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Aside from that big, salty water feature that wraps around much of this area there are numerous human-made gems around town to be recognized. Fountains breathe life amidst concrete canyons. On hot days, they can give reprieve with a dip from our toes. Coins often find rest at their bottom. Sometimes even their rushing burble can mask the sounds of our urban day-to-day.

Tacoma has many fountains and I'm sure, as with anything subjective, we all have our favorites. Mine is a simple one that is charming as it is abused. Where 12th meets Pacific Ave. downtown there's a simple cement barrier that holds a fountain of twelve or so bubbling shoots of water. I find it charming because of it's somewhat utilitarian location and use as a barrier at the end of a street and also because there's no decent vantage point from which to enjoy it unless waiting at a nearby crosswalk. It's abused because it seems to be the target of sudsing at least a few times a year. The poor thing sometimes spills over with detergent bubbles when we drive by in the morning and, worse than that, I imagine some City or BIA crew has to come clean it up.

Drop your favs in the comments below or to me via email (photos welcome, too!) and I'll add 'em to a map of local fountains. Hmm... Do I smell the next Photo Gang outing?

The City of Tacoma published a draft of their mixed use center analysis and recommendations. They took at look at a couple dozen locations around the city. Recommendations include implementing city-wide impact fees that would be waived for mixed used centers, clearing the way for more higher density development opportunities, and removing the parking requirement for condos and rental units. They're also recommending transit improvements like a flex car program, bikestations, and ride-free areas. With parking, they're recommending neighborhoods develop their own management plans, create residential parking zones especially near areas of business (see 'hoods off Sixth Ave), and even parking options for bicycles. There's even a couple cool maps (anyone want to Google-ize these?) of mixed use centers around Tacoma.

Take a gander at the doc and some related info. Any thoughts? All I know is I'd sure love to see mixed user center go in to the empty lot across from our office at 28th and Pacific.

Thanks Erik!

It's always a shame when a great product is made less so with an "upgrade". Google's YouTube seems to have done just that today with any of their videos embedded on other sites. So now when you mouse over a video you get a whole new GUI of choices for thumbing through videos OS-X style. Check it out:

Not only does it cover a good portion of what your actually watching but it doesn't go away for a full 3-4 seconds when you move your mouse away. That and the OS-X reflection and bubbling thumbnail effect is just pointless and further distracting. Ick. Less is more, says I, and in this case loading new videos in the same space seems like a bit of a hijack of the embedding website.

Let me go on the record and predict, by the way, that we'll soon be made to first view a targeted ad before watching embedded videos. They can cue off the tags of the video itself and I'm sure they can detect which domain name it's embedded in to best tailer the ad. Here's to hoping it doesn't go there.

Update - No mo' menu (2007-06-08 @ 7:13am)

Somebody listened to what I'm sure was some serious backlash over the above junk that was showing on embedded YouTube videos because now it's gone. Sweet! To see related videos and info you now have to click the "menu" button but simply mousing over an embedded vid no longer does all the menu junk you see above. Credit to YouTube for listening. Plenty of comments and info over at a post on their blog.

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