Here’s a link to Manny’s post-
Affordable Housing Downtown Site Plans
(I put captions on there for those that thought otherwise)
I’d love to say I’m surprised that people made comments to the effect that they thought the plan that Manny Simoes put on the blog were the actual finished architectural drawings but I’m not even a teeny bit surprised.
I didn’t even see the post til the following day because I’ve been prescheduling my weekend blog posts and putting the blog on autopilot during the weekends lately.
But here’s what people may or may not know about the interwebs (and anyone that has read GMG for more than a year has read my countless rants about people’s reluctance to use or know how to perform a simple google search). Read a handful of my previous frustrated rants about how people still in this day and age refuse to use google or a search engine here-
People that refuse to use Google are maddening!
Internet 101
It’s never going to sink in is it? ARGHHHHHH!!!!!
How much could I charge for a seminar to teach people how to look for things on the internet using a search engine?
It used to be worse but we’re probably still at about 50% of people that use the web that take EVERYTHING LITERALLY, do not know what a hyperlink is or that if you click on a blue sequence that the link will take them to another online place.
I’ve had dozens of conversations with our contributors saying that if you want to make sure the 50% of not-so-saavy internet people click on your actionable link that you should spell it out for them.
So say I wanted someone to click on a link to the blog, instead of doing this- Good Morning Gloucester To capture the people that don’t know that’s a link I would suggest that they take the extra time to write out-
Click Here To Go To The Good Morning Gloucester Site- http://www.goodmorninggloucester.com
Peter Van Ness told me a long time ago that you have to build web sites using The Grandmother test. The Grandmother test being that if they could figure out how to navigate it then you’re alright.
We have over 6000 email subscribers that receive an email around 8PM with a compilation of that day’s posts on the blog in an email. I’d conservatively estimate that 70% of those email subscribers do not understand that the blog is not the individual emails that they get sent but an aggregation of the daily posts on the blog itself. Many also don’t realize that if they couldn’t see a photo because it didn’t come through in the email that they could click on any of the hyperlinks in the email and go directly to the blog which resides at www.goodmorninggloucester.com
There are a ton of people that think the blog only exists as what they see on the front page. That the over 22,000 previous posts that we’ve done are gone and can never be retrieved by doing a search or scrolling to the bottom of the blog and clicking the button that says “OLDER POSTS”.
I probably have explained to my mother 1000 times to do a search using the search box on GMG and she will still say to me something like “I missed that post your sister put up about the zucchini fries the other day.” And I tell her again did you type in zucchini in the search box, because I guarantee you’ll get your desired results.
Even people that I am close to days later that I think are reasonable intelligent folks made comments to the effect that they couldn’t believe that they were going to build an orange and green building with no windows on Main Street. When I asked if they were serious, they told me they were dead serious.
The point is- no matter which way you fall on the proposal for the Camerons site, if you are a developer at a meeting and presenting plans, you might want to put a huge semi transparent watermark over the plan saying that the green and orange shading is only being used for placeholding and that these are not finished architectural drawings.
Because as internet saavy as you are as a developer or person presenting the plan having years of college and experience with computers under your belt- THERE ARE A SHIT TON OF REALLY NICE PEOPLE THAT ARE STILL VERY CLUELESS AS TO THE WAYS OF THE WEB.
THERE ARE A SHIT TON OF PEOPLE NO MATTER HOW OUTRAGEOUS YOU MAKE A POST THAT WILL TAKE IT SERIOUS AND NOT REALIZE THAT IT’S BEING SATIRICAL.
THERE ARE A SHIT TON OF PEOPLE THAT THINK IF YOU PUT UP A PLAN OF A BOX WITH NO WINDOWS AND SHADE IT IN A HIDEOUS GREEN AND CONTRASTING ORANGE THAT THESE WILL BE THE FINISHED LOOK OF A DOWNTOWN GLOUCESTER PROJECT.
That’s just the way it is.
Good Morning Gloucester 
Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa! This internet non-savvy gramma is well-chastised. I am sure that the rest of the viewers who mistook the artist rendition as a facsimile of the final project are also sufficiently sheepish and will not repeat the same mistake in future. We will assiduously in future seek out all links and hyperlinks prior to commenting. Joey, thank you for the lesson in internet use. But, I must say that whatever color the final rendition of the building, presumably with windows, I am still of the opinion that the sheer size and heft of the building and the intended population are all too great, and not the best use of the location on Main Street. That being said, I will leave now, tail well tucked between my legs. Still luv ya though, Joey! Keep up the good work.
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We old folk don’t need your four letter words blasted at us. We can probably do things which you can’t, like simple arithmetic without a computer and spell words correctly without having to use spellcheck.
I haven’t seen the plans referred to above ( but certainly know how to use a search engine) ;
don’t need to in order to know that that location is a terrible choice for any kind of housing and a
better use could surely be made .
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I said SOME in capital letters and never used the word old. That’s you projecting it on there.
I’m telling it like it is and if you don’t think there are a ton of people that don’t use search engines or that take everything as if it isn’t joking around, I’m sorry but it is.
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Other thoughts: Green, windows or no, the form and scale of that design is not pleasing aesthetically, nor in keeping with present Gloucester architecture, the “feel/mood” of the town–a unique and beautiful place whose heritage and ambiance would be better preserved/respected with a more thoughtful and historically-considered plan. It may also be that “affordable housing” should not shout out its presence (as it usually does–some louder than others, like this one), but be a well integrated part of any community?
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This site possibly could accommodate a first floor retail level and 15 to 20 units within 3 stories. I know that the North Shore Community Development Corp. said that doesn’t work economically but we don’t care about the economics or “their mission” but the density – car parking/traffic and the child endangerment/neglect issues because of the lack of open space.
If people agree with this, tell Action Inc. and the North Shore Community Development Corp. that we cannot support the project as it stands and let’s look for support from the community, the other mayoral candidates and state officials for a project more suitable for Gloucester.
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