Great post Blake.

I'll add that what I seem to be coming across more than anything is a lack of community. What needs to grow more is a feeling that we are all on the same side. The remnants of small city mentality seems to be that we're all competing for the same dollar when we have a business, or even as musicians competing for venues.

What I see starting to grow is community as well, people putting themselves second to acknowledge their city needs help. People that acknowledge that what is attractive is coming downtown and finding all these businesses that are connected to each other. When I talk to artists like yourself, or J from LION records, and you guys love to talk about other artists and give them props as artists. Knowing that when you speak well of another local artist, you speak well of your community.

When we set ourselves aside, and help one another for the sake of helping, not trying to play the what's in it for me angle, the community grows. It does not make me feel good to sit and idly watch someone struggle when I have knowledge and solutions to help them. Not especially when it costs nothing to help them, and they are much happier and do well for it. It becomes infectious to help because it makes the person your helping feel good, it makes you feel good and it spreads.

Now some of the businesses like Milano, Smokehouse, Mezcal and Cafe Corazon are starting to pull together and tackle the problems they see. They are pulling together because they want be a part of brining downtown up to be a destination for Fresno, and make Fresno proud of itself and what it has to offer. They feel the community that is forming behind them. It's thanks to people that help.

It is the people that step forward, that don't just point, but give input, insight and their own time and effort that make a difference. Fresno will reflect kindly of those people, like Blake, Josh, Abe, Ed, Mike, Carlos (DB), Mr. Feild, Jarah and her legacy and all the others that step up. I can speak for myself, I thank you all. Fresno is a better place for having people like you as part of it.

Downtown is old, but it is becoming the new frontier for the people of Fresno. All it needs is help.

That quote is priceless.

Diablo

answering my own post.
I never said I wasn't a dork.

So I asked the question: Are ‘hater’ and ‘mindless rah rah’ our only two choices?

Here’s my own opinion for what it’s worth:

When it comes to the online communities that I see most:
(a few Fresno-blogs/ FresnoFamous/Beehive/ Mindhub). I actually don’t see
these extremes too much. Most of the ‘rah rah’ing is not mindless. It usually
comes from the folks that are actively working towards making things happen:
events in music, poetry, theater, what-have-you, or trying to get
things done best they can in the field of social Good-Deed-ness.
I don’t see too much ‘hater’ action. It’s mostly lazy posting/lazy thinking:
“there’s nothing to do here” or “forget about downtown, I’ve already got my Jamba Juice
up north” sort of comments. Obviously, not every critic is a ‘hater’ and
not every praise-er is just a hot-air-ad-campaigner.

Criticism does happen. And if done right, I think it can be good.

I must say, that when someone posts a criticism of our town, I respect it much much more
when it’s something like this : “Hey Fresburgers, we sure have Problem X. I’m putting together such-and-such to solve it---won’t you join me?”

That, to me, is extremely constructive, and very very useful.

This goes well with Kendall’s comment {on Mindhub) “whenever you say ‘this is what [they/he/it] should do,‘ the next step is to get started and do it.”

I must say that drive-by potshots like using ‘Fresno-as-a-punchline’ in the media do
bother me. I know there are plenty of folks that say “laugh along, it’s only fun” [yeah, yeah, so that Prius add *did* bug me], but
cheap shots are not encouraging; they are discouraging and belittling. They also play into unhealthy divisiveness--our wish to make ourselves feel bigger by saying ‘at least I’m not one of *them*’. Obviously every*one* and every*where* has things that they shouldn’t take too seriously and even things not to be
proud of that need fixing. But I’ll stick by the old Mark Twain quotation:
“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people do that, but the really great make you feel that you too can become great.”

If you’re going to point out the problems of our town, show me that you’re already well into trying to make it better, and maybe you’ll inspire some people to rise to the occasion and help as well.