon-be or had already moved to... Las Vegas.

 Which is why you said, dazed, "I thougt you were out in Las Vegas with yo know who?"

Some of you remembered every single word about why I was -happily- thinking I'd be relocating to Las Vegas  for a few months. You mentioned her name a lot and even said it with a friendly laugh because you knew how absolutely crazy I am about her. EC is the most-amazing and fascinating woman I've ever met, so when she unexpectedly asked me while we were driving up I-95 up to her other rental property in Wilton Manors, and consider leaving my life and friends in South Florida behind and move in with her out in the desert in a matter of days, you know I took less than one second to say yes. That's how amazing she is.

But others of you, well, let's just say you couldn't quite remember, though you did think a woman was somehow involved, and that I did say it wasn't a done deal yet, and might not happen.

 Well, would it help if I told you that the scenario involved me abruptly leaving behind my life, friends and family in South Florida -at least for a few months- and moving to Las Vegas with a truly brilliant, beautiful and AMAZING woman that I positively love and adore, who, out-of-the-blue, while she was driving, turned to me and asked me if I would move and live with her in Las Vegas, and help her to start up a business there that she'd done a tremendous amount of research on while there for many recent previous trips? 
And because I love her, wanted to be emotionally supportive of her efforts and see her succeed and... well, for many other reasons, not quite my own, that I don't want to detail here.

One of my other big aims for 2018 is to write you, talk on the phone, or, when possible, even meet with many more of my readers in South Florida in person than I have the past 18 months since returning to South Florida in late July of 2016, after being away for two years.

I also aim to accept the advice of many of you and to stop beating myself up by trying to make everything I write too perfect before posting/blogging/tweeting or emailing information, and thus, #procrastinating. That also includes my taking advice I usually give others: start using technology better and smarter, to wit, my finally posting photos once in a while to Instagram, where in 2018 I should have something interesting there nearly every day that should amuse, entertain, inform or beguile people in real numbers. 

Some of you even know about some specific plans of mine to create a topical Podcast or video series on YouTube, part of which is tied into when and whether I do indeed make my next planned trip to Sweden and Iceland in the coming months, though I won't be going in January as I'd originally thought. My plans, once there, is to conduct some exciting, long-anticipated interviews with some prominent and talented people/friends in the #tech, #startup, broadcasting and music industry in... yes, beautiful Stockholm. 
It's odd that I should have so many friends and acquaintances there who are both super-talented and also really well-known publicly, as compared to here in South Florida, but it's reality

I may even get the chance to finally see a super-talented friend or two who,individually, are truly AMAZING singers, perform a concert or two in an arena or large venue for the first time, instead of in their home, a hotel, a small or-medium sized venue, or in a recording studio in snowy Stockholm.
If you follow me on Twitter at @hbbtruth or on Instagram, you may even have a good idea or two of who that might be! :-) 

As always, any inspired thoughts, ideas or suggestions beforehand would be greatly appreciated!

In case it escaped your attention, no, Hallandale Beach is not exactly #SergelsTorg in Stockholm when it comes to reindeer....



Unlike amazing #SergelsTorg in beautiful #STHLM, #Christmas holiday reindeers in sunny #SoFL, at least in #HallandaleBeach, are NOT life-size, much less, larger-than-life. Another thing that makes me miss #Sweden. ๐Ÿ‡ธ๐Ÿ‡ช


Of course, I have yet to post anything to Snapchat after FINALLY getting an account there four months ago, so, maybe there, I'll be more of an earnest observer of what you all are saying, doing, filming than being an active participant.
For now at least. Baby steps...

Adding this to my list of 2018 New Years Resolutions: 
1.) Eat breakfast more often during week B4 leaving for work in morning instead of stopping 4 Fast Food; 
2.) Have breakfast in bed more often; 
3.) Whenever possible, have super-attractive fashion blogger/Instagram models over for breakfast when the latter occurs. 
Henceforth to be known as the @micahgianneli Rule:






http://hollywoodchocolada.com/

Made in the shade! Your faithful blogger, Dave, on a very windy Sunday afternoon about 4:30 PM, in between the iconic beach ball-colored Hallandale Beach Water Tower and HB Lifeguard stand #1, near @ETARURestaurant, October 29, 2017, Hallandale Beach, Florida.
Above, me, November 14, 2017, Hallandale Beach, Florida, with a loosened tie during lunch: Portrait of a Broken Heart Hiding His Tears Behind His Favorite Ray Bans -which have been lost in the interim! :-(

​Dave 
Snapchat: SoBeHoosier





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