First, thanks to those of you who particpated in and/or attended the Neighborhood FORUM on 118-120 Washington Avenue on July 15.

The BZA met last night (7/23) but did not make a decision on the variances that would result in the demolition of these rare historic buildings.

It's not too late to make it clear that we don't EVER think it's a good idea to trade our sound urban fabric for surface parking lots!

You can:

visit the Times Union's Capital Region at the Crossroads  blog and add a comment;

visit 'All Over Albany' and comment on the article "Who should have a say about where the Fort Orange Club plays squash?";

write a letter to the Board of Zoning Appeals and email it to Bradley Glass at the Department of Planning, glassb@ci.albany.ny.us;

write a letter to the editor, http://timesunion. com/forms/emaileditor.asp;

talk to your neighbors and encourage them to do the same.

Please visit http://neoalbany.blogspot.com/ to view an alternate site plan that would preserve the historic cores of the buildings while providing additional parking for the Fort Orange Club.

Senate approves Suddaby for seat on federal bench

I can't even guess what this would be mean for the Bruno investigation, or whether this would mean any future action on the Albany PD machine gun case.  Consider me skeptical that whoever replaces Suddaby as US Attorney will be non-partisan.

So I'll discuss a bit of Austin that has nothing to do with NN, but has a connection to Albany.

Austin and Albany are alike in some ways -- centrally located smaller cities that became state capitals, downtown party bar zones, and remarkable Capitol buildings.

There are, of course, some differences in those similarities.

Austin's downtown scene is much greater than Albany's, featuring incomparably better live music.

There were at least five cranes working on non-government buildings in Austin; the few cranes seen in Albany in the last decade were mostly doing government work.

And the Texas Capitol does not subject visitors to the ridiculous security theater that demeans the New York Capitol.

My sub-headline for the article would be: Some of our staffers are not very bright.

The CDTA web site is here.  Their phone number, as the CDTA people pointed out to the TU, is 482-8822.