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Takoma Park does not have anything so inharmonious as a city hall; instead we have a community center, at 7500 Maple Avenue, which serves the same purposes. It contains an auditorium that was, for a long time, where the City Council met. This auditorium wasn't particularly useful for much else, though, so it's recently been refurbished to provide a venue for, well, whatever we need a venue for.
The new auditorium opened last week, and is hosting a two-week series of performances, readings, and so on to celebrate its completion. We looked at the fliers and immediately concluded that only one of these was of any interest to us, but that one we decided to check out. It was a concert by the Positive Vibrations Youth Steel Orchestra.
We managed to get confused about whether tickets were required -- there was one event on the calendar that required tickets, but it turned out this wasn't it. I wasted some time trying to get us a pair of the non-existent tickets.
We attended the show on Monday and enjoyed it; PVYSO is pretty good. The performers range in age from ten to "older than the kids," with most in their teens.
Attendance was... not impressive. In the low two digits. I hope the players weren't disappointed. I find myself wondering about the economics. But then, Takoma Park in general doesn't seem to be interested in economic efficiency.
Though they are moving our recycling collection to the same day as our trash collection, which is presumably an attempt at increasing efficiency.
Keeping Christmas lights up and on well into May doesn't strike me as efficient, either, but yes, there are still some to be seen, and no, I am not counting colored lights that are up year 'round, I am only counting lights that first appeared in December of 2009. These aren't unique to Takoma Park, though -- there are several in Silver Spring, too.
(The really scary item in that department is the house over on Holly Avenue (I think it was Holly) that still had its Hallowe'en decorations up and lit well into March, though they're down now.)
There are reports that the city council is struggling to balance the budget in the aftermath of the Great Recession; I wish them well with that. I note, though, that Takoma Park seems to be out of recession, going by real estate signs. Now that spring is here, lots of "For Sale" signs have been appearing -- two just on our block -- but they've been adding "Under Contract" signs at an astonishing rate. I don't think I've seen a single one that's been up for more than two weeks without adding a "Sold" or "Under Contract" sign. It's amazing. Our house was on the market for more than two hundred days in '08 and '09; this year the ones up the street didn't last a fortnight. There was one where I'd wanted to see the inside, and was hoping for an open house, but it sold ten or eleven days after it was listed.
Let's hope the rest of the country recovers as well.
The new auditorium opened last week, and is hosting a two-week series of performances, readings, and so on to celebrate its completion. We looked at the fliers and immediately concluded that only one of these was of any interest to us, but that one we decided to check out. It was a concert by the Positive Vibrations Youth Steel Orchestra.
We managed to get confused about whether tickets were required -- there was one event on the calendar that required tickets, but it turned out this wasn't it. I wasted some time trying to get us a pair of the non-existent tickets.
We attended the show on Monday and enjoyed it; PVYSO is pretty good. The performers range in age from ten to "older than the kids," with most in their teens.
Attendance was... not impressive. In the low two digits. I hope the players weren't disappointed. I find myself wondering about the economics. But then, Takoma Park in general doesn't seem to be interested in economic efficiency.
Though they are moving our recycling collection to the same day as our trash collection, which is presumably an attempt at increasing efficiency.
Keeping Christmas lights up and on well into May doesn't strike me as efficient, either, but yes, there are still some to be seen, and no, I am not counting colored lights that are up year 'round, I am only counting lights that first appeared in December of 2009. These aren't unique to Takoma Park, though -- there are several in Silver Spring, too.
(The really scary item in that department is the house over on Holly Avenue (I think it was Holly) that still had its Hallowe'en decorations up and lit well into March, though they're down now.)
There are reports that the city council is struggling to balance the budget in the aftermath of the Great Recession; I wish them well with that. I note, though, that Takoma Park seems to be out of recession, going by real estate signs. Now that spring is here, lots of "For Sale" signs have been appearing -- two just on our block -- but they've been adding "Under Contract" signs at an astonishing rate. I don't think I've seen a single one that's been up for more than two weeks without adding a "Sold" or "Under Contract" sign. It's amazing. Our house was on the market for more than two hundred days in '08 and '09; this year the ones up the street didn't last a fortnight. There was one where I'd wanted to see the inside, and was hoping for an open house, but it sold ten or eleven days after it was listed.
Let's hope the rest of the country recovers as well.