Showing posts with label downtown. Show all posts
Showing posts with label downtown. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

A river runs over it


For your flood watching edification, here are some scenes from downtown Omaha on Sunday.

Yes, the Missouri River continues to consume everything in its bloated path.

Monday, June 27, 2011

35 feet and rising


A couple of months ago, it wouldn't be unusual for visitors to be "swept away" by Omaha's riverfront.

Now, if you're down by the Missouri downtown, it wouldn't be too hard to get swept away on Omaha's riverfront. There's a distinction here, and it involves minding the barricades and signs.

The muddy Mo is running rampant and consuming just about everything in its wild and woolly path. So far, that pretty much has been limited to levees, farms, homes, roads, an interstate highway, a town or three, some parks and bunches of marinas.

And now the River That Ate the Midwest has its gastronomic eye on a couple of Nebraska nuclear power plants for dessert. Lovely.


FORGIVE US in this part of the world if we've become prone to visions of John Cleese and the "thin little mint . . . a tiny wafer" in Monty Python's the Meaning of Life. Only radioactive and sort of apocalyptic.

I guess we'll let the Nuclear Regulatory Commission worry about that for now. At top, you can see that Omaha has its hands full keeping the College World Series -- and the rest of north downtown -- dry.

What you're looking at is where crews tapped into the area's storm sewer that has been backed up by the flooding Missouri. Now the city pumps out runoff that would otherwise have nowhere else to go -- well, apart from all over city streets and into neighborhood businesses -- and send it over the floodwall and into the swollen river.

Moving south a bit, at left above, this is what the "Labor" sculpture on Omaha's Lewis and Clark Landing looked like Sunday evening. If you look closely, you'll note a couple of figures that have just about been covered by the rushing floodwaters.

They're about 8 feet tall. And they stand atop a platform the entire sculpture rests upon.

AT RIGHT is what "Labor" looked like a couple of weeks ago. Here's a link to the scene from when the waters just began to overtake it.

Perspective -- it's a useful thing.

Now back to keeping north downtown -- NoDo in local speak -- somewhat dry. It's not easy when the river's so high the storm runoff can't run off.

That's where these pumps (below) come in.

It seems Omaha has become a northern New Orleans. Complete with the street flooding until the pumps can get all the water lifted out and into the river.




THE STORM WATER goes from the sewerage (top picture) to these pumps (above), and then to a makeshift slough across what was, until a few days ago, the parking lot of the National Park Service regional headquarters.


THIS IS the drainage slough to the river and all the plumbing coming from the newly added sewer pumps.

Beneath this is the concrete parking lot. It's covered with plastic tarp, walled in with concrete traffic barricades and buttressed with sand berms. One-ton sandbags close off the slough in the foreground.



AND THIS,
by the way, used to be the lower level of Lewis and Clark Landing. Now it's the Missouri River.


LIKEWISE,
this used to be an old pier that stood well above the Missouri River. Now it is the Missouri River.


AND LIKE the riverfront trail, this post must come to an abrupt end.


Stay dry out there.

Monday, June 13, 2011

A river runs rampant


Here's some video I shot Saturday of the Missouri River just upstream from Lewis and Clark Landing, as well as by the Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge in downtown Omaha.

In a couple of weeks, I won't have to climb down the levee hardly at all to reach the water's edge.

I recall that, a couple of decades or so ago, there was a movie called
A River Runs Through It. In this spring and summer of high water and high anxiety from the top of the Missouri River watershed to the bottom, maybe we could call 2011's thriller A River Runs Through, Across and Over It.

Glub.

Learning it, loving it . . . living it?


The art of sandbagging (when the river's just too much and the levees are just too little) isn't something just any fool can do without a little learnin'. Of course, you'd be surprised at how many try, nevertheless.

This handy video from our neighbors to the southeast should make you an expert in about a quarter of an hour. Though the folks up in North Dakota add an important detail . . . your sandbags should point in the direction of the water's flow.

Remember, this is the age of the do-it-yourselfer. Unfortunately, in this country, this also extends to flood protection. Learn it, love it, live it.


HAT TIP:
NET Radio.

The upside of inundation


Sometimes, you just have to look at the bright side of things.

We will pause for a moment to allow Mrs. Favog to pick herself up off the floor after reading the previous sentence written by her pessimism-prone husband.


IN THE CASE of the Missouri River flooding in these parts, the upside of a bad thing is that the high water can be quite photogenic. Especially at night, when the light is just right and the reflections dance across the waves.

Going under on the Missouri


Here is the Missouri River at downtown Omaha on Saturday evening (above).

At right, here's the Missouri River at the same spot downtown as it was May 29.

But it's during the coming week, forecasters say, that the
real water will start to hit the Omaha area. By the time the Mighty Mo stops rising sometime in the next month or two -- barring any big rains -- we're supposed to have 4 to 6 feet more water than this.

And it's supposed to stay that high all summer.

Can the levees withstand that much water for that long -- and levels above flood stage maybe until winter? No one knows; the Missouri River flood-control system never has had to withstand such a test.


WILL SOME TOWNS around here, particularly on the Iowa shore, go under? It's a distinct possibility.

Are we already having levee problems in spots?
Unfortunately, yes we are.

Do I have confidence in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which built the flood-control system?
Not since 2005 . . . I'm originally from Louisiana.

And in these parts, the feeling quickly is becoming widespread.

Do I think Levees.org -- the New Orleans group that's emerged as one of the chief watchdogs over the Corps -- should send somebody up here to take a look and have a listen?
I think that would be useful both for us and for it, yes.

DO FOLKS who live on the bottomlands along the entire length of the Missouri need your thoughts, prayers and assistance now and for the foreseeable future.

Absolutely.

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

29 feet and rising


How high's the water, Mama?

Twenty-nine feet and rising.

And if the experts are to be believed, the Missouri River at Omaha is going to rise another 5- or 6 feet over the next couple of weeks, washing out crops, homes and parks all across the metropolitan area. Already, the water engulfs a small part of Lewis and Clark Landing downtown (at right).

Today the "Salute to Labor" sculpture, tomorrow on to the floodwall!

Above, we see flooding across an unfinished riverside park in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Below, sandbags on the now-closed floodgates on the Omaha side of the Maniacal Mo.



OF COURSE, that's nothing when you consider what's happening on the north side of Omaha and above.

Below, we take a panoramic view from high above N.P. Dodge Park, all of which is swamped and getting swampier.


NORMALLY, the Missouri River is beyond the tree line. Far in the distance, we see the bluffs on the Iowa side of the waterway.

And north of Dodge Park, a few miles beyond the city limits, there are scenes such as this.


AND SCENES such as this.


AND SCENES such as this.


HOW HIGH'S the water Papa?

Twenty-nine feet and rising.

Or, to further paraphrase Johnny Cash . . .
We can make it to the road in a homemade boat
That's the only thing we got left that'll float
It's already over all the corn and the oats,
Twenty-nine feet high and risin'.

Monday, August 16, 2010

Walk, don't fly


TRAVEL ADVISORY: After the unfortunate Icarus incident, travelers who plan to venture close to the sun are strongly urged to take the pedestrian bridge. Flying close to the sun is undertaken at your own risk.

Iowa and Nebraska authorities -- due to the continued high water and strong currents on the Missouri River -- will not be plucking your sorry ass out of the drink if you choose to fly and your damned wings melt.

This travel advisory is in effect until further notice. Thank you.

Wednesday, June 02, 2010

Still hangin' in there


Another scene from Memorial Day on the Missouri River. Right here in the Big O.

Don't let the sun go down on me


In about three weeks, Omaha's Rosenblatt Stadium will play host to its final College World Series, an event that has made its home there since 1950.

Next year, the CWS will move to the brand-new downtown TD Ameritrade Park, and the sun will set on South Omaha's old ballyard on the hill, which will give way to expansion of the Henry Doorly Zoo next door.

For now, though, the Memorial Day sun sets on the new stadium being built in NoDo -- Omaha speak for North Downtown.

Saturday, May 29, 2010

No nothing on the sidewalk


Dude! If you can't skateboard or roller-skate on the sidewalk in the Old Market, it's not like you can do it on the century-old brick streets!

That would be, like, fatal!

Oh.

Gotcha.

Fascists!

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Douglas Street


Here's a view through the windshield during a Sunday evening drive down Douglas Street in Omaha.


And, no, I'm not the Google Street View guy.


But I could be someday.



The old and the new of downtown Omaha.


That's all, folks!

Monday, March 15, 2010

Baton Rouge '81: Rollin' on the river


Left a good job in the city
Workin' for the Man every night and day
But I never lost a minute of sleepin'
Worryin' 'bout the way things might've been


Big wheel keep on turnin'
Proud Mary keep on burnin'
Rollin', rollin', rollin' on the river


Cleaned a lot of plates in Memphis
Pumped a lot of tane down in New Orleans
But I never saw the good side of a city
'Til I hitched a ride on the riverboat queen


Big wheel keep on turnin'
Proud Mary keep on burnin'
Rollin', rollin', rollin' on the river


If you come down to the River
Bet you're gonna find some people who live
You don't have to worry,
'cause you have no money
People on the river are happy to give


Big wheel keep on turnin'
Proud Mary keep on burnin'
Rollin', rollin', rollin' on the river



Rollin', rollin', rollin' on the river


. . . rollin' on the river


-- John Fogarty, 1968

Friday, March 12, 2010

Baton Rouge 1981: Getting around


In the summer of '81, in downtown Baton Rouge . . .


. . . this is pretty much what it looked like . . .


. . . as folks sat or stood around . . . in the afternoon heat . . .


. . . as they patiently waited . . . because these things took their own sweet time . . .


. . . for the bus. Which eventually arrived.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

The downtown drugstore


Summer 1981.

Downtown Baton Rouge.

A college student with a Yashica twin-lens reflex camera, filling rolls of 120 black-and-white film with images for a photojournalism class.

Here is the caption he -- I -- put on the above picture in a photo essay documenting that place . . . that time in a middling Southern state capital. Some 29 years later, I don't know whether it says more about downtown Baton Rouge or more about the experience and assumptions of the 20-year-old writing it:
THE PAUSE THAT REFRESHES . . . Liggett Drugs, at the corner of Riverside Mall and Florida Street, remains a downtown landmark with its vintage Coca-Cola neon sign and one of the few remaining lunch counters in Baton Rouge. Though a reminder of the Capital City's past, the store's customers generally consist of Baton Rouge's poorest residents -- a victim of the decline of downtown as a commercial area.
THE KID needed an editor. Sloppy writing. Introductory clauses that have not a bloody thing to do with what follows, except perhaps the concluding clause, which makes little sense whatsoever.

What a moron. I'll bet he thought he was hot s***, too.

I hate punks like that.

Still, the nearly 49-year-old me is oddly fascinated. I wonder what Mr. Wonderful had to say about the picture at left?
GIMME A HAMBURGER AND A ORDER OF FRIES . . . ["A order of fries"? God Almighty. OK, keep going. Jeez.] Something [?????? !] never change, like this drug store lunch counter, which pretty much looks the same as drug store counters used to look. [Scintillating insights . . . not. Idiot. Well? I've suffered this much, you just as well deliver the coup de grace. Continue with these semiliterate bleatings.] A great place to cool off on a hot Baton Rouge summer day.
WELL, at least I wasn't disappointed. Gaaaaack!

To give Joe College his due, the pictures aren't awful and -- lo, these many years later -- they do document Baton Rouge the way it used to be, as well as an establishment fewer and fewer there remember.

All right . . . photo on the right. Dare I ask what young, dumb and overconfident me wrote on that one?

Oh, what the hell. Hit me, Smiley!

SHOPPING DAY IN THE CITY . . . This family is decked out in its Sunday finest on a Saturday afternoon to do the shopping. [All RIGHT! Way to make a completely unsupported assumption about what the hell they were doing. Especially given the lack of shopping bags. Oh . . . but wait! They're just WINDOW shopping, being that "Baton Rouge's poorest residents" don't actually have enough money to BUY anything. Moron. Go on. . . .] While the city's major stores have deserted the downtown area, many smaller shops hang on, and one can still find [Way to throw a socket wrench in the gears of that compound verb, Gomer!] assorted goods at Mc Crory's five and dime.
I THINK we can say there was at least one thing more bedraggled than downtown Baton Rouge in 1981. My mad caption-writing skillz. That's a little slang that wouldn't come along for another 20 years.

Bedraggled. . . .

Interesting concept, isn't it? Surely, downtown Baton Rouge had seen better days by 1981. It is seeing better days now -- at least judging by the last time I was home for a visit.

(My writing skills, however, were as well gud gude good as they had ever gotten ever had gotten in '81. Ouch.)

Yet. . . .

Yet, if people back there are anything like me, now far away in Omaha, I'll bet they feel a certain nostalgia for the old bedraggled downtown Baton Rouge. For a weathered drugstore with a lunch counter. For a working riverfront, as opposed to a touristy, gambling riverfront.

For a place where just plain folk could hang out without a bunch of yuppies trying to out-pretentious one another amid the nightspots and trendy restaurants.

Don't get me wrong. The emerging new downtown Baton Rouge has a lot on the old, frayed-at-the-seams one. It's prettier, and nicer, and there's stuff to do.

But sometimes, when you're at the end of a hard day's night, you crave the comfortable old shoe. The frayed robe. The soft, loose (and ratty) sweats.

I GUESS THAT'S just like the realm of memory -- the comfort of looking back on what was amid the extreme uncertainty of what is yet to come. It's the realm of home. And tattered robes and old, comfortable shoes.

Which you probably bought at McCrory's, right down the street from Liggett Drugs.



OH, ALL RIGHT. What did Mr. Wonderful -- the college kid with the journalism-school camera -- have to say about this photograph? Be still my heart. . . .

IT SURE AIN'T Mc DONALD'S . . . Though business isn't what it used to be, people still stop by Willis Liggett's Rexall drug store just for its lunch counter. One of the few remaining of a dying breed, it is still a place where one can get out of the summer heat (or winter cold) and grab a coke [How about "grab a Coke"? Gee, kid, you must be on coke.] and a hamburger.

BRILLIANT! Sheer brilliance.

The kid probably will have a blog someday.

Thursday, December 31, 2009

Give me some peanuts and Cracker Jack


Old Rosenblatt Stadium ain't dead yet, but the family's thinking about the wake.

The wake, of course, will be the 2010 College World Series -- an oddity, being that the wake will precede the old baseball stadium's actual demise sometime in September, with the end of the Omaha Royals season.


MEANTIME, Omaha already can see the flashy downtown slickster that's going to replace the old girl in South O, starting with the 2011 CWS. At left is the view from 13th and Cuming streets of the new TD Ameritrade Park.

What's amazing -- at least to me -- is how quickly the site has gone from a Qwest Center Omaha parking lot to an excavation site . . . to this. "This thing really is gonna happen" quickly has gone from an intellectual exercise to a concrete-and-steel reality.


AND HERE'S the view from beyond what will be the right-field seats, while below is a close up of the work on the grandstands and luxury suites.

YOU KNOW, it's starting to look like a real city around these parts. Play ball!