Mesa AmpiTheater > Sight of A Fight For Bernie + The Donald

Whoever said it's OK for Mesa to be boring? Sources in the media say that both Sanders and Trump are fighting to hold rallies here on Saturday at the Mesa Amphitheatre, but that Sanders will get it because his camp called 30 minutes ahead of Trump's.
So far no confirmation from the City of Mesa, the owner of the outdoor entertainment venue.
Trump, Sanders fight for same venue for planned Mesa rallies
Published: Wednesday, March 16th 2016, 8:06 pm MST
Updated: Wednesday, March 16th 2016, 10:50 pm MST
Source: KPHO/KVTK

Family Values > Would You Let Your Kids Play With The Deadliest Attack Weapon In The World?



If you live close by or walk on Main Street or get on or get off the Valley Metro Light Rail Station at Main/Center Street you've probably noticed a public bronze sculpture in front of City Hall Plaza - it looks like a boy and a girl having fun playing catch with a toy . . . it's called "Forever New Frontiers", a bronze sculpture donated to the City of Mesa by Boeing in 2003.
It looks innocent enough in the highest traffic area in downtown Mesa on the intersection of Main and Center Steers right across from the Mesa Arts Center. Thousands of children and their parents have walked by here in the last 13 years - did no one notice?

Notice What? Just a toy - no. This helicopter is the world's most lethal killing machine and delivers a deadly arsenal of attack weapons [see image and list below]. Jobs and national defense and military interventions aside, this deadly attack weapon in the hands of children simply is not the best choice to represent Boeing on the streets of downtown Mesa.

Here's a video of an Apache attack six years ago that shocked the world for the killing of innocent adults and children and two Reuters reporters:

 

 

Behold the AH-64 Apache and all of its weapons.
Up front are for the 30mm articulated cannon under the nose of the chopper. There are up to 1,200 of these high-explosive rounds, which the Apache can fire through in less than 2 minutes.
Behind those are the 70 mm rockets that are housed in the black cylinders to either side of the rockets. These missiles can be guided or unguided, and the Apache can haul up to 80 of them.

 

For local history buffs here's an image of the plaque on the sculpture base

Modern Times Magazine Top 5 Cactus League BallParks : Sloan Park #1 + Hohokam Stadium #5

From Mesa To Glendale, We Searched The Valley For The Most Fan Friendly Cactus League Spring Training Venues In Arizona

Top 5 Cactus League Ballparks

Blogger's Note: Wish these reporters would get out more to see what's around the stadiums, but hey it's all good and about baseball, right?

Good job covering the fast food concessions inside the parks tho and of course freeway access.

 

By Rene Gomez
Modern Times Magazine

March 15, 2016 — Spring is in the air and that means the Cactus League will bring exhibition baseball to fans across the Valley. Locals and tourists come from all over to take in the games and see bask in the glow of the burgeoning MLB season.

In order to help you make the most of the 2016 Spring Training Experience, we took a look at the 10 Cactus League ballparks to find out which ones are most worth your time and hard-earned money. To separate the best from the rest, we examined the stadiums themselves along with surrounding activities and amenities, like restaurants, bars and shopping centers among other things.
Out of the 10 stadiums evaluated, five made our list of best Cactus League ballparks.

No. 5 Hohokam Stadium
Hohokam is one of the oldest sites (1977) for spring training baseball games in Arizona, but it did undergo a complete rebuild in 1996 and reopening in 1997. The Oakland Athletics call Hohokam their spring home, and they were the original tenants upon the original park’s opening. When the Chicago Cubs moved to Arizona, they took over the lease and quickly became one of the most popular, if not the most popular, Cactus League attraction.
Oakland has since returned to Hohokam after the Cubs left the park for greener pastures, and the fans have followed as the A’s essentially upgraded from dilapitated Phoenix Municipal Stadium.
Inside the park, Hohokam offers very good options for concessions as one can find Ike’s Sandwiches—which is a bay area staple—and the Mustache Pretzel food truck. The A’s are the only team that will allow the fans to shag fly balls during batting practice, so the experience is incomparable to any other in town. Hohokam is also the most economical of the stadiums on this list—which is always a welcome attribute—as lawn seats are only $10, and the most expensive ticket is $35 for infield box gold seats. The location is not ideal,  but there is freeway access using Loop 202 to get to other parts of the valley for post-game entertainment. Fans can also stay relatively close by heading to downtown Mesa’s various restaurants and bars or travel a little bit more to find Mesa Riverview’s entertainment district, which has a movie theater and shopping in addition to a variety of restaurants and bars.

Hohokam is located at 1235 North Center St., Mesa.

No. 1 Sloan Park
The Cubs moved from Hohokam to the Cactus League’s newest spring venue in 2014, and this ballpark is not the best just because it is the newest but also because it hosts the Valley’s most popular non-hometown team. The Cubs are the favorites to win the World Series, and they have been the most popular spring training team for decades dating back to Harry Caray and beyond.

Many Illinois residents also own property in Arizona and they travel specifically for Cactus League baseball to see their beloved Cubs. Sloan Park may just be the future of how spring training facilities will be made since it was made to be more than just a baseball attraction . Future building plans include a smaller replica of Wrigley Field’s surrounding shops and eateries, but as of now children can enjoy the mini Wrigley Field inside the park.

Sloan Park arguably has the best concessions options as its “Taste of Chicago” stands feature Chicago culinary staples such as Italian beef sandwiches, Italian-style hot dogs and (of course) pizza. Healthy options are also available as one could purchase salads, fruit and yogurt or a veggie and dip platter to nosh on. The Sheraton is within walking distance and has a lovely lounge inside for visitors and hotel guests for convenience after the game. Also within walking distance is Mesa Riverview’s selection of entertainment, and a couple minutes west is Tempe Marketplace.

If heading out of Mesa is your plans, then Loop 202 and 101 are nearby.

Tickets range from $15 lawn seats to $45 infield box seats.

Sloan Park is located at 2330 W. Rio Salado Pkwy., Mesa.

A Handbook for Change > [we can do without the revolutuin-thang]

"STREETFIGHT: Handbook for an Urban Revolution" by Janette Sadik-Khan and Seth Solomonow, was published March 8 by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.
Believe it or not, and this evoked a giggle from your MesaZona blogger, a review of this book on Greenbiz.com begins with"  I often tell people that if they want to save the planet, they should move to New York City . . . "
Yours truly lived there for 22+ years, happy to take a 20-block walk from the Upper Westside into Central Park where he worked on the side of a lake in the middle of Manhattan! One of my most favorite other cities is also mentioned,   
"Large cities like New York or Mexico City offer the best odds for sustainable growth as global populations increase rapidly. The collective energy of millions of people concentrated into high-rise buildings instead of being spread out over hundreds of rural and suburban miles is itself a reason why so many people are attracted — culturally, professionally, politically and practically — to cities. . ."
The books somewhat too academic, but it makes a few points: 

• Despite the natural advantages of cities, political leaders haven’t fully capitalized on them. Cities don’t come with owners’ manuals. Within city transportation departments, most street design practices were standardized by traffic engineers long ago. In this way, cities have tended to operate in much the same way that their cities have sprawled: by doing things the way they’ve always been done.
• Making cities a choice preferable to the suburbs cuts against a long-standing anti-urban bias in the United States based on the view that cities are dangerous, crowded and havens for crime.
• Suburbs and exurbs not only force long-distance commuting in cars, but also require cars to be used for every trip.
• The misreading of what is occurring in America isn’t confined to driving. While spending money to build roads is seen as a public investment, critics characterize public transportation as a wasteful welfare subsidy. The pervasive myth that public transportation riders are subsidized and that people who drive pay the full cost of their trips has never been less true than it is today.

Janette Sadik-Khan served as Commissioner of the New York City Department of Transportation (NYC DOT) from 2007-2013, where she implemented an ambitious program to improve safety, mobility and sustainability, and ensure a state of good repair on the city’s roads, bridges and ferries. At Bloomberg Associates, she works with mayors around the world to reimagine and redesign their cities with innovative projects that can be developed quickly and inexpensively.
Seth Solomonow was the chief media strategist for Janette Sadik-Khan and the New York City Transportation Department under Mayor Bloomberg. A graduate of Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Solomonow now works at Bloomberg Associates.

This Is A Revolution! NEW ERA > Data + Information = More Economic Value Than Trade In Global Goods

Digital globalization: The new era of global flows

By James Manyika, Susan Lund, Jacques Bughin, Jonathan Woetzel, Kalin Stamenov, and Dhruv Dhingra

Soaring flows of data and information now generate more economic value than the global goods trade.
Remarkably, digital flows—which were practically nonexistent just 15 years ago—now exert a larger impact on GDP growth than the centuries-old trade in goods, according to a new McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) report >> http://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/digital-globalization-the-new-era-of-global-flows?#_=_.
And although this shift makes it possible for companies to reach international markets with less capital-intensive business models, it poses new risks and policy challenges as well.

Conventional wisdom says that globalization has stalled. But although the global goods trade has flattened and cross-border capital flows have declined sharply since 2008, globalization is not heading into reverse. Rather, it is entering a new phase defined by soaring flows of data and information.

[see infographic to the right]

PAY ATTENTION: The world is more connected than ever, but the nature of its connections has changed in a fundamental way. The amount of cross-border bandwidth that is used has grown 45 times larger since 2005. It is projected to increase by an additional nine times over the next five years as flows of information, searches, communication, video, transactions, and intracompany traffic continue to surge. In addition to transmitting valuable streams of information and ideas in their own right, data flows enable the movement of goods, services, finance, and people. Virtually every type of cross-border transaction now has a digital component.
Trade was once largely confined to advanced economies and their large multinational companies. Today, a more digital form of globalization has opened the door to developing countries, to small companies and start-ups, and to billions of individuals.

Meet "Jonathan Pie" News Spoof + Satire + Brutally Honest Views On The World of Politics

A character for sure as a UK News reporter… Warning Foul-Language Run-Amuck and Uncensored.

The world is waking up to Jonathan Pie, a spoof reporter created by British actor and comedian Tom Walker. The Pie character’s reports on political problems in an alternative way have become very popular with thousands of viewers on YouTube.

Tom Walker puts it down to the public recognizing an element of truth in his jokes.
 ; ; ;  [wink] you can only come to an opinion if you are well-informed, and that is the media’s job – to inform. I think Jonathan Pie seems to get frustrated - the fact that I feel that he feels he doesn’t always get the opportunity to do that. There is quite often an agenda rather than just telling the news, telling facts.
Funny 'cos it's true

Here's another 
 -enjoy!
 

Say What? We Wanted To Focus On Downtown + Its Funky Offerings.



Those are the words Michelle Streeter used in an article by East Valley Tribune reporter Shelley Ridenour yesterday to describe a 7-month mobile advertising campaign by Millennial Media [acquired by AOL, a subsidiary of Verizon, for $248 Million on October 23, 2015] who was hired by Visit Mesa, the tourism marketing arm for the city, to specifically target a demographic group called millennials to lure them here downtown for "funky offerings".
That's slightly off the mark when advertising industry publication AdAge predicts that in 2016, marketing and communications professionals will stop targeting millennials as one demographic and focus on reaching the younger consumers based on their passions, according to a study released on Nov 17, 2015 by Hotwire PR.

Why focus on millennials as one population
group for this ad campaign-buy [price not disclosed] when you can easily see in the infographic from the U.S. Census Bureau from July 2014 that there's almost an even spread from the ages of 25-65+?
That's more to the point than what the article reports "Millennials, described as people born in the 1980s and 1990s and sometimes called generation Y, now represent a larger percentage of the American population than generation X, their predecessors."

[Blogger's Note: More than 60% of internet usage occurs on a mobile device, with the millennial generation accounting for the largest demographic accessing the web via their smart phone or tablet. According to Nielsen, more than 85% of millennials in the U.S. own smartphones and they touch them an average of 45 times per day.]

Mark Garcia, VisitMesa CEO and President [whose wife Cori Garcia was recently "lured away to work for the City of Gilbert], is quoted as saying, "Visit Mesa officials want people to see that downtown Mesa is a new place to play," As noted in a post here early in December of last year, the advertising featured a 3:12 video. Streeter is quoted in yesterday's article saying "early results show it’s working."

A check just now turned up the result from YouTube that the video Our Downtown is Your Playground received 1,910 views after it was uploaded there on January 26, 2016 with only 20 'likes' to date. . .
A good return on investment - who's to say?

Garcia also says, "We anticipated that light rail would bring in new customers but it’s the unique businesses that have relocated or opened here that have truly lured in a new visitor.” He deservedly gives credit to the individual Main Street entrepreneurs who have taken the risk and made the investment to open new businesses [Power Pill, Lulubell's, Desert Eagle Brewery, Smith-O-Later Custom Bake Shop, Volstead Public House to name a few] here in the New Urban DTMesa - partnering with established businesses to promote Pop-Up events like the first Mesa Music Festival and the Southeast MakerFest, for example as well as regular weekly and monthly street attractions MACFest, Motorcycles on Main, 2nd Friday and 3rd Friday Night's Out. All these attract a broader spectrum that includes millennial. Established city-owned institutions like Mesa Arts Center, museums and other venues no doubt attract a greater share of visitors in all generations.
When talking about results what works for most people are numbers and data. Instead what's reported in the article are additional quotes like this:
In December, the top mobile landing pages on the Visit Mesa website were four directly connected to the millennial campaign. That means the millennial ads drew in the most mobile activity to the website. “Right now it is our top mobile referral site,” she said. “We’re seeing incredible results, and we’re realizing how much more people use their phones.”
Top Mobile Landing Pages: 1 2 3 4 [activity numbers?]
Actual Results for top mobile referral site: # hits ______

Institutional Investors Are Dumping Millennial Media Inc (NYSE:MM) by Linda Rogers — March 8, 2016
Millennial Media, Inc. is an independent mobile advertising marketplace delivering services and products to advertisers and developers. The company has a market cap of $249.14 million. The Firm offers advertisers a suite of solutions that allow them to reach and connect with the target audiences across screens, from smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices to PCs. It currently has negative earnings.

http://www.clintongazette.com/institutional-investors-are-dumping-millennial-media-inc-nysemm/