Anyone Else Going To The Ap Tour 2009?

Is anyone else going?
The AP Tour 2009 dates!
Pre-sale tickets go on sale Monday!
w/ 3OH!3, The Maine, Family Force 5 and Hit The Lights, and A rocket To The Moon
March 20 – House of Blues – Dallas, TX
March 21 – Emo’s – Austin, TX (South By Southwest – free show)
March 22 – Warehouse Live – Houston, TX
March 24 – Marquee Theatre – Tempe, AZ
March 25 – Rialto Theatre – Tuscon, AZ
March 26 – House of Blues – Las Vegas, NV
March 27 – The Avalon – Hollywood, CA
March 28 – The Glass House – Pomona, CA
March 29 – House of Blues – San Diego, CA
March 31 – The Dome – Bakersfield, CA
April 1 – Grand Ballroom – San Francisco, CA
April 2 – Senator Theatre – Chico, CA
April 3 – Wonder Ballroom – Portland, OR
April 4 – El Corazon – Seattle, WA
April 5 – Knitting Factory – Boise, ID
April 7 – In The Venue – Salt Lake City, UT
April 8 – Fox Theatre – Boulder, CO
April 9 – Sokol Auditorium – Omaha, NE
April 10 – Station 4 – St. Paul, MN
April 11 – House of Blues – Chicago, IL
April 12 – The Eagles Club – Milwaukee, WI
April 14 – Beaumont Club – Kansas City, MO
April 15 – Pop’s – St. Louis, MO
April 16 – Rocketown – Nashville, TN
April 17 – The Masquerade – Atlanta, GA
April 18 – House of Blues – Orlando, FL
April 19 – Culture Room – Ft. Lauderdale, FL
April 20 – State Theatre – St. Petersburg, FL
April 21 – Freebird Cafe – Jacksonville Beach, FL
April 23 – Toad’s Place – Richmond, VA
April 24 – 9:30 Club – Washington DC
April 25 – Theatre of Living Arts – Philadelphia, PA
April 26 – Crocodile Rock – Allentown, PA
April 28 – The Fillmore At Irving Plaza – New York, NY
April 30 – Toad’s Place – New Haven, CT
May 1 – House of Blues – Boston, MA
May 2 – The Town Ballroom – Buffalo, NY
May 5 – Phoenix Concert Theatre – Toronto, ON, Canada
May 6 – The Intersection – Grand Rapids, MI
May 7 – The Crofoot Ballroom – Pontiac, MI
May 8 – Newport Music Hall – Columbus, OH
May 9 – House of Blues – Cleveland, OH

Anyone Else Having Problems Trying To Use Visa Gift Cards At Barnes And Nobles?

Just thought you would be interested…tonight I tried to use a $30 VISA gift card at the Barnes & Noble on South 76th street and they said it was now a courtesy to take gift cards and would only take it for half the amount.
I found that hard to believe and even the manager did not dispute it. So this is what I wrote to the company and the BBB.
Tonight, Saturday, 9/27/08 at 9:30pm, I went to the Barnes & Noble tonight in Milwaukee (the store on south 76th Street) and tried to use my $30 VISA gift card. The clerk at the store told me they cannot check balances (VISA website says Barnes and Noble can) and then he said they are “doing me a favor” by accepting the gift card.
Is the economy such that your VISA gift cards are not valid and Barnes & Noble has a new policy of not accepting them? Of the $30 dollar gift card, they only would take $16 of it and made me pay cash for the rest.
So I am sitting here with a $14 VISA gift card. My questions? Is there now a list of stores that still accept VISA gift cards or due to the financial crisis the country is facing, that you can only get 50cents on the dollar for gift cards now at such places as Barnes & Noble in Milwaukee.
I wrote the Better Business Bureau and VISA to see if they might know about Barnes and Nobles new 50cents on the dollar acceptance of gift cards.
When I questioned it to the clerk, he said I was rude and a moron. Then asked me to leave the store. I had to even ask for my $3 change from the cash sale…guess they even try to keep a person’s change there too now that things are so bad. lol

Is Anyone Else Sad About The Weather Getting Warmer In Milwaukee?

In inner-city Milwaukee as we all now, with the warm weather brings an epidemic of death. Dozens will die in the next few months from senseless acts of gun violence. My heart grows dreary from the news of the young and innocent who’ve fallen victim to the Summer. Night after night the news is littered with “Shot on Milwaukee’s North Side”. I don’t watch the local news in the summer. I love winter in inner-city Milwaukee because it’s so calm and quiet outside. However, now the peace is shattered by cars driving by with speakers so loud all you hear is headache. The cold and calm empty roads have been replaced by hoodlums gathering on the corner selling drugs. It just seems that people are out looking for trouble. I don’t feel safe. Does anyone else feel this way?! I’ve grown up in inner-city Milwaukee my whole life, and the yearly killings are as natural as the Geese flying back into the city’s park ponds after winter. What’s it like in other cities? WHAT DO I DO

Who Else Thinks That Baseball Is A Business?

I just got a comical answer from someone who does not see Baseball as a business but as a form of entertainment. Baseball became a business in the 1950’s when Lou Perini moved the Boston Braves to Milwaukee and mentioned the money his organization was making at the gate. Baseball became a business when Walter O’Malley finalized the paperwork that guaranteed that the Dodgers were moving to Los Angeles and that New York City government officials and Brooklyn Borough President refused to give him prime Real Estate on Atlantic Avenue and Flatbush Avenue by the Long Island Railroad and a major Subway station. Baseball became a business when Horace Stoneham complained to Chubb Feeney that there were a lot of kids at the Polo Grounds but no parents and how attendance was down. Baseball became a business when the Angels put their ball park next to Disneyland. Baseball became a business when the Boss purchased the Yankees in 1973 and refurbished Yankee Stadium. Baseball became a business when Rupert Murdoch purchased the Dodgers. Baseball became a business when Mr. and Mrs. McCourt purchased the Dodgers from News Corporation, Mr.Murdochs’ company.
Whoever doesn’t believe that Baseball or any other sport organization is not a business either must be a minor, under 21 years of age or living in Fantasy World.

Did Anyone Else See This?

By COREY WILLIAMS, Associated Press Writer
Thu Feb 28, 9:37 AM ET
DETROIT – The broad-brimmed western hats, colorful festival dance dresses and Mayan-style pottery that line the shelves at Xochi’s Mexican Imports are common sights at stores in the Southwest.
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But it’s southwest Detroit on a cold, dreary winter day, not sunny El Paso, San Diego, Tucson or other cities just north of the Mexican border.
From its Mexican Town restaurant district to the new shops of the La Plaza Mercado retail development, southwest Detroit is doing something it hasn’t done in years — grow and prosper.
“We come starving for a better life,” 32-year-old dance instructor Valeria Montes said. “We want to strive and we’ve found in southwest Detroit a place to do it. The opportunity was here for us and we took it.”
Latinos are carving out a niche in neighborhoods far from the southern border more and more — from Bagley Street here to the Mitchell Street area in Milwaukee to Bailey’s Crossroads in Fairfax County, Va.
A new wave of Latino immigrants is following others who established communities in northern cities in the 1950s after getting jobs in the auto and other manufacturing industries. The attraction now is employment in restaurants, shops and other service-oriented businesses that cater primarily to residents in those communities but also draw non-Latinos.
“A number of folks who are coming up — documented or undocumented — are finding jobs,” said Enrique Figueroa, director of the Roberto Hernandez Center at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
The now-vibrant neighborhood wasn’t always so.
Its fate had mirrored most other areas of Detroit that began to lose businesses and people following the city’s 1967 riot. Boarded-up buildings and an unappealing mix of fast-food stops, dank bars and seedy strip clubs lined the streets.
Gang violence was rampant and the housing stock crumbled.
“It wasn’t a neighborhood where you could walk down the street,” Southwest Detroit Business Association deputy director Edith J. Castillo said. “Now, you can actually walk down West Vernor. You can take your family out for ice cream after church.”
Castillo’s nonprofit is one of several working with city officials and businesses to resurrect the area.
More than $200 million has been invested in southwest Detroit in the past 15 years, which has attracted retail and new homes, including an $11 million condo development.
“It’s one of the few places in the city where you are seeing a lot of private investment,” said Olga Savic, of the Detroit Economic Growth Corp., the city’s public/private development arm. “West Vernor Avenue was once primarily vacant. Now, it’s 90 percent full.”
The neighborhood is doing so well the mayor didn’t include it in his plan to pump millions of dollars into distressed areas.
Blight hasn’t been totally wiped out, but older Latinos and the new immigrants are helping with the transformation.
“These are people who are risk takers … and understand if they are going to make it, it’s up to them to make it successful,” said Ruben Martinez, director of the Julian Samora Research Institute at Michigan State University. “Many others, who have been here for several generations, don’t have that.”
The Detroit neighborhood is known as “Mexican Town,” but it truly is a melting pot.
About half the residents claim a Hispanic heritage, 25 percent are black, 20 percent are white and 5 percent are Arab-American, according to the Southwest Detroit Business Association.
In contrast, more than 80 percent of Detroit’s 920,000 residents are black.
And while the city’s overall population has plummeted in recent decades because of white flight and more recently the exodus of the black middle class, the southwest side’s population has grown considerably, up 6.9 percent to more than 96,000 people from 1990 to 2000.
The city’s Latino population grew by nearly 19,000 over that period to more than 47,000.
Without the manufacturing jobs that attracted many to places like Detroit, Milwaukee, Minneapolis and Chicago in the 1950s and 1960s, Latinos have found opportunities in their own backyards, Figueroa said.
“Once you had a cousin, uncle or aunt there, that was a logical place to come because there were still jobs,” he said. “The Detroit economy and Milwaukee economy have not done so well in the ’80s and ’90s. But what has occurred in the Latino community is the establishment of new businesses, primarily service-oriented businesses that serve the Latino communities that were established in the ’50s and ’60s.”
Mexican restaurants and bars along Mitchell Street and in other parts of Milwaukee attract non-Latinos, but it’s Latinos that keep the bakeries and grocery stores open, Figueroa said.
“There is enough money in the economy that people can sustain retail establishments by primarily relying on Latino clientele,” he said.
It’s that sense of community that led Montes and her husband to move from a downriver suburb of Detroit to the southwest side.
“I feel like I’m at home,” she said. “I go to get a haircut, I speak Spanish. I go to mercado (market), I speak Spanish. My daughter goes to school and there are a lot of Latino kids. It’s a great feeling.”