Oh man, That dude said the salty dog sounds like a good time....What?

I am glad this website is there though. It's another website that looks like it's not ready for the public but this is the kind of thing I have been ranting about for the last 6 months. If there were also websites like this for Shrewsbury St, for Downtown, for North Main, for Highland St then we would be getting somewhere. You might think what the Canal District is doing is premature or whatever but what has happened there over the past year is kind of crazy and like nothing I have seen since I have been living here. Mainly which is a core of people that all agree that something is a very good idea and working together to achieve that idea instead of all thinking their own individual ideas are better than everyone elses and working alone or in a small small group which seems to be the norm in Worcester.

He wrote me back and stated this:
"Hi Crystal,

Thanks for your reply so fast.

I haven't contacted anyone else about this site, as it's only a week old. We are currently trying to get the website all complete, and we have some events that we're running at local CD bars that will end up giving us a lot of content to post.

I took a look at that post, and have read through it before as well. Seems like some people are dead on, but it would be great for the city and local businesses if the canal was created again.

We have some contacts in the bars of the CD, and that is where our promotions will really lie."

So yeah they are working with someone, but the website does not speak The Canal District, it speaks something it is not and I would be pissed if I drove from an area to go to the CD for the night and saw the reality of the area versus the websites protraying of what it is.

I think the reasons I like Worcester is because it is "rough" and "raw", the same reason I love my concrete floors in the loft. I love my view being a big smoke stack in the building next to us.
So I think if someone who is truly creative could come up with the website with input from others that shows the true Worcester. The websites "pics" show the same type of Glamour that the Fremont Lofts website does (they are off Cambridge Street not Salisbury) Worcester is a "jeans" city not a "Chic" city. I think the right person could put out something that shows Worcester as it is and still draw people to the area.
To bad I am not a web designer...I knew I missed my calling.

All this talk about area makes me realize the C.D. needs a hip consignment store and Crystal and I need to be business partners.

I'll have to check the rent down there.

This is exactly it. There IS a market out there for this type of thing whether our own see it or not. There is a romanticism with post industrial America that the city needs to tap into as one of our natural resources. The key is not to sweep this part of Worcester under the carpet it's to hold it up high and celebrate it.

I just see this website and I think "How boring, unoriginal and Vanilla"
Those types of people that are pictured are not any type of person I would befriend. It looks like every other city that is tied up in consumerism and "it" status.
Boring!!!!
Not everything has to be trendy and for "regular" people

Punky!!!! Lets do it!!!! Oh how fun that would be...

I checked craigslist and found nothing...hmm

Hey, remember last week when I said "the C.D. needs a hip consignment store". I was getting off 290 at the bottom of Grafton St. today and what do I see...

A closer look...

Seems like some had the same thought.

Also, I don't see why there can't be two stores selling the same kind of things. I think you could bump it up a bit with coffee and books and what not but having two of the same would only make the neighborhood better. Like Thayer (sp?) St in Providence.

This sign just went up. I'm sure they will work on the building when they move in. Kyle and I have been toying with the cafe/store/internet thing for a while, but I don't see me getting a business loan a year after buying a house and I only know 2 people that have faith and me and money. So that plan is on the back burner. I really wish the Buffalo Exchange was a franchise.

The B.E. only offers franchises to employees. Since there are none in there area, There no chance I can work for them. Seems like a silly practice...Wouldn't you want your business to spread?

There is nothing wrong with that website. It has opinions, very much like this one. He says that the Salty Dog might be an "awkwardly good time." To each their own, right? The Canal District will grow into it's own, either a profitable haven for these poor college kids that got sucked into coming here or it will simply fail. Fuck this talk of "soul" and shit...it's about real estate, wasted and overlooked old mills that someone got savy about. If it helps Worcester cement itself as something other than Boston's white trash sister to the west to people who may potentially move here...then so be it. I just don't get this argument.

The argument is that marketing does not have to be lying and marketing that does is the worst marketing around and does damage more than helps. Good marketing, really good marketing takes what you have and convinces people that they want it. That seems to be the issue with our city as a whole. I am in the minority that seems to believe that the biggest problem with Worcester is our collective attitude towards it, but as I said I am in a minority. If you are going to hype something you need to make sure that when people take you up on your hype there is some truth to it to back it up. Like I said there is a market for post industrial America out there. Have you been to Williamsburg in Brooklyn? I had been hearing about it for a few years and when my band played down there last year I could not believe how much of an unsightly shithole it was, but it's one of the most in demand urban neighborhoods in our country right now.

Now I am not for a second trying to compare Worcester and Brooklyn but what I am saying is that most of Worcester doesn't understand what people like me find appealing about inner city urban living so they can't even visualize how it should be marketed. I would absolutely LOVE to live in the Canal District as is along with a dense population of people who take pride in the neighborhood and get out and do things like pull up weeds in the sidewalks and pick up trash.

The trying to turn Worcester is what bothers me. That is problem gentrification. We are so far gone as a city that we can't even see what makes Worcester awesome anymore and many of us would just like to burn it down and start over. What makes the city an anomaly and heart of what drives it to be better than it is, is the few people that see that.

There are about six neighborhoods right now that do not need a major overhaul, just some fine tuning and they would really be great for a segment of our population. The city, it's citizen's and it's investors need to be very careful right now how they proceed because the next few steps could be the difference between taking steps forward and backward.

Exactly. So you draw in all these people who go back to where they came from and talk up how shitty Worcester is therefore doing more damage and taking steps backwards. This is why I hope that website dies a quick death. It is a good site and it looks good, but it is completely going towards the wrong demographic.

"Good marketing, really good marketing takes what you have and convinces people that they want it."

I hate to say it Gabe, but really good marketing is taking a product that people don't want
and makes them feel as though they want to be part of it---that they can't live without it.

If the city continues to market itself as a blue collar, good ol' boy little town out of a bad Springsteen song-- the city will never move forward.

So we agree then great.