Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Living Life Online: The "Best Town EVER" or...

www.homesnacks.net/worst-places-to-live-in-washington-121022/

37 comments:

  1. Don't forget to vote! Yes, you can vote against Port Angeles. I don't know why I didn't think of this sooner.

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    1. Either way, Port Angeles is a loser. In every sense of the word. Chumps. Suckers. Losers.

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  2. Yes, a list based on actual criteria, as opposed to a silly "contest" that is based on voting for your self. Hmmmm.

    Based on things like education, employment, housing, etc. Gee.. Port Angeles ranks as the 6th worst place to live in the State.

    Surprise, surprise.

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    1. Too bad the city council and county commissioners don't use, you know, things like real, fact-based, you know, facts, when making their expensive decisions.

      "Our shoreline is wonderful and beautiful and marketable! Let's put a Turd Tank on it!"

      "Our rivers are wonderful and beautiful and essential to our economy and water supplies! Let's run sewage pipes over them!"

      The madness never seems to end. But fortunately, this stupid, stupid "contest" soon will.

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  3. Considering Sequim's much higher crime rate, I'm surprised not to find them on the list.

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    1. It's towns over 10000.

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    2. The cutoff was 10k people in the city limits. Sequim is about 6.6k.

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  4. Let them have their jollies. Distractions are nice to have around here.

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  5. Hmmm...I wonder if the PDN is going to cover THIS particular piece of internet interest...Hmmm...

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    1. 'Bout as important as Yelp, I'd say.

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    2. At this point, pretty much everyone checks out sites like Yelp before going anyplace. So, yeah, I'd say Yelp and other rating websites are important. This one is at least as "important" as the Outside "drive our webpages hits up" campaign is.

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    3. Anon 10:24, you don't seem to get that Yelp (and Trip Advisor, Urban Spoon, etc.) have real impacts. People use those websites. So when they see things like "found dirty needles under my mattress" about our largest downtown hotel, that has a real-world impact on Port Angeles.

      Our local merchants, restaurants and hotels have to step up their game in a big way if they ever hope to compete, or even just to survive. They should stop wasting their time on some stupid, one-time, meaningless contest, and focus in on actually doing the hard work of running their businesses.

      Clean your rooms, brighten up your shop, train your staff, send your cook out for more skills - something, anything. Because right now, what we've got is a whole lot of nothing. And the internet allows the world to see that without ever having to come here.

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    4. Yelp is b.s. but Trip Advisor and Urban Spoon are key. This town is too reliant on FSA (food services of America) and Sysco foods (think junk food marketed to restaurants) to ever score very high. Here we are in close proximity to local agriculture, and we're serving pre-cut salad out of a big plastic bag.And, add to that, the prices of our restaurants are about the same as those in San Francisco and New York City. $45-50 dollars per person, for what? Junk food? The downtown building owners are to blame, too. They are trying to get Seattle rents for dilapidated buildings. (I'm just waiting for the moment when the city decides to put in parking meters...and the city council just nods like bobble-head dolls.)
      And, the real estate cabal keeps pushing prices that are insane, then the county just encourages them with their faux values. Take a zero off the end of your property value, and that would be just about right, considering. The only people we can get to buy our houses here are idiot Californians who are already in deep sticker shock from their wildly inflated values (but, justified, as everyone wants to live in California).
      For a poor area, with a high unemployment rate, low education, and questionable skills we sure are kidding ourselves, aren't we?

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  6. The best town ever wouldn't have higher than average unemployment.

    The best town ever wouldn't have frightening rates of drug abuse.

    The best town ever wouldn't have high drop out rates.

    The best town ever wouldn't be saddled with astronomical amounts of debt.

    The best town ever wouldn't have to bribe airlines to service it.

    The best town ever would have intelligent, ethical and responsive elected representatives.

    And the best town ever would have a stable water supply.

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    1. The best town would be looking for ways to serve the people.

      The best town would work to provide for the people who live here.

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  7. I am going to be so happy when this contest is over because I'm sick of the PDN articles about it and sick of the facebook posts that keep cropping up. It's a statistically invalid contest that means absolutely nothing and it's wasting a whole lot of people's time. How many public officials are spending time at work clicky clicky clicky to gain the BEST TOWN label so they can crow about it later? It's going to be insufferable if their internet games actually result in a win.

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    1. I hate this stupid click bait contest. Idiots. Stupid magazine, and it won't do diddly squat to bring people here. I don't know about you, but I don't suddenly say "goodie a magazine I've never heard of says this is the best place on earth" and then pack my car and drive right out.
      People come THROUGH PA because, to quote Gertrude Stein "There is no THERE, there" (about Oakland, CA, but that's only because she never came here). What do we have to offer?
      I can't believe that some of our marketing geniuses want to try and sell folks living on Vancouver Island to come here for the wonderful trees and the mountains (psst..they have their own, and, more pristine than ours). They want people heading to Victoria to stay here for a few hours, and spend their wad of vacation money. Except, what do we have to offer that isn't much grander in Victoria? No Roger's Chocolates, no high tea at the Empress, no Butchart Gardens, no dim-sum, no curious trinket merchants.
      We're the rest stop on the way to something.
      Our town is dull. Our desperation is cloying. Our "lets pretend" (drawing with a stick in the sand) is childish.
      We are what we are. A town that was so insecure it modernized the downtown buildings, or tore them down, to look like we were hip. We tore out the railroad tracks that could have led somewhere (they led to both Port Townsend and Olympia). We never finished the museum at the old Lincoln School (nor did anything with it, aside from some fundraisers that got us nowhere) and instead built a "business incubator" and all that nonsense that lined a few pockets, and did little else except put us in debt.
      Then we gave proprietary, singular use of our fiber optic internet pipe to a swindler (who's wife worked for the city, and wielded great power) which has since been sold. We can't really be attractive without inexpensive, fast internet. (Pooch was well screwed there).
      The town forgot to add some public gathering places when it designed itself, and the place to, naturally, put a nice center park, was instead made into a transit center. The second probably place for a gathering center is a parking lot (Red Lion. Why do they need that many spaces, anyway?). We let a prime retail spot become DSHS. We let some idiot buy the land at the end of Railroad.
      This town is about as forward thinking as the next con. Con artists never see far into the future, and they aren't civic minded.
      Seems no one in this town has any civic pride, certainly not our city council or the city government offices.

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  8. The summer vacation traffic will raise the number of people around town, as it always does, and the rah-rah folks will say it was because they voted themselves the best town.

    And, the water levels will continue to drop, and make even bigger headlines. Ooops.

    I saw with interest on the other blog a conversation going on, and the Revitalize "party line" being that Port Angeles is "coming back from the great recession ", and "has come back more that many others" due to the hard work of people downtown.

    Right. And the new unemployment numbers? Clallam "slightly down" to 8.1% , national is 5.4%, state wide unemployment is 5.6% .

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    1. Summer always brings a few more people. Fine. Too bad we never had a Chamber of Commerce who actually tracked numbers, and did interviews, and had some metrics. Can't tell what is working from what isn't without data. It's all best guesses here.

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    2. I could not possibly stomach silly Revitalize taking credit at this point in the game. Makes me sick.

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  9. Let's get one thing clear, Revitalize is but a new name for the doomed, Port Angeles United. They will deny it but look at this, the downtown association moved in with the chamber of commerce. Russ is still running the show with the other assorted Port Angeles United stooges in the wings. Give them enough rope and they will hang themselves such as this goofy click to show what a good town we have. How bout click here for a reliable water supply. Click here for a functioning school system. Click here for a hospital not about to fall over the edge into the strait. Click here for a city council that gives a shit. Click here for a county commission that is not giving away our future.

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  10. I see the new sports bar, on the way out of town, has a full parking lot. My understanding it is owned by one of the downtown folks that is thick into that cheerleader group, Revisionist Port Angeles.

    Every one else is supposed to put their money into propping up the downtown, while they draw people away from it. I see how that makes sense.

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  11. Did you see the TV news clips of the Frugals employees exchanging food for hits off a dope pipe? And, the Port Angeles Frugals management complain that the event was "captured" on video, and that the news media are "sensationalizing" the event.

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  12. Well, honestly it WAS entrapment. Like this isn't a regular thing.

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    1. You can't trap someone who doesn't willingly step into the trap...You can't cheat an honest man...Etc...

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    2. How do we know how regularly that, or similar things do happen? The guy who captured the exchange was confident enough to have the cameras rolling.

      Entrapment? How? All the empolyees had to do was say "no, the price of a burger is six bucks.." or what ever order came to.

      Plus, it wasn't just one employee.

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    3. Okay, people...Let's keep the focus on Port Angeles and Clallam County. If Frugals employees there start doing this on camera, we'll talk more. But short of that...

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  13. Is that why their burgers are so tasty? :)

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  14. As we see, a few people in Port Angeles have devoted their lives over the last couple of weeks to sitting at computers and repeatedly voting in order to get Port Angeles to be named " The Best Town, Ever" in the Outside magazines' contest.

    I'll be generous, and assume the people at Outside Magazine who came up with the contest were sincere in having a real contest to help their readers get exposed to communities across America. But, as we see, Port Angeles does not know how to play fair, and has openly chosen to distort the results of the votes by encouraging residents to vote as often as possible, and to "stuff the ballot box".

    Okay. We don't know if Outside Magazine knows about what Port Angeles is doing, or cares. Maybe, all they really care about is generating click traffic, and any deceptive practices by participants are just fine by them. In which case, everyone should be clear that the results and title of "Best" are meaningless.

    So, do any of you think there is any value in writing to Outside Magazine to inform them of what Port Angeles is really like? That they are going to use their name, brand, prestige and influence crowning a complete fraud?

    Going to their site, they have a "Contact us" site. Should we be writing to them, letting them know about all the things we talk about here? Once informed that the city is broke, with citizens overdosing in the intersections, youth pleading for help and hope and being ignored by the very same people promoting this vote, will Outside Magazine say they didn't know?

    Just a thought.

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  15. Over the weekend, I saw local businesses holding their own contests offering a prize to be drawn randomly for people who vote, and then post a screen capture of their vote to enter the local drawing. It's getting ridiculous. The voting site itself now has instituted a Captcha code now so they must be on to something - but maybe they think its just bots entering the contest. The code entry won't stop folks from "stuffing the ballot box." Only a few more days to go folks, then hopefully it goes away. If PA wins though, brace yourself.

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  16. I've read through this site a bit and it basically seems to me that a bunch of people who just don't like their own lives gather together here to bitch and complain. Here's an idea, perhaps if you don't like Port Angeles, you should actually do something to improve it. Or you should move to somewhere you actually like. I feel a little sad that some folks can concentrate so much negative energy into one spot. The town doesn't need your negative energy. How about promoting the 287 job openings that are currently going unfilled in the community and ways to match those jobs with applicants to help lower unemployment in the area and boost the economy? Better yet, get off your computer and do something about it.

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  17. Although there are truths on this site, most is negitive. What are any of you doing to change our situation? There is a saying that goes, "If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem"

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    1. You misspelled "negative." I point this out to help you, so that you won't look foolish in the future by making simple mistakes like that again.

      This blog is the same thing. It is helpful and useful to point out the stupidity of elected and business leaders. When they make blunders, they need to be called on them. That's not being negative, it's being truthful. And yes, sometimes the truth hurts. But that doesn't make it any less true.

      As for being part of the solution...Please note that one of the current crop of City Council candidates has cited this blog as a major factor in her deciding to run for public office. See? The discussions here do spawn real-world actions, as well as spreading useful and relevant information.

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