Increased security in the ward

Courtesy of Ramblin' Willie. Who's friend was ... shot in this very stairwell. This is how the people in charge at Fourth Ward Square handled the threat. As many of us know, people who live in buildings like this with a significant portion of renters tend to get screwed.

Jurassic J disrespects the Bobcats

His nomination for the Worst of the Worst awards, which actually covers a few categories: Worst Sports Owner, Worst Sports Arena Name, Worst Sports Team, Worst Potential Draft Pick. (Read Jurassic J's last post here.)In case you have not heard, the Bobcats finally sold the naming rights to their arena.

After four years of terrible basketball, half-hearted promotions, questionable front office moves (to put it mildly), and non-HD telecasts, the Bobcats selected Time Warner Cable as their arena sponsor. In the immortal words of Mike Gundy, “Makes me wanna puke!”

Actually, the naming decision makes perfect sense, in that it is just another stupid move by Robert Johnson and the Bobcats. I thought the Bobcats had enough problems attracting fans. Why did they go and name the arena after one of the most hated companies in Charlotte? How much more broke can you get than naming your arena after a cable provider that wasn’t providing HD broadcasts to the current fanbase? Even young single women are buying HD televisions now, and the Bobcats can’t even get their games in HD?

The Bobcats should have been aggressively pursuing young professionals in Charlotte as a foundation for ticket sales to come. What is the go-to first purchase of a newly settled, recovering frat star? An HD flat screen TV, of course! Why would these newly transplanted people watch a Charlotte Bobcats road game in crappy regular-definition when they could catch a good team on TNTHD or ESPNHD?

Seriously, it was about time you put the games on a reasonable channel. Channel 14 was a terrible NBA broadcast, and generally a terrible station outside of their informative nightly news broadcasts, which you should check out if you ever get tired of the nonsense that goes on Fox News Charlotte. The Fox Sports deal is the only element of this that makes sense, and it only took you 15 months to complete it? Congratulations, Bob Johnson. It only took me 16 months to get Time Warner to come out and replace my cable box!

Let's recap. The Bobcats developed their own TV station called C-Set, which folded in 2005, shortly after it debuted. Why did this channel fail? Well, it was only offered on Adelphia and not Time Warner, so potential fans were unable to see the inaguaral Oakafor in ’04 campaign. C-Set folded since no one was able to watch the games in the Charlotte area; only fans in Lake Norman were offered Adelphia.

Also, I know for a fact that C-Set interns were asked to punch all-star ballots for Bobcats players, and could vote for anyone else they pleased, as long as it wasn’t a New Orleans Hornet. Instead of tapping the brains of young college students and recent graduates for promotional ideas to increase the popularity of the team, the Bobcats had their interns voting for Primoz Brezec. Don't worry, I will save my player personnel rant for another day.

The Charlotte Observer reported that the Bobcats games will now reach 3.8 million homes instead of the 1.2 million they previously reached as a result of the new TV deal. Common sense says an expansion franchise trying to build a fan base would maximize their home viewership numbers to begin with, but maybe they knew something about their 07-08 playoff prospects the average fan didn’t. One would think the Bobcats learned their lesson from the C-Set disaster. Instead, it took ownership from the C-Set debacle in 2005 to April 2008 to figure out a way to get their broadcasts into 3.8 million homes.

Now, the naming of the stadium is almost as terrible as the service Time Warner provides, but this cannot be changed. At least the Bobcats recognized their broadcast problems, even if it did take them two tries, and corrected the mistake on their second attempt with the upgrade from Channel 14 to Fox Sports Net. I am assuming Fox Sports Net will offer the games in HD, but this is a huge assumption knowing the Bobcats braintrust. At least the games will now reach more potential fans. Lets just pray they don’t have to watch the crappier of the two Lopez twins running down the court next season.

Hillary supporters receive middle finger

I'm sure I missed the big showing, and these had to be the leftovers from Hillary Clinton's visit to Church Street this afternoon. But at around 6pm, after receiving a text from a friend advising me to come "check out the pathetic Hillary supporters at the corner of Trade and Tryon," I drove by to see four young women standing glumly behind a blue HRC banner at the aforementioned location.

As I passed slowly by heading west on Trade, blasting Obama Girl on my stereo to see if I could get their attention (I couldn't), a car with two twenty-something guys headed in the opposite direction screeched to a halt at the intersection. The driver blared his horn and began waving his middle finger out the sun roof before speeding off. The looks on the faces of the Hillary supporters said this wasn't the first time they'd been subject to some abuse.

Judging by the number of local volunteers and the level of enthusiasm (by my hasty, likely inaccurate guesstimate), Obama seems to have the most support in center city. Maybe that's not surprising given the high percentage of young professionals here. The fact that there's a hefty generational (and educational) divide in support for the two candidates has already been beaten to death by the media (though you might have to dig a little deeper, and navigate through some careful language, to find the latter).

For what it's worth, I had a nice little spin experience while trying to find volunteer numbers for the respective campaigns to include in a short article I wrote on the subject for the most recent mag. The Obama campaign didn't have exact numbers, but told me they signed up over 700 volunteers at the grand opening of the campaign headquarters in March. The HRC rep, meanwhile, would only say her camp had "hundreds" of volunteers.

Hundreds like 900, or like 200?

"Oh, there are just so many people here every day. Just hundreds."

So you're not going to tell me?

"We're so happy to have all these hundreds of volunteers."

I politely hung up, then called back and asked the rep whether she could at least tell me how many people had signed up at the HQ opening in South Park. No dice there, either.

Should be a good show leading up Tuesday's vote. Be prepared to throw it right back if someone flips you the bird.

Charlotteans clap back

Over the first three months of this year, there's been a thirty-eight percent increase in applications for handguns (according to a story in today's Observer). That's following a ten percent increase all of last year.

Also, concealed handguns are perfectly legal with the right permit. In other words, be careful who you bump into around here.

Increases in gun applications are usually seen as a response to increases in crime. Percentage of NASCAR fans also appears to be a factor.

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As a side note, is there a more annoying word than "Charlotteans?" There must be a better shortcut for describing people who live in Charlotte. Queens? Mecks? Charlatans?