The Daily Parker

Even though there are more important things going on in the world, there are also better bloggers out there, so I trust sticking with entirely petty and parochial issues won't offend anyone. Like this, for instance:

Prying the Sears name off North America's tallest building was as simple as asking the leasing agent from U.S. Equities Asset Management to do it.

"I kept saying, 'Sears Tower, Sears Tower. I'd rather have it be Kmart Tower,'" said Carmine Bilardello, the Willis executive who negotiated the lease. "Then I asked them what it would take to put our name on the building, and they said that could be arranged."

Well, then, I guess that's as good a reason as any. I'm still not calling it Willis Tower. Or "Big Willie," for the love of dog.

I'd like confirmation on this: the Times' David Pogue reported today that Amazon deleted a particular author from people's Kindles overnight:

[A]pparently the publisher changed its mind about offering an electronic edition, and apparently Amazon, whose business lives and dies by publisher happiness, caved. It electronically deleted all books by this author from people’s Kindles and credited their accounts for the price.

You want to know the best part? The juicy, plump, dripping irony?

The author who was the victim of this Big Brotherish plot was none other than George Orwell. And the books were "1984" and "Animal Farm."

The Kindle forum thread on the topic reads, to me anyway, like the copies deleted were from a publisher that didn't have the rights to sell electronic copies. Like it or not, Orwell's works are still protected by copyright. So if the deleted copies were indeed sold by a publisher illegally, it's not like Barnes & Noble removing the book off your shelf and leaving 99c on the table; it's like Barnes & Noble discovering it had sold you a remaindered book and correcting the error.

On the other hand, perhaps an email explaining the situation might have helped Amazon in this case?

Cubs win their first game to start the beginning of the ending of the season at 1 game over .500. Hey, it could happen.

The Sears Tower's name officially changed to Willis Tower this morning, under the new ownership of UK insurance brokerage Willis Group Holdings Ltd. No one will call it that for a generation, of course, a fact not lost on NPR's Steve Inskeep this morning.

Willis CEO Joseph Plumeri, in what I sincerely hope was a moment of retail British irony rather than wholesale American idiocy, suggested a way to help ease the transition:

[Crain's Chicago Business]: Any idea how long will it take for people to get used to the new name?

[Plumeri]: No, I don't. People have asked me, "What do you think they'll call it? Willis, Sears?" I've said, "You can call it the Big Willie, and that would be fine with me." And I mean that. I don't mean that in a comedic way. (Chicago) is a town of neighborhoods and it's a town of nicknames. And people in this town, when you call something by a nickname it's not meant to be demeaning, because I come from the neighborhoods. It's meant to be a term of endearment. So if they did that, that would be fine.

One more thing: I want to warn my friends and colleagues that, today and tomorrow, anyone uttering that hideous phrase from that treacly 1980s sitcom—you know what I'm f@!$&!! taliking about—will be punished. Oh yes. In the names of Strunk, White, and Orwell, you will be punished.

The Chicago Tribune ran an exposé of suburban red-light cameras recently; today they're reporting that one suburb, Schaumburg, has removed its camera despite its success at generating revenue. So why would they remove a million-dollar-earning camera? Because it doesn't actually stop accidents, and it really annoys drivers:

When Schaumburg first signed on to the red-light camera business last year, officials could hardly wait to get started, which is why they chose Meacham and Woodfield Roads as the first of their 10 planned camera locations. That intersection wasn't chosen because it had a lot of accidents -- the spot isn't even in Schaumburg's top 10 -- but because all of the intersection's approaches are in the village's boundaries and are local roads. This let village officials deploy the cameras much faster, avoiding the state approval needed for cameras on state roads.

Almost immediately, that selection paid off, literally, as cameras there flashed as fast as a paparazzi pack, mostly nabbing drivers for making right turns on red without a complete stop. In just 2½ months, the cameras spit out about 10,000 tickets, each a $100 violation.

[But] Schaumburg officials stated Tuesday night that they terminated the RedSpeed contract because crash data, prepared by the Police Department in June, revealed that the intersection does not have a problem with running-red-light accidents nor did it have one in 2008 when the cameras were installed. That fact angers Brian Costin, president of the Schaumburg Freedom Coalition, a citizens group that campaigned against the cameras last September. "I think Mayor [Al] Larson and the board did not do their due diligence," he said.

Unfortunately, other suburbs haven't gotten the memo:

On Monday, River Forest's board voted to conditionally hire RedSpeed to install two traffic cameras along Harlem Avenue.

Sigh. Cameras may not be all bad, but when used to raise revenue rather than reduce accidents, they just piss people off.

Frango Mints, the historic Chicago mint-chocolate candy, have returned to Chicago:

South Side candymaker Cupid Candies has started producing the No. 1-selling Frango product — one-pound boxes of the mint chocolates — in the past several days for local Macy's department stores.

The start of production, to be announced today by Macy's and Cupid Candies executives, comes a year and a half after production was expected to start.

... The production is meaningful to Chicagoans outraged by the 1999 outsourcing of Frango production to Pennsylvania under then-Marshall Field's corporate parent Dayton Hudson, and then outraged again when Macy's CEO Terry Lundgren jettisoned the Marshall Field's brand and replaced it with Macy's in September 2006.

It's about time, too.

Incidentally, I discovered when I worked in Lisbon, Portugal for a few months in 2000-2001, that "frango" means chicken in Portuguese. People in Europe already think we Americans eat crappy food (can't think why); the "chicken mints" I brought caused some commotion in the Lisbon office until people got up the nerve to try them. Ah, international business.

Heaven knows some teams need it.

With baseball taking a three-day break for the All-Star Game (tomorrow night in St. Louis), we take a moment to reflect on how much worse things could be for the Cubs. They wound up exactly at .500, with 43 wins and 43 losses, tied with Houston and 3.5 games behind St. Louis (49-42).

The real story, though, has to be how the Washington Nationals haved lost 61 games so far, the second time in a row they've dropped 60 before the break, putting them on course to lose120 games by the end of the season in October. It won't be the worst season in history (the 1899 Cleveland Spiders went 20-134), but it would be the worst showing for the Nationals.

There's hope. Last year they pulled out more wins in the second half, ending with a 59-101 record.

The Cubs, though: looks like perfect mediocrity, once again.

Update: Mediocrity, certainly; but possibly also bankruptcy, according to reports.

Via Calculated Risk, apparently Wells Fargo is suing itself over a mortgage foreclosure, which Fox Business columnist Al Lewis fails to understand, and so, because it's Fox, decides to criticize:

You can't expect a bank that is dumb enough to sue itself to know why it is suing itself.

... In this particular case, Wells Fargo holds the first and second mortgages on a condominium, according to Sarasota, Fla., attorney Dan McKillop, who represents the condo owner.

As holder of the first, Wells Fargo is suing all other lien holders, including the holder of the second, which is itself.

Most of the column slams Wells Fargo for being stupid, for wasting paper, for abusing the legal process, etc., rather than trying to explain why the bank did this. Possibly, Lewis could read the third paragraph of his own column, in which he quotes a Wells Fargo spokesman explaining that "[d]ue to state foreclosure laws, lenders are obligated to name and notify subordinate lien holders." Guess how you're required to do that in most states' foreclosure laws? Through a court filing.

As one who possesses a (seldom-used and quite dusty) juris doctorate, I understand why this looks odd but is, in fact, appropriate under the law. The bank has this obligation so that other leinholders' rights are protected. Lewis, himself about as ignorant of the law as he is of journalism, asks "wouldn't it be easier for Wells Fargo to release one of the liens to itself?" I'm not sure what he means, because he doesn't seem to understand the fundamentals of real property law. As the bank's spokesman said, "The primary reason is to clear title and ownership interest in a property to prepare it for sale." (Emphasis mine.) It's not a contested suit; Wells Fargo will not be taking itself "to the Supreme Court," despite how much Lewis would enjoy that.

In the alternative I suppose Lewis could mean that Wells Fargo should simply walk away from the second lein, which would, in effect, put money in the pockets of all the other leinholders at its own expense. That would not only be stupid, it could generate a shareholder derivative suit.

The truly stupid person here is Lewis, who refuses to understand what his own sources are saying in his own column.

Since Lewis' main source seems to be the owner of the property under foreclosure, you can bet that if Wells Fargo had done something hinky with the second mortgage, Lewis would be all over that, too. That this is a complicated and somewhat nuanced legal situation doesn't seem to enter into his thinking; the Rights of the People (including—or, given this is Fox again, especially—those of millionaire property developers) Must Be Protected. The Outrage! The Outrage!

In sum: the bank really, really doesn't want to sue itself, a point several bank and legal sources make clear in the column to any person of average literacy. The bank has no choice, both as a matter of Florida law and as a matter of arithmetic. Yes, the bank probably shouldn't have agreed to an 80/20 mortgage during a real-estate boom on overly-optimistic condo project, and as pennance will now have to eat a good bit of both loans. But Lewis would rather waste column-inches getting mad rather than do what he as a journalist should do, which is to understand and explain a seemingly odd event.

Again, though, this is Fox. Understanding is not encouraged.

What a brilliant idea. Get 30 brewers together under some tents, charge a reasonable amount ($40) for admission, and provide everyone with a 60 mL tasting glass. Yum. (For the most part.)

Yesterday I went to AleFest 2009 in the shadow of Soldier Field, and in the aftermath of severe thunderstorms. (Note to self: bring dry socks next year.)

I must confess to a slow but perceptible change in the sensitivity of my palatte as the afternoon wore on, but I did come away with some new beers to buy when I can: Southampton IPA from, of all places, Long Island; Emmett's Victory Pale, from West Dundee, Ill.; and Granite City Duke of Wellington IPA, from St. Cloud, Minn.

There weren't as many people there as I would have expected, probably no more than 500 or so, but by 4pm every single one of them was in this line:

This is what happens when 500 people each have about two pints of ale simultaneously.

Excellently fun afternoon. And, given a small amount of discipline and a large amount of time, I did not overindulge. (In fact, more beer than you might guess wound up discreetly feeding grass and trees. Hey, not everyone likes every beer.

Whole Foods recently opened its new, enormous Chicago store at 1550 N. Kingsbury St., on an old brownfield lot. The old industrial infrastructure surrounding the site—including a still-active spur line railway running down the center of Kingsbury St.—still has some, ah, quirks from the days before tens of thousands of shoppers went there every week. The intersection of Weed, Kingsbury, and Sheffield, for example, goes off in five directions, not including the three parking entrances:

The store occupies the vacant patch in the lower-left quadrant of this image from Google Maps. The store parking lot has entrances near where Weed meets the river, and also near the "A" marking on this photo. North Ave., Clybourn St., and Halsted St., the largest streets in the area, are just beyond the top and right sides.

So a lot of traffic now goes past that intersection. Not just cars, either; with two major bus routes and a Red Line station right there, the store attracts lots of pedestrians. (Parker and I often go there, for example; it's about 3 km from home, so the round-trip makes for a good hour of walking.)

Until this week, the intersection only had two stop signs, one on the southbound Kingsbury corner, the other on the westbound Weed corner.

Tom Vanderbilt, author of Traffic, and Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Jeff Speck, the authors of Suburban Nation, would argue that this is probably less dangerous than it sounds. Everyone approaching the intersection instantly realizes that he has no idea where anyone is coming from or going to, no idea who's going to stop or go, and no idea where the guy with the dog will choose to cross. Consequently, he slows down and starts paying attention.

I am surprised that it took two months for the city to respond. Clearly we can't have people thinking for themselves at a dangerous intersection. So now the intersection has stop signs all around. My prediction: drivers will pay less attention, except to struggle with remembering who goes first when you all arrive at an intersection simultaneously,[1] with no effect at all on accident rates. As long as Parker and I can get across the street, we're fine.

[1] In Illinois, there is no rule. Probably you should observe the majority rule and wait for the person to your left to go before you.