GLOUCESTER GETS TINGLED IN THE BUTT

Like pretty much everyone, we here at your The Clam are busy with things like stuff, life, work, and other assorted things. So, while we ARE working on a piece focusing on a serious subject, we thought that in the mean time we’d gift you with the most ‘opposite of serious’ thing that we could possibly come up with, inspired by Dr. Chuck Tingle himself.

Enjoy, and feel free to add your own. Chuck would want all his buckaroos to be in on the fun.

**Note – some of these are illustrated, some are not, because we are supposed to be working today and not dicking around with photoshopping hunks.

 

 

  • ‘THE GREASY POLE REAMED ME IN THE BUTT WHILE SHOUTING VIVA’

  • I’M HAVING A GAY AFFAIR WITH THE PHYSICAL MANIFESTATION OF A WARD 2 RECOUNT

  • ‘NOT POUNDED IN THE BUTT BY ANYTHING BECAUSE I SPENT 40 MINUTES IN LINE AT STARBUCKS’

  • ‘MY ASS IS HAUNTED BY THE GHOST OF JOHN HAYS HAMMOND, JR.’

  • ‘GOOD HARBOR BEACH FORMED A MAN OUT OF SAND AND SENSUALLY SLAMMED ME IN THE BUTT’

Babson Boulders for a new era

We’ve noticed here at the Clam a great deal of discussion about Dogtown in recent months. We think that Dogtown belongs on the Historic Register, and that will help keep it protected from development while also making it somewhat more accessible as a part of our history.

But we realized that the Babson Boulders, one of the noteworthy features of the site, seem a tad dated for today’s world. So we consulted with the Clam braintrust in our super secret Underground Lair, and came up with a few ideas that can be placed as soon as we find a stonecutter who will work cheap and can chisel in Comic Sans. But until then, we’ll share them with you.

“Get Consent”

“Vivaaaaaaaa”

“Back up your data”

“If this is the high tide line, you’re screwed”

“Vaccinate your kids”

“Carry in/Carry out”

“Take off every zig”

“Han shot first”

“I went to that old parochial school on the Rotary; what happened with that?”

“Fight the Power”

“Never vote Republican”

“Delete your browser history”

“Suck It, Ravenswood”

“Fluoridate Public Water”

”Check Snopes”

On Housing – thoughts from the Clam’s token politician on the eve of the Fuller vote

Affordable housing.

 

Those two words seem to scare, anger, and confuse most people. Dunno why, though. It’s something every community needs, and precious few have enough of it. Affordable housing also isn’t really so much a specific government program (because lord knows we’re living in an era where, ever since one of our Grand Old political parties picked up a prion disease and started to see their brain dissolve into pudding, convincing themselves that Governmenting Is Bad) as it is a development goal to make sure that communities can have people of all sorts living there. The people who eat in restaurants AND the people who work there. The supermarket shoppers AND the supermarket workers. The Gym members and the gym workers.

 

Everyone needs to live reasonably close to their jobs. The people who sell you your coffee, deliver your newspaper, mow your yard, and help you live your upper middle class lifestyle don’t come from another dimension through a wormhole each day, returning to their tenement universe at night. Nope. They live in your town. If they get priced out of living there they’ll leave. And then the businesses you depend on won’t have employees. There’s more people who need affordable housing, too. People juggling school and work. Single parents. People in entry-level jobs.

She doesn’t live in a pod. She lives in an apartment. And you tip her badly, you cheap bastard.

People in government, too. I don’t know about Gloucester, but do you have any idea what a veteran parking enforcement agent (meter maid) makes? In Salem, after nearly 20 years, ours make about $44k. That’s also what an entry-level firefighter makes here. Make it to Lieutenant? We pay you $67k.

 

A new police patrolman isn’t paid as badly – they make about $54k. But that still doesn’t go too far in a world where rents for a 3-bedroom apartment go for between $1500 (one single listing on Realtor.com when I searched Gloucester today) and $2500 per month.

 

Your friendly local GOP will tell you that affordable apartments are all set aside for “illegals” or “them”, or “welfare queens”.

Saint Ronald The Spender, after fighting the Welfare War

Affordable housing is for you. And a community that lacks it starts to die, from the inside out.

 

There’s a fiction out there that 30% of your gross income should be the guideline for what you pay in housing costs. So let’s look at that number, shall we?

 

Assume, for a moment, that you’re a firefighter that’s moved up a couple of grades. And you make $60k per year. Pretty good coin, right? So that means you should be able to afford $20k per year in rent or in mortgage+property taxes. That equals about $1660 per month in housing expenses.

You know, these guys? All the feels.

First of all, looking at that Gloucester market (and I don’t know what you pay your firefighters, but it’s not going to be a lot more than Salem – if at all), when I ran the listing tonight there was ONE apartment rental of 3 or more bedrooms at that price. One. Now I’m sure there’s apartments that are on the market by word of mouth, or on Craigslist, or other channels. I’m not pretending that a single web search untapped an entire real estate market for me.

 

But that’s pretty slim pickings, however you look at it. Now assume the taxes paid on that salary (around $15k or so), and you’re looking at, after everything, perhaps $25k per year for that firefighter. Out of that he’s going to have to pay for a car, food, gas, clothing, and a whole life. If he’s married and has a child, that’s going to help pay for childraising as well. Sure, his wife probably works too – and out of those combined salaries you now have (probably) 2 cars, childcare, and a zillion other increased costs.

 

And there are people out there looking at this financial statement and saying “I WISH I HAD IT THIS GOOD!!!”

 

Think about that.

 

Buying a house? That’s even tougher. For a personal example, my wife and I earned, between us, about $100k back in 1993. We bought a single-family house in Salem that spring for $185k.

 

One Hundred Eighty-Five. Thousand. Dollars.

And it looked like this. Really.

Today, it’s worth almost $600k on the open market. That’s a rough tripling in value. Did our salaries triple? Nope. Simply put, if we were in the market for a home today, we couldn’t easily buy our own home that we already have. Real estate prices have not followed the same inflationary curve that most consumer goods follow. If they did, our home would have a value around maybe $300k. High, but within reach. Instead, the $300k home needs a lot of work, may lack things like off-street parking, and is probably in a worse neighborhood. As crazy as rental prices are, home ownership is even tougher. Mortgages are relatively cheap nowadays, but a $320k mortgage will cost you (before taxes and, if you need it, PMI) about $1700 per month if you have amazing credit. Add your property taxes (mine are about $7200 per year – another $600 per month – so a home assessed for less might be half that, or $300 per month) and there’s $2000 per month or $24k per year to stay on the housing treadmill. Not including all the things you have to pay for when you’re a homeowner (repairs and the like).

 

It’s like a Red Queen scenario. You have to run faster and faster just to stay in the same place.

 

So part of the dilemma for Gloucester, Salem, and all sorts of other communities is how to serve these people. We need housing for our workforces. Only in a supply-side fever dream do we actually want a world where there’s a whole subservient underclass who can be shipped in and out of town daily.

Affordable housing, amirite?

Years ago, Massachusetts realized this. And they created the “40(b)” zoning law. To over-simplify horribly, it says this: communities should have at least 10% of their housing stock in the “affordable” category (and I won’t get into the exact way it’s measured – you can look it up). At last measurement, Salem was at about 14%, and Gloucester below 10%. What 40b does is give cities an incentive to place and approve projects with an affordable component – if that number is below 10%, a developer can buy a property, designate a certain portion of the project to be “affordable” by deed, and then bypass all sorts of local approvals and zoning restrictions that would otherwise apply.

 

In Salem, we’re above 10%. Our redevelopment is mostly concentrated around our old brownfields at this point, because we’ve filled just about all the rest of this city. And our boards have full powers over most of it.

 

You guys aren’t. The Fuller School is out there. So are a whole bunch of other open spaces in town. Just saying. Building market-rate housing will help affordability some, by increasing supply. But to really make a difference, you need to build the real deal. As a community, you can get serious about solving this yourselves, or you can try to raise up the bridges. But only one of Gloucester’s bridges is a drawbridge. The other one is fixed-span – and even though it’s under construction all the time, you can’t close it. So other people are likely to solve it for you. There’s money to be made in housing, after all.

Where the hell is our Clam?

“Hey, who turned out the lights? Anyone here? Knock knock…”

So, you may be wondering where Your Faithful Clam has gone. Truth is, we’re all pretty much still here but Real Life has gotten in the way of our trademark mix of snark, righteous indignation, and beautiful uses of pop culture references. So for the moment, they’ve left me – junior editor and Actual Elected Official Josh – with the keys.

Where are they right now? Well, Jim is in the middle of a massive client project that his small marketing company is managing. I saw him once, furtively wandering into a pho joint in Beverly (because Gloucester needs a good Vietnamese restaurant too, amirite). He looked haunted, as if he was on the verge of being a mammoth success and earning enough cheddar on this job to buy a brand new Subaru with ALL THE THINGS. He’s also kinda burned out from the damned Democratic primaries and is joining me on Team Cthulhu now.

KT moved (twice) and took on a new full-time job in the insurance biz. She now lives close enough to Official Clam Dirndl Wearer and Beer Goddess Brooke Welty that they’re quickly going from good friends to “it’s really maybe a little creepy at this point”. She’s working through post-divorce life and has an awesome boyfriend. She’s sick of the primaries too.

As for the rest of the Clamtributors? Adam headed off to Greenland in the hopes of experiencing an actual winter before climate change turns New England into Morocco. Len went to work for me in real life and had his creativity stifled. Anna is moving up to one of the identical cake decorating war shows, seeing what spunk and attitude can do to make a MB sheet cake spectacular. Jeremy was unable to be elected President in Massachusetts and has resumed warping the minds of America’s youth. And Steven has begun a retail business to see if every product can be sold with a 17% markup. Because we really like that arbitrary number here at The Clam, and it works so well for taxes.

Me? I’m just busy trying to keep the lights on here for the moment. We do have some terrific content coming up in the coming weeks, just not as fast as we’d all like to. Greatness takes time, y’all.

Hot Take on Gloucester Issues by Josh Turiel

Occasionally we look to FOC (friend of Clam) Josh Turiel for “Over the Bridge” perspective. That he gives it from Salem, a place demonstrably crazier than Gloucester, just makes it better. But Josh is sane. Sorta. Anyway, here’s his hot take on some of our goings on.

As the Clam’s Official Actual Elected Politician (City Councillor in Salem, MA, and current Council President), I am often asked to comment and lend the Clam insights on issues local and national. Having gone through the election process several times and worked for a number of other candidates for office, I can bring some of that perspective to events going on, and candidates for office.

The first thing I’ll opine on for the benefit of the Gloucester audience is this. When I heard about the Soones Court plan, my first instinct was to say “this is a joke, right?” I mean, I live in Salem. We have plenty of controversial projects here in this community, mostly projects that are brownfield re-use where people are justifiably worried about density and traffic issues, and possible remediation risks.

With all that given, nobody thus far has proposed building a SUBDIVISION ON THE FREAKING OCEAN. What homes in Salem we do have balanced on the ocean are in places that at least are somewhat sheltered in our harbor, and aren’t directly exposed to the Atlantic. If there was actual land to build on perhaps this would be different, but fortunately it looks like you guys were able to shoot that bit of idiocy down. Good on you.

Because the old saying “they aren’t making real estate anymore”? It applies doubly to the seawall. That’s going away a little bit farther, even.

I’ve also been asked a lot about the election process and the presidential campaign. Well, I’m arguably the closest thing to a conservative in Clammedia Tower (as I may have been the only non-Sanders supporter on the vast payroll). That said, even with that I’m still a Democrat. Registered and everything. Not one of those “unenrolled” that dominate Massachusetts and much of the country.

So I understand, a little bit, what the complicated rules are that are used to select a Presidential nominee. The Democrats and Republicans have slightly different rules. The Democrats once nominated Jimmy Carter, and he won the Presidency. This made a lot of Democrats very unhappy, so they changed the rules to make it a lot tougher to nominate Jimmy Carter ever again. Basically, they created a big class of free agent delegates that amount to about 20% of the total delegates to national convention. They’re called “Superdelegates”, because they have the power to totally ignore the electorate and vote for whomever they damn well please.

And those “Superdelegates” are the Professional Political Class of the Democratic party. They’re elected officials (Congressmen, Senators, Governors, other state constitutional officers) and key party leaders (senior party directors and officials). The idea is that they’ll generally back whomever the preferred candidate is of the party mainstream and make sure that the rabble doesn’t win.

In reality, even though they pledge to the party favorite, often early, if that candidate goes south in a hurry (like, for instance, happened to Clinton in 2008), they fold like a cheap suit and switch to whomever has the momentum.

The problem for those Feeling the Bern, though, is that many of the key primaries after this point are not “Open” primaries, in which anyone can vote. And Sanders’ support has come very much from unenrolled voters and voters who come from outside that party structure. And the Democratic party so far hasn’t wavered nearly as much as they normally do. Between proportional delegate awarding and closed primaries, I go on record for Clam purposes as saying that Sanders is likely toast by the beginning of April. Sorry.

I loves me some Bernie, I just don’t see him winning a Democratic Party nomination. Because unlike the Republicans, the Democrats know how to stack the deck properly.

The Republicans have a different system. They gather the most offensive people they can generate and let them slug it out

uninteligble yelling

while following the strategy of appealing to the farthest right segment of their base they can – because that’s a proven way of getting the nomination. After doing so, the nominee then tries to tack as close to the center as they can in the hopes of getting normal Americans to forget the promises they made and vote for them.

In every election since 1992 (except for 2004), that’s failed, but it gets people nominated. The other custom in the Republican party is that the runner-up for the nomination is usually the front-runner for the next time out.

This year, that failed because of the orange-tinted sentient wig of spite that detonated onto the electorate this year with a splat, namely He, Trump. After eight years of unbelievably polarized rhetoric painting a utterly milquetoast black man as a Deadly Muslim Kenyan Socialist who WANTS TO TAKE YOUR GUNS (and whose signature accomplishment has been to make everyone buy health insurance) many disaffected members of the Republican base were ready to thrust their right arms in the air and pledge support to a vaguely authoritarian reality TV star.

Donald Trump supporter Birgitt Peterson of Yorkville, Ill., argues with protesters outside the UIC Pavilion after the cancelled rally for the Republican presidential candidate in Chicago on Friday, March 11, 2016. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune/TNS via Getty Images)

Donald Trump supporter Birgitt Peterson of Yorkville, Ill., argues with protesters outside the UIC Pavilion after the cancelled rally for the Republican presidential candidate in Chicago on Friday, March 11, 2016. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune/TNS via Getty Images)

Since the opponents that have survived against him so far are reduced to a Canadian religious zealot who likes to pull wings off flies and is considered the most hated man in Washington, a youthful helium balloon from Florida, and a vaguely polite, friendly right-wing patron of the Reformed Church of the Balanced Budget, the Republicans are now hoping that they can spread disorder and chaos to the point where they go into their July convention with no nominee.

And then they would have to try and bring in a Great White Hope to save the party. The likeliest person to return in that scenario would be Willard (Mitt) Romney – you hated him in 2012, but much like Bullwinkle, “This time for sure!”. The other option considered by GOP elders was digging up the corpse of Ronald Reagan, but have you seen Reagan’s actual positions? Even dead, he’s not conservative enough for this bunch. Outside of the whole Supply-Side economics horsecrap Reagan’s pretty much left of John Kasich. And he made deals with Democrats that settled for half a loaf All. The. Time.

Ultimately, we think the GOP will splinter into two or three different parties. Maybe this year, maybe not for another cycle or so. They’re getting close. But after this election, the Cape Ann GOP will have to decide whether to just officially re-dub themselves the Cape Ann Tea Party or not. I’m thinking they rebrand. But this year, they’ll be lined up solidly behind He, Trump, instead of whining about how Ted Cruz just really isn’t conservative enough for Cape Ann.

Anyhow, there is more to this battle that will come later, and the Clam will, in our inimitable fashion, weigh in on it.

Back in Cape Ann, the affordable housing project I wrote about last fall? Why in sweet heaven is this not done yet? It’s a rehab of a downtown property that will bring people living in your downtown. Trust me. This happened in Salem. It works out well for you in the end. There will be more traffic, at least a little bit more. That’s cool, you also get people living there who will shop, eat, and walk the downtown – making it look busier and more successful and in turn drawing out still more people to Gloucester’s newly cooler and hipper downtown. Yes, these are “affordable” units. It still works. Really.

There’s plenty more to weigh in on over the next few months and Your Faithful Clam will bring it all to you, complete with occasional insight. This is our first Presidential campaign as a active mollusk and we hope to help the region bumble through it as best we can. Think of it as a warmup for the local elections that we will again cover next year – and that ALL OF YOU SHOULD VOTE IN FOR CHRISSAKES.