Back in April, Big Bad Bob declared that businesses in Charlotte had failed the team. Or him. Or something. Frankly I don't get it. The man gets a brand new arena, effectively for free, and he wants more? Give me a break. Someone should have slapped him when he decided to name the team after himself. The Carolina Cougars would have been a much better name. It would have brought back nostalgic days of the ABA and made more sense with the Panthers, and it doesn't matter if they weren't any good. The Bobcats? Might as well have named them the Housecats.

But then he complains that, after being jilted by the Hornets, the businesses don't support him, when he hasn't done anything for us? He still lives in Washington - or wherever it is, because it certainly isn't Charlotte. That's just stupid. Now I'm not saying that the man is stupid, because obviously he's done a few things well in his life. But surely he has some ideas of how to get things going. But he doesn't seem to have a clue how to do business in Charlotte.

I have often wondered why people live in tall buildings. In a prior job, I had to travel to larger cities than Charlotte, and when I did, I would end up staying in hotels that would look out at other hotels. The view just wasn't that great. I mean every once in a while you might get a nice show of someone making dinner across the way, or maybe watching television. But it was never anything interesting, like the naked guy in Friends, or even an attractive naked person or someone getting ready to jump out of a window (not that I want that, just saying - that would be interesting).

While I get that the idea of living in a more vertical manner is more friendly than sprawl, especially if you consider the green we are consuming, from the perspective of living in one of those places, you would always want to live in the tallest building possible, so you could look over the top of everyone else. I guess that's why the penthouses are worth the most money - because you get to do so. But then you have to look at air conditioning units and such.

It seems that the City of Charlotte cannot figure out why businesses along the Independence corridor cannot do well, so they plan to hire a consultant to do so for them. At a cost of $250-350 thousand dollars.

You heard that right. They are actually going to spend more than a quarter of a million dollars to have someone tell them why businesses have shuttered along the area of Independence that has seen work done. I just want to know how I can get in on this.

Just over a month ago, the current owners of Eastland Mall - Ohio-based Glimcher Realty Trust - decided that it wasn't even worth paying the mortgage any longer. That's probably not a good sign.

The trust owes some $42 million, and has had a "For Sale" sign out front for the last three years or so. So why walk away? Just like a standard homeowner, they found themselves in a property that was well underwater - worth far less than they owed - and feel that they are better served cutting their losses.

According to a study recently released by UNCC, Mecklenburg County has lost more than 100 acres daily to development from 1976 through 2006. That is roughly 75 football fields each day. Now I haven't read the study itself - only the summary in the paper - but it is disturbing, to say the least. By the year 2030, Mecklenburg County will have just 3% of green area left.

It mentions a comparison to New York City, and asks what the city would be like without Central Park. Now if you overlaid Central Park on Charlotte, the city would virtually disappear. At the same time, if you carved out green space from Charlotte in a similar ratio to Central Park in New York, it would have to be fairly large - and make a lot of people very mad. So the point is certainly well taken on that front.

Mecklenburg County Park and Recreation recently announced a new offering - Segway tours through the 1300 acre Latta Plantation Nature Preserve.

Tours are available much of the year, though hours vary, so you'll want to check the site. You do need to meet certain requirements - namely you need to fit on the Segway, be of a certain age and able to stand for a length of time (tours last for 3 hours). Refreshments included, though no word on what they are. Maybe trail mix and a bottle of water, so you may not want to get your hopes up. But it is definitely something new in the Charlotte area, thus if you're looking for something different, check it out.

Something like nine months ago (in November of 2007), the Lynx Blue Line opened to great fanfare - and not a few Bronx Cheers. Those who thought that the entire mass transit system of Charlotte would be paid for - not to mention built - by that time had a few shocks in store, as the budget kept going up and up ,while the delivered goods kept going down and down.

The sleek cars were definitely nice and all, but ultimately there was a certain disappointment. Original plans had called for trains that could handle three cars. Scaled-back plans had many trains running with two cars, and some sporting only a single. Parking lots along the farthest reaches had been trimmed as well, because with citizens screaming for another referendum, it seemed like the only way to make ends meet was to trim the fat. That was done, and now things have been up and running for the better part of a year. To make things even more interesting, gas has gone up with no apparent end in sight. What does it all mean?

There are people who will try to tell you that Charlotte is the Queen City. Don't believe them. Charlotte is Bus Stop City.

I've never been a huge rider of the bus. Even when I was in school I didn't ride the bus that much. I won't say that there weren't school buses back then, I just don't recall them being all over like they are now. But whenever I did ride the bus, I remember having to walk a good bit to get on the bus. Not the case in Charlotte. For whatever reason, Charlotte has to have the closest bus stops I have ever seen. There are some places in Charlotte (Idlewild Road North and Milton Road being two of them, but I'm sure that there are others) where the bus stops are perhaps a hundred feet apart.

Back in 1937, the North Carolina General Assembly created a system of control for "spirituous liquor" in the state. This act allowed voters in each county to determine whether or not liquor would be sold at retail, and if it would be sold, their vote would create an ABC board in that county, which in turn would be able to run one - yes, one - retail ABC store. Some seventy years later, there are 156 separate ABC systems in North Carolina and 392 retail stores.

Obviously something has changed, since there should be a one-to-one correlation with those numbers, and that is obviously not the case. I can personally say that there are nineteen in Charlotte, according to the search tool on the site. I haven't been to each of them. According to a recent article in the Charlotte Observer, while two-thirds of the boards run only one store, as was originally intended, there are actually nine boards in Brunswick Country operating ten stores. So I don't know how it works, I just know that it's a really odd setup.

After careful consideration, I have determined that the drivers in and around the Charlotte area have no idea how to use divided highways. They might not even know how to drive. But the divided highway baffles them like absolutely nothing else that I have seen.

In most parts of the United States, it is common for it to be unlawful to pass a stopped school bus (at least one with red lights flashing). The exception to this rule is on the divided highway, where that special division allows for special privilege. It's like the school bus is on an entirely different road, meaning you can pass at will, and safely ignore the fact that they are stopped, red lights or no. The first problem is that drivers in Charlotte seem to have no idea what constitutes a divided highway, so they just don't know when they should stop. That is a problem.

Because of events that recently transpired, we were able to come face-to-face with some of the staff of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Animal Control team, and came away less than impressed (to say the least). You're probably not surprised, as I've been talking about them for years - I think that the first post on the subject was way back in 2004.

To start things off, if we're talking about the strict letter of the law, Tigger never bit our son. Scratched yes, bit no. That means that he should never have been quarantined or even reported to Animal Control. But because we consider ourselves responsible parents and citizens, we explained what happened, and also to be absolutely sure that there was no cause for alarm (and because it was here at our house), allowed Tigger to be quarantined. What we really didn't like was the way in which it happened. There are so many blunders that it's just sad.