Home Builder Developer - Interior Renovation and Design

As part of the YongeTOmorrow revitalization plan, the City of Toronto has proposed to create pedestrian priority zones fitted with expanded sidewalks and additional patio space on Yonge Street.

Yonge Street is one of the citys main arteries, booming with pedestrian activity, yet its narrow sidewalks limit the space available for pedestrians to walk. In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the increased necessity for accessible, high-quality public space in the downtown core.

YongeTOmorrow is proposing a full redesign of Yonge Street starting at College Street and stretching south to Queen Street.

According to the plan, sidewalks would be expanded, vehicle lanes would be modified, restaurant patios would be extended, and streetscape elements would be added.

The plan also adds pedestrian priority zonesalong Yonge between 6 am and 1 am every day, with vehicle access restricted in zones situated between Walton and Elm Streets, and from Edward Street to Dundas Square.

New renderings by Norm Li have been released showing what the new design of Yonge Street could look like.

The City of Toronto has stated that, the water main beneath Yonge Street will soon need replacing and this construction provides an opportunity to consider a new street design to better serve everyone.

The final report on the plan will be presented to the Infrastructure and Environment Committee for review on January 11, 2021, according to the City.

View post:
Expanded sidewalks and more patio space part of plan for Yonge Street | Urbanized - Daily Hive

The City of Boston has announced the launch of an outdoor dining pilot program for the 2021 season, beginning April 1, 2021 and continuing through December 1, 2021, weather permitting.

The program will build on initiatives from this years program, such as streamlined permitting and outdoor patios on roadways that enable restaurants with narrow sidewalks to offer patio seating to patrons, as well as offer new features based on community feedback.

Applications for outdoor dining licenses on both public and private property are now open and can be accessed here:https://bostonopendata.knack.com/outdoor-dining#welcome.

The initial deadline for licensees to submit an application is January 18, 2021. Applicants who meet this deadline will receive a decision or follow-up questions from the City byFebruary 19,2021. Applications will still be accepted after January 18 and will be reviewed on an ongoing basis.

Restaurants who took part in the 2020 temporary outdoor dining program and who wish to do so in 2021 must re-apply. The City will also be accepting applications from restaurants who did not take part in the 2020 program.

There will be virtual application help sessions to assist restaurants in preparing and submitting their applications. The first session is scheduled for Wednesday, December 16 at 5:00 pm. Registration is required.

The following changes have been/will be made based on public feedback from the 2020 program:

Read more at http://www.boston.gov/2021outdoordining.

See original here:
2021 Outdoor Dining Pilot Program Will Bring Tables Back to the Streets - NorthEndWaterfront.com

This weekend on an all-new episode of Goodtaste, raise a glass to good food, good times and a good patio at the popular Houston restaurant aBouzy. Love this spot and am excited to share it with all of you. Plus, feast your eyes on some of the best patios in the state! And, well take a bite out of LSA Burger Companys Texas-size burgers, some of the BEST in Texas. Check out the Spirit of a Hero Burger loaded with bacon and onion rings stacked so high, youll want to salute it! Set those DVRs for Saturday and Sunday morning at 5:30a on KPRC. Sign up for our newsletter for exclusive recipes and my HEB wine finds, plus a chance to win a stay at the Royal Sonesta Galleria.

Photo Credit: The Spot

Photo Credit: LSA Burger Co.

'); sml.click(function(){ sml.fadeOut(); be.nextAll('.gallery').css({'opacity':'','height':'','margin':'','overflow':''}); be.nextAll(':not(.show-more-link)').slideDown(); $(document).trigger('show-more-single-after-show'); $(be.nextAll().prev().get(0)).after('

See more here:
Patio Dining to Kick Off the Holiday Season Time to Celebrate - Chron

As a business owner, we are trying to make the business survive at all costs, she said.

When we were broken into, the alarm went off and I raced to the store from home. When I got here, there was a police officer and a dog inside. I was terrified.

The surveillance video showed a man crawling into the business while another person served as a lookout.

Nooners restaurant on Clarence Street has seen sales drop 75 per cent since March and, in the same time period, its windows have been broken three times.

We boarded up the windows and they came back with a saw and cut through the door. They took a ton of food, said Cathy Walsh, who has owned the business for 34 years.

The restaurants downtown are hurting bad.

There could have been more break-ins, but Walsh installed bars and safety glass on all the windows, she said.

London police Wednesday could not offer a breakdown of how many incidents of vandalism have occurred downtown since March. They have charged a person in connection with the damage at Che Restobar.

He destroyed the whole thing, owner Che owner Marvin Rivas said of a man who took a golf club to his patio. We will wait until the spring to see what we do. We are having a lot of problems with the homeless, with mental health issues.

Barb Maly, director of Downtown London, is not surprised merchants believe there has been an increase in property damage.

Anecdotally, we have heard there are more reports, more incidents in recent months, she said.

Original post:
Smashed windows, trashed patio add to woes of downtown merchants - London Free Press (Blogs)

With COVID-19 restrictions changing to allow up to 50 people to gather outdoors, we checked in with some well-known local spots offering outdoor events, deals on takeout or continued local night specials.

Cross Cut Warming Hut No. 5: Snag locals' day deal on Tuesdays, get $1 off all drafts, all day long. Snuggle up by a heater or fire pit while waiting for grub.

Bridge 99: Trivia is back and outdoors! Keep an eye on the weather for potential cancellations, otherwise mask up, dress warm and enjoy specials on pints, prizes and food truck grub.

River's Place: Offering outdoor eating, drinking, trivia and fire pits to help keep you from going stir crazy this winter. Outdoor TVs, so you never miss a game and brunch trivia every Sunday.

Boneyard Beer: Patio is open with four fireplaces and several patio heaters. They're also offering Locals Day deals every Wednesday featuring $1 off "Crowlers" and pints, $2 off Growlers and pitchers for only $15. Takeout and delivery on beer and food available.

Bevel Brewing: Open for outdoor dining with a covered tent, fire pits and tabletop heaters! Free delivery in Bend and pick-up options available. $4 beers and ciders every Tuesday and $2 off growler fills on Wednesdays. Grab some grub from the food trucks!

Worthy Brewing: Currently only open on the weekends for drinks on the patio. No food, but $4 pints every day they are open, all day long.

Silver Moon Brewing: The upgraded patio provides plenty of space. Locals' night is still on every Monday featuring $3 pints of their core lineup beers and $4 pours for barrel-aged brews. Trivia returns on Thursdays and Bingo on Sunday mornings with brunch.

On Tap: Over 30 tap handles, delicious food trucks and beer garden with a view. To keep patrons warm, they have a newly enclosed covered patio with heaters, two large outdoor fire pits and a lawn to sprawl and play outdoor games. Locals can enjoy $1 off all drinks all day long on Mondays.

Initiative Brewing: Redmond's Initiative Brewing has a great outdoor dining space with fire tables and pits to keep you warm. While they had to suspend their weekly trivia, they are still offering tons of great eats and brews.

See the original post here:
COVID-19 restrictions changing to allow up to 50 people to gather outdoors - The Source Weekly

With temperatures finally coming down all across the state and health experts saying that outdoor dining is a better option to reduce your risk of contracting COVID-19, now is the perfect time to get out and enjoy the cooler weather on the patio at your favorite restaurants. Here are the 15 best outdoor dining options in and around the Valley.

Chelseas Kitchen in Phoenix offers a wide variety of savory Southwestern dishes all cooked to order on a wood burning rotisserie and grill or in their exclusive smoke yard. The restaurant has a stunning tree-covered patio and outdoor fireplace, making it the perfect place to eat now that temperatures have started to drop.

With games like ping pong, cornhole and foosball available to play at any one of their six Arizona locations, Culinary Dropout is one of the most fun places to go for a bite. Most locations are open air, which means theres no shortage of patio seating. Enjoy live music from local bands or catch a sports game on the TVs while enjoying delicious cocktails and good, homestyle food such as meatloaf, soft pretzels with provolone fondue or fried chicken.

O.H.S.O. is a restaurant, nano-brewery and distillery with locations in Gilbert, Scottsdale, Paradise Valley and Arcadia. All locations are home to huge dog-friendly patios with games like cornhole and ping pong to keep you busy through the afternoon and into the night. O.H.S.O. has a rotating selection of their own original beers, plus they serve all of their own house-distilled spirits: Arcadia flavored vodkas, D.i.C.K. and J.a.N.E. fruit-flavored whiskeys and #Vodka, Gin and Rum.

Famous for their mix and match bruschetta boards, Postino Wine Cafe is a great option for patio dining this season. Each of their nine locations offers an intimate outdoor dining area complete with low-slung couches and cozy fire pits. Postinos has a rotating wine list with over 30 bottles to try, as well as a full menu of charcuterie, bruschetta, sandwiches and salads.

LONs at the Hermosa Inn.

Surrounded by the Phoenix Mountains, LONs at The Hermosa Inn is the all-in-one spot for outdoor dining. The restaurant has a globally inspired Arizona cuisine, with a new Chefs Tasting Menu being offered each week and an on-site sommelier. Decorated with rustic ironwork and an adobe fireplace, LONs is a stunning place to have brunch, lunch or dinner any day of the week.

Considered one of the first fine-dining restaurants in Tempe, House of Tricks comprises two historic homes connected by a communal deck and outdoor patio bar. The houses serve as the dining rooms and kitchen. Each side has their own al fresco dining area in addition to the shared space in between. House of Tricks offers a seasonally-inspired contemporary American menu, as well as a wide variety of refreshing cocktails.

Located within The Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix, the patio at Gertrudes offers gorgeous desert scenery as the backdrop to your meal. Described as a reserved oasis setting, Gertrudes seasonal menu of Arizona-inspired dishes and rotating selection of local and regional spirits is sure to inspire you.

The patio at Press is the perfect place to catch up on work or catch up with friends. All nine Valley locations serve coffee made from beans roasted locally at their original Phoenix location, The Roastery, as well as breakfast sandwiches and avocado toasts. Press Coffee prides itself on being a community focused business that supports both local Arizona charities and coffee farmers all over the world.

With a happy hour menu for every aspect of the restaurant, Kasai Japanese Steakhouse in Scottsdale is a great place to gather with friends on the spacious covered patio. The patio dining section features a mix of low and high-top tables, as well as heaters for chilly nights. The menu at Kasai includes sushi, teppanyaki and Asian fusion appetizers and entrees.

Pedal Haus Brewery has locations in both Tempe and Chandler, each with their own dog-friendly patio. Both locations host a Sunday Funday event every week featuring bottomless brunch and specials on wings, beer, wine and cocktails. The Chandler location has live music every Sunday between 1 and 4 p.m., while the Tempe location boasts NFL Sunday Ticket on over 40 screens.

Although PHX Beer Co. has locations in Phoenix and at Sky Harbor Airport, their Scottsdale location is the place to go for great patio dining. Located alongside Marguerite Lake, the generous patio looks out onto a stunning green belt and the lake itself. PHX Beer Co. serves 15 of their own original beers, brewed locally inside their Phoenix location, as well as a full menu of creative takes on classic American bar food.

Family owned and operated since 1986, U.S. Egg has six locations in Scottsdale, Tempe, Phoenix and Chandler each with their own gorgeous patio for you to enjoy. Strictly open for breakfast and lunch, U.S. Egg is famous for their protein pancakes, as well as their traditional breakfast options, deli-style lunch sandwiches and creative brunch cocktail menu.

VooDoo Daddys Steam Kitchen is a locally owned and operated Cajun, Creole and Caribbean restaurant in Tempe that focuses on bold flavors and a fun atmosphere.The New Orleans-style patio is home to live jazz music every Friday and Saturday night from 6 8:30 p.m. Their menu includes Big Easy favorites like poboys, gumbo and etouffee, as well as a number of craft cocktails.

Originally opened in Brooklyn in the 90s, Grimaldis now has eight locations in Arizona serving their signature coal-fired brick oven pizza. Every Grimaldis location has an expansive stone patio where you and loved ones can split a fresh pizza pie or enjoy a glass of wine from their extensive wine list while enjoying the gorgeous weather. Be sure to try something from their seasonal menu, including red velvet cheesecake and chicken alla vodka pizza!

Located in the tiny community of Tortilla Flat, Arizona, the Superstition Restaurant and Saloon has opened their patio seating early so that visitors can enjoy the beautiful weather with views of the Superstition Mountains. Be sure to try their famous Killer Chili and original prickly pear BBQ!

More here:
Here are 15 great outdoor dining options in Arizona - AZ Big Media

Elyria City Council voted Dec. 7 to rezone land for an expansion of a mobile home park.

During a Planning Commission meeting in October, Pikewood Manor representatives brought forward its tentative plans to expand and bring in new mobile homes.

The Pikewood Manor is located off of state Route 57 and has been in the city for several decades.

The property came under new ownership in 2018.

John Monroe, who represented the owners, said there will be about 160 houses and a convenient access to Griswold Road.

The company he represents, UMH, is a 50 years old and has never sold a park, Monroe said.

It owns 122 parks, mainly in the northeast United States, and have 23,000 developed home sites under its management.

A bulk of the expansion will take place behind Lowes, 646 Midway Blvd., Monroe said.

Individuals can lease the houses, he said.

However, the designs could change in the future as the company goes further into the planning and rezoning process, Monroe said.

The property owner does own the strip that goes up to Griswold," he said.

Monroe said he cautions people that these are preliminary plans because they are not final in terms of engineering or construction.

"Right now, the plan is to Griswold," he said. "We think a majority of the existing park will still go out the existing entrance.

"The expansion could go out onto Midway Boulevard and onto Griswold.

Monroe said it's common to lose pads due to stormwater, potential wetlands and other issues.

The process to expand is just continuing as Council approved the rezoning to a residential-mobile home park designation.

Read the original post:
Pikewood Manor in Elyria clears hurdle in proposed expansion - The Morning Journal

GoSun Inc. is a solar and renewable energy company based in Ohio, U.S., offering cooking, cooling, charging, and water purification devices working solely on solar power. This is their first tiny home and, as of last month, its available for pre-order (hat tip to New Atlas).

Solar power and tiny homes go hand in hand, especially since most people who buy these types of mobile homes do so first and foremost out of the desire to go off the grid or at least be able to in theory. The appeal of a tiny home is that, once you get past the prohibitive price, you get a home you can tow wherever you want, plop down wherever you want, and live all by yourself (with or without family/friends) for as long as you can.

The GoSun Dream aims to check all these boxes: its small enough so you can tow it, it has solar panels and batteries, separate water tanks, and its built with quality materials. It might not allow you to live fully off solar power and go completely off the grid, as GoSun claims in the video below, but you will get a certain degree of autonomy.

Meet the GoSun Dream, a solar powered, off-grid, tiny house, GoSun says. Designed to be affordable, versatile, mobile and solar powered to help you live a more independent, healthy and resilient life, anywhere. Perfect for RV resorts, off-grid, studio, rental (i.e. AirBnB, VRBO) or vacation property.Most tiny homes use height as a means to compensate for the lack of space, building a bedroom, and optionally some storage space on the second floor. The Dream doesnt do that, because GoSun wanted to keep the height down to avoid reducing the houses movability. Instead, it uses a floating bed to solve the issue of cramped space.

This makes the Dream able to sleep four adults, despite its compact size (22 feet/6.7 m in total length, with an interior floor space of 195 square feet/18 square meters). Two people can sleep on the extendable couch in the living room, which is deployed once the table is tucked out of sight, and two on the queen-size bed operated by a lift on rails up and down. This saves space and maximizes double functionality for the space available a must with all tiny or otherwise mobile homes.

On the side is a spacious kitchen with everything you need to make dinner for all four occupants: a sink, cooktop, two-burner stove, oven, fridge, and freezer. To get to the bathroom, you go through the kitchen: here, you get a small shower, the tiniest sink, and a toilet, which can be either flushing or of the composting type, depending on where you plan to be using it most.

Further amplifying the impression of more available space is the offer of a complete GoSun bundle: the Dream comes with a variety of GoSun products made for outdoor use, such as the GoSun solar kitchen and water filtration system. The automatically retractable electric awning serves to create shelter from the sun and mild rain, so you can take the kitchen outdoor with you and thus not stink up the place with all manners of cooking odors.

The Dream is move-in ready, with GoSun saying they will be offering more details and exact specs as the production date nears. A certain level of customization will also be available, at a cost, of course. Right now, GoSun is taking pre-orders on the Dream with $500 refundable reservations, with a delivery date set tentatively for 2021. Pricing will range between $69,500 and $99,500, depending on the final configuration you opt for.

View post:
The GoSun Dream Tiny Home Solves the Problem of Cramped Space, Will Go Off-Grid - autoevolution

Every ideology produces its own brand of fanatics, but theres something special about libertarianism.

I dont mean that as an insult, either. I love libertarians! For the most part, theyre fun and interesting people. But they also tend to be cocksure about core principles in a way most people arent. If youve ever encountered a freshly minted Ayn Rand enthusiast, you know what I mean.

And yet one of the things that makes political philosophy so amusing is that its mostly abstract. You cant really prove anything its just a never-ending argument about values. Every now and again, though, reality intervenes in a way that illustrates the absurdity of particular ideas.

Something like this happened in the mid-2000s in a small New Hampshire town called Grafton. Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling, author of a new book titled A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear, says its the boldest social experiment in modern American history. I dont know if its the boldest, but its definitely one of the strangest.

The experiment was called the Free Town Project (it later became the Free State Project), and the goal was simple: take over Graftons local government and turn it into a libertarian utopia. The movement was cooked up by a small group of ragtag libertarian activists who saw in Grafton a unique opportunity to realize their dreams of a perfectly logical and perfectly market-based community. Needless to say, utopia never arrived, but the bears did! (I promise Ill explain below.)

I reached out to Hongoltz-Hetling to talk about his book. I wanted to know what happened in New Hampshire, why the experiment failed, and what the whole saga can teach us not just about libertarianism but about the dangers of loving theory more than reality.

A lightly edited transcript of our conversation follows.

How would you describe the Free Town Project to someone who doesnt know anything about it?

Id put it like this: Theres a national community of libertarians that has developed over the last 40 or 50 years, and theyve never really had a place to call their own. Theyve never been in charge of a nation, or a state, or even a city. And theyve always really wanted to create a community that would showcase what would happen if they implemented their principles on a broad scale.

So in 2004, a group of them decided that they wanted to take some action on this deficiency, and they decided to launch what they called the Free Town Project. They sent out a call to a bunch of loosely affiliated national libertarians and told everyone to move to this one spot and found this utopian community that would then serve as a shining jewel for the world to see that libertarian philosophies worked not only in theory but in practice. And they chose a town in rural New Hampshire called Grafton that already had fewer than 1,000 people in it. And they just showed up and started working to take over the town government and get rid of every rule and regulation and tax expense that they could.

Of all the towns in all the world, why Grafton?

They didnt choose it in a vacuum. They actually conducted a very careful and thorough search. They zeroed in on the state of New Hampshire fairly quickly because thats the Live Free or Die state. They knew that it would align well with their philosophy of individualism and personal responsibility. But once they decided on New Hampshire, they actually visited dozens of small towns, looking for that perfect mix of factors that would enable them to take over.

What they needed was a town that was small enough that they could come up and elbow the existing citizenry, someplace where land was cheap, where they could come in and buy up a bunch of land and kind of host their incoming colonists. And they wanted a place that had no zoning, because they wanted to be able to live in nontraditional housing situations and not have to go through the rigamarole of building or buying expensive homes or preexisting homes.

Wait, what do you mean by nontraditional housing?

As the people of Grafton soon found out, a nontraditional housing situation meant a camp in the woods or a bunch of shipping containers or whatever. They brought in yurts and mobile homes and formed little clusters of cabins and tents. There was one location called Tent City, where a bunch of people just lived in tents from day to day. They all united under this broad umbrella principle of personal freedom, but as youd expect, there was a lot of variation in how they exercised it.

What did the demographics of the group look like? Are we talking mostly about white guys or Ayn Rand bros who found each other on the internet?

Well, were talking about hundreds of people, though the numbers arent all that clear. They definitely skewed male. They definitely skewed white. Some of them had a lot of money, which gave them the freedom to be able to pick up roots and move to a small town in New Hampshire. A lot of them had very little money and nothing keeping them in their places. So they were able to pick up and come in. But most of them just didnt have those family situations or those 9-to-5 jobs, and that was really what characterized them more than anything else.

And how did they take over the local government? Did they meet much resistance?

When they first showed up, they hadnt told anyone that they were doing this, with the exception of a couple of sympathetic libertarians within the community. And so all of a sudden the people in Grafton woke up to the fact that their town was in the process of being invaded by a bunch of idealistic libertarians. And they were pissed. They had a big town meeting. It was a very shouty, very angry town meeting, during which they told the Free Towners who dared to come that they didnt want them there and they didnt appreciate being treated as if their community was an experimental playpen for libertarians to come in and try to prove something.

But the libertarians, even though they never outnumbered the existing Grafton residents, what they found was that they could come in, and they could find like-minded people, traditional conservatives or just very liberty-oriented individuals, who agreed with them on enough issues that, despite that angry opposition, they were able to start to work their will on the levers of government.

They couldnt pass some of the initiatives they wanted. They tried unsuccessfully to withdraw from the school district and to completely discontinue paying for road repairs, or to declare Grafton a United Nations free zone, some of the outlandish things like that. But they did find that a lot of existing Grafton residents would be happy to cut town services to the bone. And so they successfully put a stranglehold on things like police services, things like road services and fire services and even the public library. All of these things were cut to the bone.

Then what happened over the next few years or so?

By pretty much any measure you can look at to gauge a towns success, Grafton got worse. Recycling rates went down. Neighbor complaints went up. The towns legal costs went up because they were constantly defending themselves from lawsuits from Free Towners. The number of sex offenders living in the town went up. The number of recorded crimes went up. The town had never had a murder in living memory, and it had its first two, a double homicide, over a roommate dispute.

So there were all sorts of negative consequences that started to crop up. And meanwhile, the town that would ordinarily want to address these things, say with a robust police force, instead found that it was hamstrung. So the town only had one full-time police officer, a single police chief, and he had to stand up at town meeting and tell people that he couldnt put his cruiser on the road for a period of weeks because he didnt have money to repair it and make it a safe vehicle.

Basically, Grafton became a Wild West, frontier-type town.

When did the bears show up?

It turns out that if you have a bunch of people living in the woods in nontraditional living situations, each of which is managing food in their own way and their waste streams in their own way, then youre essentially teaching the bears in the region that every human habitation is like a puzzle that has to be solved in order to unlock its caloric payload. And so the bears in the area started to take notice of the fact that there were calories available in houses.

One thing that the Free Towners did that encouraged the bears was unintentional, in that they just threw their waste out how they wanted. They didnt want the government to tell them how to manage their potential bear attractants. The other way was intentional, in that some people just started feeding the bears just for the joy and pleasure of watching them eat.

As you can imagine, things got messy and there was no way for the town to deal with it. Some people were shooting the bears. Some people were feeding the bears. Some people were setting booby traps on their properties in an effort to deter the bears through pain. Others were throwing firecrackers at them. Others were putting cayenne pepper on their garbage so that when the bears sniffed their garbage, they would get a snout full of pepper.

It was an absolute mess.

Were talking about black bears specifically. For the non-bear experts out there, black bears are not known to be aggressive toward humans. But the bears in Grafton were ... different.

Bears are very smart problem-solving animals. They can really think their way through problems. And that was what made them aggressive in Grafton. In this case, a reasonable bear would understand that there was food to be had, that it was going to be rewarded for being bolder. So they started aggressively raiding food and became less likely to run away when a human showed up.

There are lots of great examples in the book of bears acting in bold, unusually aggressive manners, but it culminated in 2012, when there was a black bear attack in the town of Grafton. That might not seem that unusual, but, in fact, New Hampshire had not had a black bear attack for at least 100 years leading up to that. So the whole state had never seen a single bear attack, and now here in Grafton, a woman was attacked in her home by a black bear.

And then, a few years after that, a second woman was attacked, not in Grafton but in a neighboring town. And since the book was written and published, theres actually been a third bear attack, also in the same little cluster and the same little region of New Hampshire. And I think its very clear that, unless something changes, more bear attacks will come.

Luckily, no ones been killed, but people have been pretty badly injured.

Youre fair, even sympathetic, to the libertarians you profile in this book, but I do wonder if you came to see them increasingly as fanatics.

You know, libertarian is such a weird umbrella term for a very diverse group of people. Some libertarians are built around the idea of white supremacy and racism. That was not the case with these libertarians. Most of the libertarians that I met were kind, decent people who would be generous with a neighbor in any given moment. But in the abstract, when theyre at a town meeting, they will vote to hurt that neighbor by cutting off, say, support for road plowing.

So I guess what I noticed is a strange disconnect between their personalities or their day-to-day interactions and the broader implications of their philosophies and their political movement. Not sure Id use the word fanatic, but definitely a weird disconnect.

Theres a lesson in this for anyone interested in seeing it, which is that if you try to make the world fit neatly into an ideological box, youll have to distort or ignore reality to do it usually with terrible consequences.

Yeah, I think thats true for libertarianism and really all philosophies of life. Its very easy to fall into this trap of believing that if only everybody followed this or that principle, then society would become this perfect system.

Did any of the characters in this story come to doubt their libertarianism as a result of what happened in Grafton? Or was it mostly a belief that libertarianism cant fail, it can only be failed?

One of the central characters in the book is a firefighter named John Babiarz. And John had the distinction of running for the governor of New Hampshire on the libertarian platform, and did better than any other gubernatorial libertarian candidate has ever done in America. And he invited the libertarians to come in and begin the Free Town Project. He was their local connection.

But by the end of the project [sometime in 2016], he had really drawn some distinctions between himself and many of the extremist libertarians who came to town. He still considers himself to be a libertarian, and a very devout one at that, but by the end of the project he was at odds with most of the other libertarians. And it shows that until you actually have a libertarian-run community, its very hard to say what it is or what it will look like.

In the end, do you think these people bumped up against the limits of libertarianism, or is this more about the particular follies of a particular group of people in a particular place?

I think they bumped up against the follies of libertarianism. I really do think that there is a hard wall of reality that exists thats going to foil any effort to implement libertarianism on a broad scale. And I think if you gave a libertarian the magic wand and allowed them to transform society the way that they wanted to, it wouldnt work the way they imagined, and I think it would break down just as Grafton did.

Maybe thats the lesson.

Will you help keep Vox free for all?

There is tremendous power in understanding. Vox answers your most important questions and gives you clear information to help make sense of an increasingly chaotic world. A financial contribution to Vox will help us continue providing free explanatory journalism to the millions who are relying on us. Please consider making a contribution to Vox today, from as little as $3.

Read the original here:
A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear: Author Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling on the Free State Project - Vox.com

Jessie A. Nelson, 45, of 405 Juniper St.; and Heather Michelle Dickens, 34, of Marley Drive; were charged Tuesday morning by sheriffs deputies with methamphetamine possession and possession of drug paraphernalia. Deputies went about 9:15 a.m. Tuesday to the 1900 block of Brittontown Road in Afton to assist a stranded driver. Nelson said the vehicle ran out of gas the night before. A records check showed Nelson and passenger Dickens both had active arrest warrants issued in Greene County, Deputy Andrew Long said in a report An inventory before the vehicle was towed turned up a clear plastic bag containing suspected methamphetamine in the middle console accessible by both parties, the report said. Another plastic bag containing suspected meth was found on the passenger side floorboard. A plastic bag in Dickens purse contained syringes and a glass pipe. Nelson had a cut straw in his pocket. Nelson and Dickens were held without bond pending a first scheduled appearance Wednesday in court.

Michael T. Stanliand, 57, of 870 Sinking Springs Road, was charged Tuesday afternoon by sheriffs deputies with domestic assault. Deputies responded to a disturbance call at the Midway address and spoke with Staniland, who said he and a relative had gotten into a dispute. Stanliand had physical contact in a manner that caused the alleged victim to fear for his safety, Deputy Joe Harness said in a report. Staniland was held without bond pending a first scheduled appearance Wednesday in court.

Two necklaces and a pistol were stolen between Monday and Wednesday from a house in the 100 block of Keller Road in Afton, sheriffs Deputy Eric Cutshall said in a report. The victim told deputies that two suspects named in the report was staying with his family when the jewelry and gun went missing. A car described in the report was seen leaving the driveway Monday morning and a bedroom window was open. The silver and gold necklaces have a combined value of $280. The .22 caliber pistol is valued at $166.

A catalytic converter was stolen from a van between Saturday and Tuesday from the parking lot of Ragon Wholesale Warehouse, 4765 E. Andrew Johnson Highway, sheriffs Deputy Joe Harness said in a report. The victim told deputies that when he started the van Tuesday morning, the exhaust sound was excessively loud. An inspection of the exhaust system showed the catalytic converter was missing. A camera security system had notified the victim there was motion detected about 1:30 a.m. Monday on the property and after looking at video footage saw a man and woman acting in a suspicious manner, the report said. The catalytic converter was apparently cut from the exhaust system with a power tool. It is valued at at $350.

Water lines at a Springbrook Park property were vandalized, Greeneville police were told Tuesday by a contractor doing work on the property. Workers cleaning the property at the address bulldozed four mobile homes but left the water lines intact, the crew supervisor said. He told police an unknown suspect is coming onto the property after they leave and is busting the water lines, Officer Derek Casteel said in a report. Broken water lines have flooded the property and workers cant get any equipment on it to continue cleanup work, the report said. Repairs and equipment rentals had cost $2,500 as of Wednesday.

See the original post:
It Happened Here | It Happened Here | greenevillesun.com - Greeneville Sun