Winter Wonderland Ice Rink open daily at Merry Main Street
December 6, 2017 at 10:46 am
One of the key attractions of Merry Main Street in downtown Mesa is the 5,000 sq ft Winter Wonderland Ice Rink in the parking lot next to City Hall directly across from the Mesa Arts Center until 05 January 2018 It's the third year for this 40-day event (see details below) What did it take to put a Rinky-Dink ice rink in Mesa in the parking lot next to City Hall?
Here's a video from the camera on the roof of 20 E Main Street uploaded to YouTube on November 20th --- 5 days before the opening when it was too hot to skate
New "Specials" during the week from 5-10 pm have been added this year to attract more people - now available at the ice rink through Dec. 21: Mondays are "Family Night" Bring the whole family and skate for only $8 per person Tuesdays are "Two-fer Tuesday" You and a friend or significant other can skate two for the price of one $10 general admission Wednesdays are "Ugly Sweater Wednesday" Wear an ugly sweater and skate for only $8 Thursdays are "Student Night" Students skate for only $8 with a valid student I.D.
If you need to drive to get here, the city's announcement reminds you that there is free parking throughout downtown Mesa. You can, of course, ride bikes. People who live downtown can walk to the rink. You can also ride the light rail for FREE during Merry Main Street between Country Club Drive and Mesa Drive from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. every Friday and Saturday in December when regular $10 general admission rates apply, including rental of skates For more information, visit www.merrymainst.com.
SPONSORS Merry Main Street is sponsored by the City of Mesa, SRP and Visit Mesa. Other sponsors Mesa Parks, Recreation and Community Facilities Lennar M.U.R.A.L. McCarthy Blount Contracting Cox Sundt Sloan Park KMLE-FM Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport Stacy and Witbeck Phoenix Marriott-Mesa Valley Metro Benedictine University Otto Trucking Arizona Coyotes Mesa Arts Center Downtown Mesa Association Mesa Chamber of Commerce. Public Information and Communications Contact: Steve Wright Tel. 480-644-2069steven.wright@mesaaz.gov
Organized by Anthology, Inc., a Mesa, AZ, based literary non profit organization, the Mesa Book festival is intended to be the annual event to showcase the literary arts in the east valley.
Organizing Partner
Mesa Book Festival is organized with the support and assistance of Downtown Mesa Festival of the Arts, which offers a great opportunity to shop for locally created art.
Downtown Mesa, Macdonald St. between Main and 1st Ave.
What's the Mission?
In keeping with the Anthology.org mission, we seek to build a world-class book festival and encourage readers of all ages.
Who's Invited?
Everyone!
Authors, Publishers, and Book Sellers are invited to egister for space to showcase, promote, and sell their books.
Readers are invited to come and buy their books direct.
We're encouraging a wide variety of literary arts purveyors to share their work to create a bigger audience for everyone.
What's happening?
Eighty-five vendors, including a diverse offering of books and authors
Here's Kevin Christopher doing a fast-read of the entire Meeting Agenda - business as usual here in the City of Mesa with a population of over 480,000 where few know or care or are informed what their elected government is doing .... Why is that? Published on Dec 5, 2017 Views: 4
This from The Atlanticthree days ago: ". . . The case hasn’t attracted the higher degree of attention from the press, the public, or policing-reform activists, partly because body-cam footage of the killing has been withheld from the media and partly because the cop and the dead man were both white, rendering the killing less controversial than one possibly animated by racism. But it warrants more attention than it has received. . . " Your MesaZona blogger has published more than a few posts in the last year about the killing of Daniel Shaver. They can be found here > https://mesazona.blogspot.com/search?q=Daniel+Shaver UPDATE TODAY FROM Courthouse News: Fate of Mesa Cop Accused of Murder Is in Jury’s Hands
. . . Brailsford says the shooting was justified because he saw Shaver reach toward the waistband of the basketball shorts he was wearing. Jurors were shown Brailsford’s body camera footage of the shooting during trial. It was the first time an unedited version of the footage has aired publicly, but the footage has not been fully released to the public yet. Before the trial started, Maricopa County Judge George Foster granted a motion filed by the defense to prevent the media from recording the body cam footage. Portions of the video, including the actual shooting of Shaver, remain sealed until Brailsford’s sentencing or acquittal. . . READ MORE > Courthouse News ______________________________________________________________ Here's more from The Atlantic's reporter Conor Friedersdorf: ". . . Even if police killings were rare in America, this case would warrant more attention, not only because of the deadly shots fired by Brailsford, but also due to the confounding commands issued by Langley. It would warrant more attention regardless of the race of the victim. . . . it would still remain the case that American police officers kill many more people overall––and many more unarmed and mentally ill people in particular––than do police officers in other democratic countries.
A Police Killing Without a Hint of Racism
Daniel Shaver begged officers not to shoot him. What role will his death play in the push for law-enforcement reforms?
By Conor Friedersdorf 03 Dec 2017
Daniel Shaver’s case is instructive. His killing deserves more journalistic coverage as a matter of substance and more activist attention as a matter of strategy. Here is how Mark Geragos, an attorney in the case, describes the body-cam footage, which has been shown in court but not released to the public:
I know why they have not released it. It’s not bloody. It’s the most chilling, horrific thing you’ve seen in your life. This kid was begging for his life. He raised his hands, did everything the cops told him to do. And then they just executed him. It’s bone chilling. One of the worst experiences I’ve ever had in my life is sitting in a court room with his widow, who watched it for the second time, and she literally went into convulsions. I had to grab her to hold her in a bear hug. It was just awful.
Given all that—and understanding that police kill roughly twice as many white as black people every year, with some killings of whites among the most egregious and best-documented unjust killings—the tendency of some journalists and activists to put less emphasis on unjust killings of white people, whether because they are less controversial or less illustrative of disparities, undermines both the journalist’s task of informing the public about the scope of the police-killing problem and the activist’s task of building a winning coalition. If you’re horrified by Daniel Shaver’s untimely death, yet against Black Lives Matter, consider that Shaver might well be alive if only the Mesa police department had long ago adopted reforms of the sort that Black Lives Matter suggests.
Unexpected Journeys: Louise Nevelson and Pedro Guerrero
Posted: Tuesday, December 5, 2017 - 8:00pm
Event Date: Thursday, December 7, 2017 - 2:00pm
On Thursday, December 7, the Farnsworth Art Museum will present a talk by Farnsworth Chief Curator Michael K. Komanecky entitled Unexpected Journeys: Louise Nevelson and Pedro Guerrero.
The program will take place at 2 p.m. in the museum's auditorium.
The sculptor Louise Nevelson and photographer Pedro Guerrero both reached the peaks of their chosen professions, though their paths to success were anything but expected. Both came from humble origins. Leah Berliawsky came as a young girl with her family from the present-day Ukraine to settle in Maine, joining her father who had come a few years earlier; and Pedro Guerrero grew up in the "dusty desert town" of Mesa, Arizona, shortly after Arizona became a state.
Nevelson, a Jewish immigrant from the Russian empire, did not gain citizenship until 1920 when she married an American.
Guerrero's family had been in Arizona since the 1870s, yet his experience was shaped by the ways in which being of Mexican heritage was viewed by the community in which he lived.
This presentation will explore the nature of their work, the reputations they forged during their long and productive careers, and how their early life experiences shaped their artistic personae.
The fee for this program is $10, and $8 for Farnsworth members.
Like probably far too many things here in Mesa, Arizona, the Public Right-To-Know somehow gets by-passed when we are all rightfully concerned over demanding that government is open, transparent and accountable.
City Hall too often falls short-of-the-mark in meeting or honoring those goals. That issue has been addressed numerous times on this blog before and will continue to get into focus on featured posts with a strong resolve.
Secrecy in government, the Supreme Court has stated, is fundamentally anti-democratic.
With that being said, let's take a look at a respected national news organization that took the time to report on local news that hasn't received much local public attention: the case of an officer-involved killing from last January 2016 where testimony just ended in the trial.
Slate reporter Amy Gajda addresses the issue of police body cam footage - just one aspect of the public right-to-know
When Public Records Aren’t Made Public
The troubling trend of judges keeping police body camera footage hidden.
By Amy GajdaNov. 16 2017 10:35 am (See link below to the entire original source)
Former Mesa, Arizona police officer Philip Brailsford has been charged with second-degree murder after shooting unarmed Daniel Shaver at a hotel in January.
Image credit: Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office
"The video is said to be graphic. Taken by an officer’s body-worn camera, it apparently shows a man crawling toward the officer, looking confused. The man makes a “quick movement”—maybe it’s a move to pull up his shorts, maybe it looks like he’s about to pull out a gun—and the officer shoots him to death.
Those of us who weren’t in the Arizona courtroom the day the body camera video was played for the jury can’t assess either man’s behavior. That’s because the judge in Mesa police officer Philip Brailsford’s second-degree murder trial agreed with the defense that the media should not be allowed to see the video of Brailsford killing Daniel Shaver. While part of the bodycam footage was released last year, the Mesa police edited out the footage of the actual shooting. In his ruling last month, Judge George Foster agreed that the media should not get its hands on the full video evidence, even though the videotape was central to a case of intense public concern and was shown in open court. . . Taken together, as sympathetic as the individuals in these cases may be, those decisions and the accompanying rhetoric do not bode well for public access to government documents and freedom of information. In the Arizona case, we’ll likely see the video footage as soon as the trial is over; the officer’s attorney has argued it should be kept from public view only until acquittal or sentencing." The trial just concluded a few days ago
Other than the scurrilous and curious headlines topping-off what's called 'news' in the current cycle of things or euphemistically referring to 'private parts', these recent sales of Multi-Family Housing Units here in Mesa were recently made public. The Take-Away = In Real Estate We Trust or REITs are back BIG TIME At the same time new-construction costs are rising, so why not buy Value-Added properties of one kind or another?
MFUs aren't the only hot places to throw your money for either so-called safe havens or speculative markets, with interest rates so low, million$ sitting on the sidelines in ca$h on hand - needing to go somewhere while the goin's get good to make more money. That makes the local economy - and global world markets go 'round and 'round where interest rates have never been so low and tax reform so high a priority for those who have the dough and want to raise more. Who can blame them for wanting to make more buck$?
But if you're in the workforce and employed maybe supporting a family, don't yet own your home and pay significant chunks of your incometo rent, expect a rise in rents if you haven't already been asked to pay more.
Multi-family housing units, in high-demand and popular here in The East Valley where a car-driven culture thrives, usually sited in close proximity to quick-and-fast entry ramps to highways and freeways to get to your job, are selling like hotcakes these days. Why? Simply put - They generate cash for investors - fast!
If you want to know five other reasons, take a look at this entry from an investor industry publication Cash Flow Diary: "If you’re new to real estate investing, you’re likely doing deals in single-family houses.But if you want to ramp up your income, you will move into multifamily properties. Before you take that step, you need to find out if it is right for you. . . "
For some it’s a no-brainer. __________________________________________________________________________ Three recent MFU sales transactions:
Berkadia today announced the sale of Indian Springs Apartments, a garden-style multifamily community in Mesa. Senior Managing Directors Ric Holway and Mark Forrester, along with Senior Director Dan Cheyne, completed the $49 million off-market sale on behalf of the seller, Stratford Partners LLC. Managing Director
The company is targeting further acquisitions in Washington, Oregon, Arizona, California, Colorado, and Nevada. MG Properties Group (www.mgproperties.com) is a privately owned West Coast real estate owner and operator specializing in multi-housing assets. Over the last 25 years, MG Properties Group ...
3
Recent deals between ready-willing-and-able sellers and buyers:
![Philip "Mitch" Brailsford](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_urzmbM0AvK9hqkQgUghfpw4NK2x03_yCU882wFE1YBsjczxuKrUc0bAkLdvcara_by_GPV3KkdS6dysjz5-r4RQGFY-rSwdM-9TNwFJCPuwjz3dab8u9XZohi2v1qBhiUIn1fNRBYhjJ7ZUEEUjzncBGhUk3nXgzTrPtK1gu1dAnxnCqDF37w7dgzmyr9vDGC1tbGrhqprOx6OYNpSdhtI8ZMwwfXl9ZonwpsCT8SodbnF=s0-d "Philip "Mitch" Brailsford")
