By Staff
Regular readers might remember a Jan. 31 Minnesota dispatch from the Land of 10,000 Lakes and 600 festivals, including the first Whorehouse Days in Gilbert.
It was a deliberately provocative name, guaranteeing priceless publicity. The Iron Range town's ploy worked too well, despite drawing attention from Dowagiac to Scotland.
The naughty name nodded at Gilbert's actual notoriety as a red-light district of saloons and prostitution serving isolated lumberjacks and miners, but as you might imagine, a backlash built among certain offended locals who pressured City Council members into killing the July 9-10 bash, including competitive beer-mug sliding along an outdoor bar, a best-dressed madam contest, a four-poster bed race and a performance of "The Best Little Whorehouse in Gilbert."
Organizers, who call themselves Gilbert After Hours, posted this on their Web site: "The all-powerful City Council of Gilbert has decided to not rent us the public buildings we need for this event. We are taxpaying citizens of the community and feel we are being discriminated against … We are currently looking for an attorney that is not afraid of (or connected to) the city government of Gilbert."
But the mayor acknowledged that the brouhaha "has been very bad publicity for the city of Gilbert. I've been on radio talk shows as far away as New York and Arizona and they didn't have very nice things to say about us."
Organizers attracted $50,000 in sponsorships and were filling up nearby hotels with weekend reservations. But a third of Gilbert's businesses petitioned against it and opponents stormed council meetings in protest. They must have been loud if they weren't a majority.
Businesses that realized the jackpot they were about to miss were said to be "irate."
Maybe one of them became the "anonymous reader" who wrote to the Mesabi Daily News: "I am so grateful that our precious region will not be burdened with thousands of them pesky tourists wanting to come into our area spending their money in our gas stations, hotels, restaurants and shops. We don't need them; we here on the Range can survive on our precious morality in our quiet, quaint little bedroom communities. So thank you, my fellow festival opposers, may your lives be blessed with a quiet (and non-profitable) weekend."
Eyes and ears: When Chicago police installed cameras in 2004, the Second City's murder rate fell to its lowest level since 1965. Now our urban neighbor is employing new technology to listen, too - and recognize the sound of a gunshot within a two-block radius, pinpoint the source, pivot a surveillance lens at the shooter and place a 911 call.
Safety Dynamics LLC in Oak Brook, Ill., makes Chicago's SENTRI (Smart Sensor Enabled Neural Threat Recognition) system, which employs four microphones to triangulate on the shooter.
Chicago's "pods," or remote-controlled cameras can rotate 360 degrees and feed video straight to squad car laptops.
In various stages of implementing such technology are Philadelphia, Los Angeles County, Tijuana, Mexico, San Francisco, New Orleans and Atlanta. Safety Dynamics also works with the U.S. Army and Navy. The company develops systems that could detect a range of sounds such as glass shattering.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in Illinois is concerned about privacy rights being violated by prevalent cameras, but as long as they only record activity in public spaces, such as sidewalks and streets, they do not violate the law, according to Northwestern University Law School professor Robert W. Bennett.
Thirteen tracks include Fine Line, How Kind of You, Jenny Wren ("daughter" of Blackbird), At the Mercy, Friends to Go, English Tea, Too Much Rain, A Certain Softness, Riding to Vanity Fair, Follow Me, Promise to You Girl, This Never Happened Before and Anyway.
Recorded in London and Los Angeles over the past two years, its release coincides with the Sept. 16 launch of his 37-city US tour.
He played most of the instruments, a la 1970's "McCartney," including drums, guitar, bass, keyboards, block flute, harmonium and flugelhorn.