Another Splendid Day for a Saturday Tour...

September 11th proved to be another beautiful day for Pristine Chapel to welcome 55 guests for a comprehensive tour of the facility. After the dancing in the reception hall, all enjoyed a special wedding cake tasting, followed by  prize giveaways of over $1,500 in gift certificates.

Congratulations to our winners:

Althea Scott- Extended Reception & Photography Time,

Queneisha Rolen- Groom's Cake Allowance,

Cassandra Terry- Bridal Bouquet Allowance, and

Yolanda Jenkins- Linen/Color Reception Enhancement Pkg.

Our next Saturday Tour is scheduled for November 13, 2010...hope to see you there!

Wedding Package Specials!!!

Time	Sunday, January 9, 2011 · 12:00pm - 5:00pm
Location	Cobb Galleria Centre
More Info	http://www.eliteevents.com/#content=%3Fshow.id%3D860

Is it time to plan your Bridal Shower? ~Budget Shower Ideas from our friends at Brides.com~

From Classy Cocktail to Potluck Recipe party, here are some can't-miss ideas...

http://www.brides.com/wedding-ideas/wedding-showers-parties/2006/12/budget-showers

The safety of objects.

The escalation of airport security after September 11th has unambiguously complicated air travel. Hardly a year has gone by since that tragic day without the introduction of a new major regulation, generally enforced by the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA). The use of small box-cutters to intimidate the passengers of the four hijacked airplanes prompted the FAA to expand its restrictions on knives—formerly permissible if the blades were less than four inches long—so that no blades of any sort were allowed. This new regulation became a mandate just a day after the attacks , and restrictions since then have been, for the most part, cumulative. The most significant initiative took place on November 19, 2001—in time for the busy holiday travel season—when Congress passed the Aviation and Transportation Security Act, which officially formed the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).

Although the breadth and intensity of control of the FAA (under the Department of Transportation) still transcends all other aviation-related authorities—after all, it was the FAA’s decision that halted all air travel for a few days after 9/11—passengers are far more likely to experience a regulatory onus through their more routine engagement with the TSA. (Though also initially under the authority of the Department of Transportation, the Administration saw its authority shift in 2003 to the Department of Homeland Security, which was also created as a direct consequence of the September 11th attacks, under the original name of the Office of Homeland Security.) The TSA radically transformed the implementation of airline security, beginning with a fundamental nationalization of the process, which, prior to 9/11, usually involved airport authorities contracting out the passenger screening task to private companies. Though some of the earliest regulations appear relatively subtle from the passengers’ perspectives—criminal background screenings on 750,000 airport employees, locked cockpit doors, reduced partitions between first class and business class passengers—the majority of them directly affect the customer base, because the passengers are the target of federal scrutiny. Almost anyone who has flown in the past decade is familiar with the regulatory additions: sophisticated metal and explosive detectors, x-rays, and lighting to determine authentic watermarks on drivers’ licenses or other personal ID. Many of the interventions have forced passengers to change their behavior: removing their shoes and belts, discarding all liquids bought from outside the airport, bagging personal toiletries under three ounces (anything larger is prohibited), undergoing far more frequent hand inspections of bags and even occasional frisking from TSA authorities. Enhanced security staffing has allowed the employment of body pattern recognition (BPR), so that passengers exhibiting suspicious behavior—excessive sweating, thick clothes on a warm day, use of pay phones—may undergo additional questioning. Following the failed attempt on Christmas Day 2009 by Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to detonate plastic explosives hidden in his underwear, the recent announcement that airports would expand the use and availability of full-body scanners was more remarkable by how little controversy it aroused, even as civil libertarians have criticized numerous initiatives since 9/11 for privacy violations.

To a large extent, Americans have adapted to these restrictions with unusual reticence, most likely interpreting them as necessary precautions in the interest of national security and the prevention of another attack at the magnitude of the destruction of the World Trade Center. The most obvious burden the restrictions have imposed is one of time—it is no longer possible to arrive at a flight 20 minutes prior to departure. The TSA screening process, at its smoothest, will usually still take at least 10 minutes, and depending on passenger traffic (which often varies during different times in a single day), can last approximately an hour. Even smaller airports often induce a significant queue, particularly since they engage in the more nationally regularized process with fewer TSA staff. Most airlines recommend arriving at an airport 75 to 90 minutes in advance of departure, while checking in at least 30 minutes in advance. In an effort to abide by the restrictions, airline revenues have floundered over the past decade, instigated at least in part by the crippling FAA suspension on all civilian air travel in the days immediately after the attack, though escalating oil prices and the economic downturn have subsequently contributed to the airline industry’s woes. To counter these rising costs, airlines have stripped away benefits such as on-flight meals while adding fees for checked luggage. Neither of these policies, of course, makes air travel any more appealing to customers, and they only add to the accumulation of annoyances originally induced by TSA’s demands during the security screening process. At the end of 2009, the chief executives of several major airlines many airlines have argued that consumers’ perceptions of the inconvenience of flying may have had more of an impact on the industry than travelers’ concerns about another hijacking or bombing attempt. Prospective passengers have undoubtedly weighed the advantages of air travel versus automobile, bus, or rail travel, in terms of additional embedded or elective fees, and on-trip amenities. But the biggest variable undoubtedly remains temporal: all of these inconveniences amount to more time a passenger must invest in a flight, to the extent that short-haul trips between major airports such as JFT to BOS may take longer than a car, train, or bus ride. Maneuvering through the safety gauntlet slows customers down enough that airlines lose their biggest advantage: speed of travel.

Time from A to B isn’t the only dimension to suffer in the wake of September 11th. These intensified security measures have exerted spatial implications as well, and airports can suffer profoundly. The new equipment, increased personnel, elongated queues, and partitions take up much more space than the “old-fashioned” passenger screening measures, and my guess is that the smaller airports, with far less available floor space, suffer the brunt of these initiatives. Woodrum Field, the regional airport of roanoke, Virginia (ROA), shows what happens when the primary terminal is unprepared for radical changes:

This photo represents nearly the entirety of the airport’s one concourse, visible as soon as a passenger emerges from the TSA security station. It isn’t large, of course, but that’s not a surprise, considering the airport serves a metro area of only 300,000 persons.
Here’s the overhead sign which I was standing under in the first photo:

Notice that it lists six gates. Immediately to my left and slightly behind the point I was standing (back toward the airport’s entrance) is the busy Gate 2:

But if I look over to my right, what do I see? The glass partition separating me from the people who are still making it past the Transportation Security Administration. Far more telling is the label directly above the partition:

It would appear that the sprawling security configuration induced from 9/11 takes up an entire gate. The last two pictures demonstrate this more clearly:


Roanoke Regional Airport apparently had to sacrifice one of its six gates for enhanced security procedures. It’s possible that such a shift amounted to no more than an administrative blip for the Roanoke Airport Authority. After all, the Roanoke metro is only growing modestly, at less than 4% since 2000. And, the number of emplanements at ROA declined over 5% from CY 2008, falling below 300,000 in CY 2009. But if two days of universally suspended flights after September 11 was enough for some airlines to skirt bankruptcy, one can imagine how sensitive the entire aviation industry is toward minor changes, and removing 16.6% of an airport’s available gates is hardly minor. The results of this cut undoubtedly impacted the airlines’ ability to schedule flights, as well as the timing of liftoffs on ROA’s two runways. Airlines most likely had to reduce the number of flights available during the day, juggle the times at which flights could arrive at the airport, or compress the headways between flights for the ones with highest demand, resulting in a greater likelihood of delays due to less cushion time between flights. If things got too bad at ROA, some prospective passengers may opt for other airports in the region, such as Lynchburg Regional Airport down the road (LYH), particularly if the later airport had a design that didn’t need to cut a gate to make room for new TSA regulations. While nearly all airports across the country have suffered declining passenger volumes over the past couple years, it is possible that having six gates available would have at least mitigated some of Roanoake’s diminishing emplanements. Falling passenger numbers and fewer available gates could ultimately influence some of the City of Roanoke’s own economic development initiatives, since passenger volume numbers generally correlate heavily to a region’s sphere of economic influence.

This blog article does not intend to lambast the FAA, TSA, DHS or any of the other acronyms that have engendered the culture of aviation security we can observe today. The fact that attempted terrorist attacks on airplanes persist nearly a decade after the planes crashed into the Pentagon and WTC indicates that expansive and adaptive security measures are still worthwhile. But top-down initiatives elicit a bottom-up response that rarely meshes perfectly with the intended results. It is just as possible that other airports in the country had to make even greater spatial sacrifices in the interest of security; imagine what would have happened to an airport that had to sacrifice one of only two gates. Some safety measures incur the greatest cost at the point of installation, such as the square reflective devices embedded in streets that I blogged about earlier. Others have long-term implications. In the case of Roanoke Regional Airport, the culpability may rest on the TSA, or with the original aviation architects who failed to design a concourse that could adapt to changes. The wisest resolution would avoid ascribing blame and simply allow the airport authority and the airlines to continue collaborating to provide passengers with the most efficient mode of transit available, even if, someday, our TSA passenger screening stations require enough space to hold a passenger’s dressing rooms.

The safety of objects.

The escalation of airport security after September 11th has unambiguously complicated air travel. Hardly a year has gone by since that tragic day without the introduction of a new major regulation, generally enforced by the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA). The use of small box-cutters to intimidate the passengers of the four hijacked airplanes prompted the FAA to expand its restrictions on knives—formerly permissible if the blades were less than four inches long—so that no blades of any sort were allowed. This new regulation became a mandate just a day after the attacks , and restrictions since then have been, for the most part, cumulative. The most significant initiative took place on November 19, 2001—in time for the busy holiday travel season—when Congress passed the Aviation and Transportation Security Act, which officially formed the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).

Although the breadth and intensity of control of the FAA (under the Department of Transportation) still transcends all other aviation-related authorities—after all, it was the FAA’s decision that halted all air travel for a few days after 9/11—passengers are far more likely to experience a regulatory onus through their more routine engagement with the TSA. (Though also initially under the authority of the Department of Transportation, the Administration saw its authority shift in 2003 to the Department of Homeland Security, which was also created as a direct consequence of the September 11th attacks, under the original name of the Office of Homeland Security.) The TSA radically transformed the implementation of airline security, beginning with a fundamental nationalization of the process, which, prior to 9/11, usually involved airport authorities contracting out the passenger screening task to private companies. Though some of the earliest regulations appear relatively subtle from the passengers’ perspectives—criminal background screenings on 750,000 airport employees, locked cockpit doors, reduced partitions between first class and business class passengers—the majority of them directly affect the customer base, because the passengers are the target of federal scrutiny. Almost anyone who has flown in the past decade is familiar with the regulatory additions: sophisticated metal and explosive detectors, x-rays, and lighting to determine authentic watermarks on drivers’ licenses or other personal ID. Many of the interventions have forced passengers to change their behavior: removing their shoes and belts, discarding all liquids bought from outside the airport, bagging personal toiletries under three ounces (anything larger is prohibited), undergoing far more frequent hand inspections of bags and even occasional frisking from TSA authorities. Enhanced security staffing has allowed the employment of body pattern recognition (BPR), so that passengers exhibiting suspicious behavior—excessive sweating, thick clothes on a warm day, use of pay phones—may undergo additional questioning. Following the failed attempt on Christmas Day 2009 by Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to detonate plastic explosives hidden in his underwear, the recent announcement that airports would expand the use and availability of full-body scanners was more remarkable by how little controversy it aroused, even as civil libertarians have criticized numerous initiatives since 9/11 for privacy violations.

To a large extent, Americans have adapted to these restrictions with unusual reticence, most likely interpreting them as necessary precautions in the interest of national security and the prevention of another attack at the magnitude of the destruction of the World Trade Center. The most obvious burden the restrictions have imposed is one of time—it is no longer possible to arrive at a flight 20 minutes prior to departure. The TSA screening process, at its smoothest, will usually still take at least 10 minutes, and depending on passenger traffic (which often varies during different times in a single day), can last approximately an hour. Even smaller airports often induce a significant queue, particularly since they engage in the more nationally regularized process with fewer TSA staff. Most airlines recommend arriving at an airport 75 to 90 minutes in advance of departure, while checking in at least 30 minutes in advance. In an effort to abide by the restrictions, airline revenues have floundered over the past decade, instigated at least in part by the crippling FAA suspension on all civilian air travel in the days immediately after the attack, though escalating oil prices and the economic downturn have subsequently contributed to the airline industry’s woes. To counter these rising costs, airlines have stripped away benefits such as on-flight meals while adding fees for checked luggage. Neither of these policies, of course, makes air travel any more appealing to customers, and they only add to the accumulation of annoyances originally induced by TSA’s demands during the security screening process. At the end of 2009, the chief executives of several major airlines many airlines have argued that consumers’ perceptions of the inconvenience of flying may have had more of an impact on the industry than travelers’ concerns about another hijacking or bombing attempt. Prospective passengers have undoubtedly weighed the advantages of air travel versus automobile, bus, or rail travel, in terms of additional embedded or elective fees, and on-trip amenities. But the biggest variable undoubtedly remains temporal: all of these inconveniences amount to more time a passenger must invest in a flight, to the extent that short-haul trips between major airports such as JFT to BOS may take longer than a car, train, or bus ride. Maneuvering through the safety gauntlet slows customers down enough that airlines lose their biggest advantage: speed of travel.

Time from A to B isn’t the only dimension to suffer in the wake of September 11th. These intensified security measures have exerted spatial implications as well, and airports can suffer profoundly. The new equipment, increased personnel, elongated queues, and partitions take up much more space than the “old-fashioned” passenger screening measures, and my guess is that the smaller airports, with far less available floor space, suffer the brunt of these initiatives. Woodrum Field, the regional airport of roanoke, Virginia (ROA), shows what happens when the primary terminal is unprepared for radical changes:

This photo represents nearly the entirety of the airport’s one concourse, visible as soon as a passenger emerges from the TSA security station. It isn’t large, of course, but that’s not a surprise, considering the airport serves a metro area of only 300,000 persons.
Here’s the overhead sign which I was standing under in the first photo:

Notice that it lists six gates. Immediately to my left and slightly behind the point I was standing (back toward the airport’s entrance) is the busy Gate 2:

But if I look over to my right, what do I see? The glass partition separating me from the people who are still making it past the Transportation Security Administration. Far more telling is the label directly above the partition:

It would appear that the sprawling security configuration induced from 9/11 takes up an entire gate. The last two pictures demonstrate this more clearly:


Roanoke Regional Airport apparently had to sacrifice one of its six gates for enhanced security procedures. It’s possible that such a shift amounted to no more than an administrative blip for the Roanoke Airport Authority. After all, the Roanoke metro is only growing modestly, at less than 4% since 2000. And, the number of emplanements at ROA declined over 5% from CY 2008, falling below 300,000 in CY 2009. But if two days of universally suspended flights after September 11 was enough for some airlines to skirt bankruptcy, one can imagine how sensitive the entire aviation industry is toward minor changes, and removing 16.6% of an airport’s available gates is hardly minor. The results of this cut undoubtedly impacted the airlines’ ability to schedule flights, as well as the timing of liftoffs on ROA’s two runways. Airlines most likely had to reduce the number of flights available during the day, juggle the times at which flights could arrive at the airport, or compress the headways between flights for the ones with highest demand, resulting in a greater likelihood of delays due to less cushion time between flights. If things got too bad at ROA, some prospective passengers may opt for other airports in the region, such as Lynchburg Regional Airport down the road (LYH), particularly if the later airport had a design that didn’t need to cut a gate to make room for new TSA regulations. While nearly all airports across the country have suffered declining passenger volumes over the past couple years, it is possible that having six gates available would have at least mitigated some of Roanoake’s diminishing emplanements. Falling passenger numbers and fewer available gates could ultimately influence some of the City of Roanoke’s own economic development initiatives, since passenger volume numbers generally correlate heavily to a region’s sphere of economic influence.

This blog article does not intend to lambast the FAA, TSA, DHS or any of the other acronyms that have engendered the culture of aviation security we can observe today. The fact that attempted terrorist attacks on airplanes persist nearly a decade after the planes crashed into the Pentagon and WTC indicates that expansive and adaptive security measures are still worthwhile. But top-down initiatives elicit a bottom-up response that rarely meshes perfectly with the intended results. It is just as possible that other airports in the country had to make even greater spatial sacrifices in the interest of security; imagine what would have happened to an airport that had to sacrifice one of only two gates. Some safety measures incur the greatest cost at the point of installation, such as the square reflective devices embedded in streets that I blogged about earlier. Others have long-term implications. In the case of Roanoke Regional Airport, the culpability may rest on the TSA, or with the original aviation architects who failed to design a concourse that could adapt to changes. The wisest resolution would avoid ascribing blame and simply allow the airport authority and the airlines to continue collaborating to provide passengers with the most efficient mode of transit available, even if, someday, our TSA passenger screening stations require enough space to hold a passenger’s dressing rooms.

July 2010 Weddings Pop like Fireworks!

see postings below...

Keyunna & Bryon~7.31.10

Monica & Mark~7.31.10

Contrina & Eric~7.24.10

Aisha & Doug~7.17.10

Shawanda & Kelon~7.10.10

Shaniece & Jonathan~7.11.10

Amber & Jarrod~7.3.10

MONTAGE: Animal and vegetable deserve a break today.

A spike in the workload has again slowed down much of my blogging progress (as well as an apparent server problem with Blogger and Google on Monday night), but I still have acres of fertile fields ahead of me left to sew, so even if the monthly output lags, I have every intention of committing myself to the new material. In the meantime, it has been awhile since I’ve added a real photo montage—I didn’t get one in last month—so the blog is due for one, especially since this entry features a topic that I’ve otherwise exhausted: handicapped access in urban settings. I don’t have much new to say, but this particular design predicament and its ensuing solution are interesting enough to merit a discussion. Thus, I will provide minimal “captions” to the photos below, taken close to my current home, from a McDonald’s near downtown Biloxi, Mississippi:


My apologies if some of the photos approve misty; my lens was apparently clouded over on a predictably humid morning. At any rate, the McDonald’s here on Beach Boulevard (US Highway 90) uses a sort of sandstone motif that seems to be a particularly popular design vernacular these days, giving clear indication that the structure post-dates Hurricane Katrina.


If that weren’t proof enough, the fact that it sits just a few hundred feet from the water should offer evidence to anyone familiar with the area that this is a new building. In Biloxi, virtually everything within a tenth of a mile of the shore was obliterated by Katrina’s storm surge. Just across US 90 from this McDonald’s is the completely refurbished Hard Rock Casino Hotel, and just beyond that is the Mississippi Sound.


For a historically spread-out city that is redeveloping after the hurricane with abundant parking, this McDonald’s squeezes its thirty spaces into a relatively small parcel, as outlined in red below.


Thanks to a huge hotel just across the street (and the even more colossal Beau Rivage just next door to the west), this stretch of Highway 90 enjoys a high enough density of visitors that the McDonald’s across the street could very well expect some foot traffic, even in an area in which the building configurations otherwise do not attempt to accommodate pedestrians. As the photos indicate, the McDonald’s is also elevated several feet above street level.

The ramp out front demonstrates a clear effort to provide wheelchair access. It runs from the sidewalk at the intersection—


—up to the parking lot.


Yet, interestingly, the sidewalk parallel to the city street does not offer this same convenience.

Pedestrians walking along Main Street toward downtown Biloxi will have to climb a few stairs, and then descend again after several feet.

The last two photos capture the bizarre site preparation decisions that the developers made here, presumably in negotiation with the City in order to obtain the building permit. This parcel incorporates three different grades: one at the level of the street and most of the sidewalk; one for the terrace hosting two expansive live oak trees and the elevated portion of the sidewalk; and one for the McDonald’s building itself. The decision behind elevating the McDonald’s is obvious: regardless of whether this complies with FEMA or the National Flood Insurance Program’s Base Flood Elevation standards, any sensible franchiser working with this parcel would want to elevate to reduce the chances of flooding in the event of another storm surge. But it would appear that the original elevation decision took place long ago, at the grade where the two live oak trees stand, both which clearly pre-date Hurricane Katrina, and thus survived its powerful winds. The earth around those trees needs to remain elevated to accommodate their expansive root systems; bringing the sidewalk down to street level at this point could have threatened their stability.

The question is how much the local ordinances dictated this unusual decision. If the City of Biloxi has both a sidewalk ordinance (which it apparently does—Section 23-14-7 in the Land Development Ordinance) and a tree protection ordinance (Section 23-16-11) this parcel would pose a difficult means of reconciling the two codes. It’s highly possible that the sidewalk predates the new McDonald’s as well as Hurricane Katrina, though, judging from the pavement’s new appearance, chances are that some entity installed new concrete to coincide with the construction taking place. If Biloxi’s sidewalk ordinance mandates that all new construction requires a sidewalk at any perimeter that directly abuts the streets, then the developer installed this segment by law. But how did he or she circumvent the Americans with Disabilities Act by building a portion of sidewalk that is clearly non-compliant? The two live oaks at a different grade quite possibly form the crux of an elaborate negotiation. Also, a wheelchair can avoid the stairs on the sidewalk with little difficulty: first by running up the ramp into the McDonald’s parking lot, then by circumscribing the building along the parking lot, and finally by taking the automobile exit ramp back around to the back of the structure, on the other side of the stairs to the sidewalk (to the left of the above photos). A seemingly mundane development that could take place anywhere manifests the collision of different well-intentioned policies, with results that accommodate the interests of both groups: those in wheelchairs and those seeking to save native tree growth. Though one could argue that both the trees’ root network and disabled persons are moderately inconvenienced by the resulting site plan, no one emerges a loser, demonstrating the potential for ingenuity in compromise.

MONTAGE: Animal and vegetable deserve a break today.

A spike in the workload has again slowed down much of my blogging progress (as well as an apparent server problem with Blogger and Google on Monday night), but I still have acres of fertile fields ahead of me left to sew, so even if the monthly output lags, I have every intention of committing myself to the new material. In the meantime, it has been awhile since I’ve added a real photo montage—I didn’t get one in last month—so the blog is due for one, especially since this entry features a topic that I’ve otherwise exhausted: handicapped access in urban settings. I don’t have much new to say, but this particular design predicament and its ensuing solution are interesting enough to merit a discussion. Thus, I will provide minimal “captions” to the photos below, taken close to my current home, from a McDonald’s near downtown Biloxi, Mississippi:


My apologies if some of the photos approve misty; my lens was apparently clouded over on a predictably humid morning. At any rate, the McDonald’s here on Beach Boulevard (US Highway 90) uses a sort of sandstone motif that seems to be a particularly popular design vernacular these days, giving clear indication that the structure post-dates Hurricane Katrina.


If that weren’t proof enough, the fact that it sits just a few hundred feet from the water should offer evidence to anyone familiar with the area that this is a new building. In Biloxi, virtually everything within a tenth of a mile of the shore was obliterated by Katrina’s storm surge. Just across US 90 from this McDonald’s is the completely refurbished Hard Rock Casino Hotel, and just beyond that is the Mississippi Sound.


For a historically spread-out city that is redeveloping after the hurricane with abundant parking, this McDonald’s squeezes its thirty spaces into a relatively small parcel, as outlined in red below.


Thanks to a huge hotel just across the street (and the even more colossal Beau Rivage just next door to the west), this stretch of Highway 90 enjoys a high enough density of visitors that the McDonald’s across the street could very well expect some foot traffic, even in an area in which the building configurations otherwise do not attempt to accommodate pedestrians. As the photos indicate, the McDonald’s is also elevated several feet above street level.

The ramp out front demonstrates a clear effort to provide wheelchair access. It runs from the sidewalk at the intersection—


—up to the parking lot.


Yet, interestingly, the sidewalk parallel to the city street does not offer this same convenience.

Pedestrians walking along Main Street toward downtown Biloxi will have to climb a few stairs, and then descend again after several feet.

The last two photos capture the bizarre site preparation decisions that the developers made here, presumably in negotiation with the City in order to obtain the building permit. This parcel incorporates three different grades: one at the level of the street and most of the sidewalk; one for the terrace hosting two expansive live oak trees and the elevated portion of the sidewalk; and one for the McDonald’s building itself. The decision behind elevating the McDonald’s is obvious: regardless of whether this complies with FEMA or the National Flood Insurance Program’s Base Flood Elevation standards, any sensible franchiser working with this parcel would want to elevate to reduce the chances of flooding in the event of another storm surge. But it would appear that the original elevation decision took place long ago, at the grade where the two live oak trees stand, both which clearly pre-date Hurricane Katrina, and thus survived its powerful winds. The earth around those trees needs to remain elevated to accommodate their expansive root systems; bringing the sidewalk down to street level at this point could have threatened their stability.

The question is how much the local ordinances dictated this unusual decision. If the City of Biloxi has both a sidewalk ordinance (which it apparently does—Section 23-14-7 in the Land Development Ordinance) and a tree protection ordinance (Section 23-16-11) this parcel would pose a difficult means of reconciling the two codes. It’s highly possible that the sidewalk predates the new McDonald’s as well as Hurricane Katrina, though, judging from the pavement’s new appearance, chances are that some entity installed new concrete to coincide with the construction taking place. If Biloxi’s sidewalk ordinance mandates that all new construction requires a sidewalk at any perimeter that directly abuts the streets, then the developer installed this segment by law. But how did he or she circumvent the Americans with Disabilities Act by building a portion of sidewalk that is clearly non-compliant? The two live oaks at a different grade quite possibly form the crux of an elaborate negotiation. Also, a wheelchair can avoid the stairs on the sidewalk with little difficulty: first by running up the ramp into the McDonald’s parking lot, then by circumscribing the building along the parking lot, and finally by taking the automobile exit ramp back around to the back of the structure, on the other side of the stairs to the sidewalk (to the left of the above photos). A seemingly mundane development that could take place anywhere manifests the collision of different well-intentioned policies, with results that accommodate the interests of both groups: those in wheelchairs and those seeking to save native tree growth. Though one could argue that both the trees’ root network and disabled persons are moderately inconvenienced by the resulting site plan, no one emerges a loser, demonstrating the potential for ingenuity in compromise.

Check out Our Latest Kudzu Reviews!

Bucolic baristas.

The coffeehouse isn’t just a destination for the bohemians these days. Long a mainstay in big cities, coffeehouses are visible now across all types of settings, from urban street corners to suburban or small-town strip malls, from tiny kiosks in parking lots to the exits of interstate highways. They have joined the ranks of 24/7 fitness centers, tarot card readings, spas, check cashing stores, tanning salons, and pet salons. Among this motley crew of retailers, coffeehouses may reign supreme: all of the above outlets have transcended their niche markets to become popular in just about any setting, metropolitan or small town—but coffeehouses have enjoyed widespread popularity far longer than most of the others, suggesting that their current visibility is not some ephemeral fad. (The verdict isn’t out on 24/7 fitness centers.)

It’s difficult to determine how much beat culture really fueled the initial curiosity and eventual popularity of coffeehouses. My guess is the influence is small. Jack Keruoac may have claimed that coffee surpassed Benzedrine and everything else, for that matter, for “real power kicks” [at least according to Howard Cunnell’s introduction to On the Road: The Original Scroll (New York: Viking Penguin, 2007, p. 24)], but it would be a stretch to think that such a diverse array of Americans visit coffeehouses—or drink coffee, for that matter—in pursuit of an artistic or psychological high. No, Americans visit “coffee shops” (the preferred term on this side of the Atlantic) for their ability to govern space under new parameters, much the reason beat writers enjoyed them 40 years ago. Coffee shops offer an expansive flexibility for human socialization with few time constraints, either overtly or unconsciously, and they achieve this usually without the concomitant alcohol-induced raucousness one might usually find in a bar. You can pick up a drink to go and carry it legally down the street with you. Or you can sit inside and sip for hours. Quite simply, coffee shops allow people of all ages to engage in perfectly acceptable private activities a setting where they will consistently see other people and be seen. I’ve already mentioned their adaptability to a variety of urban forms. Most coffee shops exploit their own malleable milieu by offering other goods and services in conjunction with the coffee: some sell the original bean, some sell exotic roasts or blends, most sell sandwiches or at least pastries, some offer drive-through services, many host special events. But the key defining characteristic of a coffeehouse is the way it affords the power to appropriate private space under so few rules that the space assumes almost public, non-exclusionary characteristics. You can do just about whatever you want—provided that it’s already legal in public—in many of the most successful coffeehouses across the country.

It’s safe to venture that, in a good economy, a new locally owned coffee shop opens somewhere in the US at least once a week, if not much more. Websites like Indie Coffee Shops or Delocator even help travelers spot the most distinctive non-chain coffee purveyors. No matter what the size of a community is, at least one entrepreneur is likely to attempt to open a coffee shop at some point. Even an economically struggling jurisdiction is likely to see the occasional scrappy coffee house give its best shot amid high vacancies and inexpensive leases. They were virtually unheard of outside of the biggest metropolises as recently as 1990, until a certain humble retailer named Starbucks started gingerly trying its luck in metros outside of Seattle, and eventually, the rest of the world. Chain or independent, this non-alcoholic lounge environment has ascended to a proven retail typology, loosely akin to the big box or the drive-thru—it works across a variety of settings. One might have thought that, by this point, coffee houses would approach ubiquity—that they demonstrate such an enduring appeal that they can augur the economic growth of an area.

Yet many of these indie coffee shops break ground and then fold within a few years or even months. No doubt most of us witnessed it: that likable place with the fantastic blend that never has more than 3 or 4 patrons, yet you try to promote it as much as possible, because eventually it will catch on due to word of mouth….then it doesn’t. In no time, that storefront has a “FOR LEASE” sign out front. So how can an independently operated coffee house—a true newcomer—bolster its longevity in this era of Starbucks? This example below along a historic main street reveals an unremarkable effort—but highly indicative because of its ordinariness—to introduce java to an economically sluggish commercial area:


Pascagoula, Mississippi is a mid-sized city along the Gulf Coast, close to the Alabama border. It lacks the high profile of its bigger, flashier neighbors, Gulfport and Biloxi, both of which lured a number of large casinos to their waterfronts over the past twenty years, helping to elevate Mississippi among the top states for casino revenue—usually part of the trifecta that includes Nevada and New Jersey. (Many of the most prominent casinos rebuilt shortly after Hurricane Katrina.) Pascagoula, though, has remained considerably quieter, with an almost completely residential waterfront. This city of approximately 25,000 souls derives most of its economic base from Ingalls Shipbuilding, the shipyard which hosts Northrop Grumman, whose warship division here often serves as Mississippi’s largest private employer. All three of the aforementioned cities were badly devastated by the heavy winds and storm surge induced by Hurricane Katrina; the serene Pascagoula waterfront offers newly built homes on pilings alternating with concrete slabs where homes once stood and the owners have yet to rebuild.

Pascagoula’s main street falls under a completely different scenario:

Downtown Pascagoula seems far smaller than one might expect for a city of 25,000—much of this derives from the fact that, until 1950, it was a modest fishing village, and the Cold War demand for ships helped galvanize the population boom. Like the similarly scaled city of Dover, Delaware (and former blog subject), Pascagoula boomed after the proliferation of the automobile, so a disproportionately high amount of its building stock appears suburban and auto-oriented by today’s standards. (Truthfully, it’s just a smaller version of the same phenomenon plainly visible in post-automobile sunbelt cities like Atlanta, Houston, and Phoenix.) Delmas Avenue, the commercial main street of Pascagoula, appears fairly intact, without the vast stretches of emptiness that characterize Gulfport and Biloxi, both of which lost a considerable amount of their downtowns to Hurricane Katrina. Pascagoula’s downtown is further inland, buffering it from the worst of the storm surge; the city also sits farther away from the eye of the storm, so winds were most likely weaker. But the considerable investment in street beautification most likely post-dates Katrina, even if the source of the funds—HUD’s Community Development Block Grants (CDBGs) had nothing to do with disaster recovery itself.

I have long been skeptical that streetscape improvements achieve much in the way of revitalizing a main street, as I wrote about in an Indiana town much smaller than Pascagoula that attempted a similar initiative, essentially replicating the look of the popular suburban retail typology of the lifestyle center (i.e., malls without roofs). Many historic main streets with particularly unlovely sidewalks have soared. But I hardly want to criticize the instigators of these improvements on their efforts. Pascagoula’s main street is not dead: a few retailers making a go of it, and of course one of them is the featured coffee house.

The proprietors of Courthouse Coffee seem to understand the recipe for success with this kind of enterprise. While coffeehouses do not depend on urban environments to prosper, nearly every great walkable commercial main street harbors at least one independent coffee shop. The problem is, Delmas Avenue in Pascagoula is not flourishing: it is only about 50% occupied, at most. The sidewalks look fantastic, of course, but the building façades suffered the sort of mummification that only an era as hostile to urbanism as the 1960s and 70s could induce.


And much of the surrounding area is a sea of parking—not building slabs, as one sees in Biloxi and Gulfport—suggesting that any other historic architecture was demolished to service the industry visible in the background of the photo below.

This two-block portion of Delmas Avenue is actually a bit tough for the visitor to find among the spread-out civic buildings, churches, and a railroad depot, all of which constitute most of the rest of the downtown. Yet it may still be enough to herald a revitalization to downtown Pascagoula. Clearly a few smart preservationists saw the merit in this old firehouse building:

Despite the heavily modified façade, the spirited result seems to host the only other restaurant currently in business on the main street. But Courthouse Coffee still faces a great deal of challenges, manifested by the decals on the door:

Standard business hours are undoubtedly all that this place can hope for in a downtown that has very little attraction on evenings and weekends. But truncated operational times often equate to the death knell for a coffee shop. I know that remaining open 45 hours a week is hardly that limited, but people seek these establishments because they offer such a wide berth for congregation. Excluding the evenings—even if only until 7 pm—removes much of the client base that would seek such a business for leisure, rather than just its apparent breakfast or lunch offerings, its desserts, or its early morning brew. And, with all the pretty trees and flowers and decorative brick patterns, isn’t a recreational main street in large part what Pascagoula’s applicants for these Community Development Block Grants are probably seeking as the impetus for revitalization? No one should force Courthouse Coffee to stay in business after dark. (The poor coffee shop probably couldn’t sustain itself that way.) But since one would presume that these small business owners were hoping to “ride the wave” of a revitalized Delmas Avenue, wouldn’t they attempt to capture the sort of population seeking a coffee shop who might otherwise go home to relax, read a book, or surf the internet?

Coffeehouses may have been a destination unto themselves for Middle Eastern men 500 years ago and beat poets just 50, but they are hardly a silver bullet for revitalization of a commercial district suffering the doldrums. One could claim that they’re simply too small, they don’t have a sufficiently diverse enough, they don’t attract the big enough spenders, they’re only an accessory to some larger, anchoring activity going on down the street. But the fact is that nothing is a guaranteed economic bonanza for downtowns. Countless large cities in America have sports arenas near their city center, yet downtown remains moribund any time outside of the big game. A coffee shop like Courthouse may not single-handedly turn around a main street’s economic fortune—no single business ever does—but it can work with the level of ambition that took an aging fire station elsewhere on Delmas Avenue and turned it into a moderately priced restaurant. Perhaps Courthouse Coffee could stay open till sort of late (8 pm perhaps) just two nights a week—one Friday night and one weeknight. If a city like Pascagoula doesn’t have a big enough counterculture craving an after-dark destination, it just needs to think of the potential clientele it does have. Teenagers, typically not lacking in their free time, are always seeking places to congregate and spontaneously run into their peers. (This, of course, is the main reason they’re such denizens of suburban shopping malls.) Live music might be a draw, but staying open solely to host a club meeting, or a Bible study, or a poetry slam can also do the trick. After all, even the coffee shops in thriving urban districts often have to find some way to distinguish themselves. But the good ones would never dream of closing until well after it is dark outside.

Obviously I’ve just launched on a flight of fancy regarding an establishment that wasn’t even open on the Saturday I visited Pascagoula. No doubt I’ve only demonstrated my own bias and love of coffee shops in the process. But coffee shops are just as solid of a contributor to a downtown revitalization as the big-ticket items, since downtowns and main streets both revitalize by accretion, and a good coffeehouse scores a point the same way a new convention center might. The fact that the market for coffee shops has penetrated smaller communities in recent years is a testament to their versatility and democratizing impact, even if most of the small-town incarnations close after 36 months. Though I have yet to see a downtown that attributes its revival to a coffee shop, I would never rule out the possibility. All thriving coffee shops—even the suburban ones with a drive-thru (as long as that’s not all they have)—appeal to the same unconscious needs for human-to-human engagement that great downtowns do, in communities big and small.