Our towns: April 2008 Archives

Hey, Swami:

I see them DNA tests show that the dead Chicago cougar was the same one they spotted up there in Wisconsin back in January. Should we be angry or thankful that our neighbors let their wild animal invade our back yard?

Sincerely,
Puma Concolor

Dear Mr. Concolor:

Not that it took William Petersen and Marg Helgenberger to figure this one out, but The Swami predicted that the Chicago cougar was the Lake County cougar two long weeks before the forensics confirmed it (and, if the O.J. Simpson trial taught us anything, it is that DNA results are always a slam-dunk case).

Now that the self-congratulations are dispensed with, we move to your question: should we send Wisconsin a thank-you note or a flaming bag of dog waste? Before answering, it might be instructive to look back at the good things and not-so-good things that America's Dairyland has given to the world:

Good: Usinger's meat products; Chris Farley; Harry Houdini; the BoDeans; Danica Patrick; the original Schlitz's; Les Paul; Spencer Tracy; Johnsonville brats; Orson Welles; Frank Lloyd Wright; Harley-Davidson; and the guys who made both "Airplane" and "The Naked Gun."

Bad: Arthur Bremer; Jeffrey Dahmer; Ed Gein; Joe McCarthy; Kato Kaelin.

And the cougar? Because no one got hurt, and the late predator gave us a nice "Shark Week" episode right at the tail end of winter, The Swami hereby puts the cougar into ... the good catgeory, right next to Jane "Malcolm in the Middle" Kaczmarek.

Swami:

Someone told me Waukegan is backing off that downtown parking plan that scared everyone away from parking (or doing anything else) downtown. When will they scrap the whole thing and blame it on an out-of-touch consultant?

Stevie, Wondering in Waukegan

Dear Stevie Wonder:

The Swami likes your thinking. It has been a public relations nightmare for Waukegan ever since some bean-counter told them to put the screws to on-street parking outside the empty restaurants and mostly-dark Genesee Theatre. The surest way to make sure people never venture east of Green Bay Road ever again is to hit them with a $20 parking ticket and make them feel like a sucker for taking a chance on Waukegan.

And Swami never saw the logic in sticking Hussey's Downtown Tavern on the south end of Genesee -- which is so dormant that you could fire a cannon and never hit a parked car -- and then nickel-and-diming-and-quartering its customers back to Kenosha County.

Talk about the law of unintended consequences. All those extra coins in the meters can never buy back a lost consumer.

But Waukegan's burgermeisters are slowly seeing the light. The 9 p.m. parking limit, enacted in November, became 7 p.m. in March, and now the business community is asking for that to become 5 p.m., along with cutting the fines in half and extending the free-parking window for people who want to gulp-and-git.

Using that geometric progression, your Swami predicts that the city, by September, will be paying visitors 25 cents an hour to pretty-please come downtown and see a show, maybe grab a bite. And it will be money well-spent.

Wait Just a Dang Minute, Swami:

Are you as outraged as I am that Waukegan would even consider putting a muzzle on we, the people, who want to get up and speak our piece during City Council meetings? What kind of police state are we living in?

Love Always,
Vox Populi

Vox, Vox, Vox:

Remain calm. Sure, the Waukegan Town Fathers have rattled their sabers about dumping Audience Time, but it might just end up being an empty threat.

But if there is any outrage to be had here, it is that there wasn't a simultaneous move to dump Aldermen's Time.

Seriously. Have you ever sat through a Waukegan City Council meeting? Neither has the Swami, who usually watches it on Comcast to battle insomnia. Two hours of people speaking just to hear themselves speak. The Usual Suspects, week after week, railing on about the same pet issues, while everyone who opposes them literally rolls their eyes to keep from falling asleep. This is not productive discourse. It is a squabbling family that has tuned one another out.

Realistically, the business of the City of Progress can be taken care of in a clean, quick 30 to 45 minutes. Gag the gadflys, collar the aldermen and put the busywork stuff like "APPROVE PAYROLL" and "MOTION TO PAY THE ANNUAL SPECIALIZED RESPONSE TEAMS MEMBERSHIP DUES" on this wonderful clearinghouse tactic called a "consent agenda." Ten unanimous votes for the price of one, bah-dah-boom, done.

This way, there will be no more counterproductive squabbling ... and everyone will get home for the second half of "Monday Night Football."

Dear Swami:

Why is it that every time I turn on the news or pick up a newspaper, I see stories about the Gurnee area bracing for flooding? Why do these idiots continue to live and work in a FLOODPLAIN, if they know they may get wet every year?

High and Dry in Highwood

Dear High:

Let's do what the nuns always told us not to do, and answer your question with a question. Several questions, actually:

Why do people build $800,000-plus brick mini-mansions 10 feet from the Tri-State Tollway at, say, Route 137 and Route 176?

Why are the Pritzkers getting millions and millions of dollars for land that commands a stunning view of that same Tri-State? And why do developers constantly knock on Waukegan's door looking to build dozens if not hundreds of homes within hearing distance of both I-294 and Route 120?

Why are there wooded estates smack dab along the mighty Union Pacific railroad tracks in noneother than tony Lake Forest?

Last but certainly not least, why did multi-multi-millionaire Michael Jordan build his Lake County mansion, oh, about a John Paxson three-pointer away from not only those Union Pacific tracks but also Route 41?

Don't ask the Swami. Ask Lex Luthor -- as portrayed by Kevin Spacey in "Superman Returns" (2006): "You can print money, manufacture diamonds, and people are a dime a dozen. But they'll always need land. It's the one thing they're not making anymore of."

There you have it. People choose to live by raging rivers, buzzing tollways and roaring frieght-train tracks because the world isn't getting any bigger -- and in the banquet of real estate, sometimes you have to go with the leftovers.

P.S. Let us know if you can do a shift or two on sandbag patrol this spring.