“There’s a piece of Maria in every song that I sing.”

“Never ask an artist about their art.” Mostly because they’ll give you a long rambling answer that doesn’t tell you anything or the answer is disappointing. So when I woke up with a Counting Crows song in my head, I had to find out who Maria is.

Unless you grew up around the same time I did, you’re probably not a fan of Counting Crows. I find that I tend to gravitate towards lead singers whose vocal range is similar to mine and Adam Duritz fits that bill. He’s the white guy who wore dreds for twenty years and was labeled by MST3K as the most repulsive thing in the universe. Anyway, in at least four songs I can name, Adam sings about a girl named Maria, including their most popular, Mr. Jones.

The great thing about the internet is that you can find answers to just about anything really fast. Whether they’re the correct answers is up to you. When Counting Crows hit the scene in 1992, the Internet wasn’t that robust, so you were left with wondering on your own? Who was Maria? From the lyrics, I guessed that she was an old girlfriend that he treated rather bad, felt bad about doing it, and then never quite got over that fact. That was my guess because… well, that was my experience, right?

Well, someone interviewed Adam and asked that very question. Turns out the answer was disappointing. Maria is… Adam. It’s just the feminine form of himself that gives personality to his experiences. Well, that’s either a) deep or b) too up his own butt. But hey, it’s his songs–let him write about whatever he wants!

This is probably why Pearl Jam never explained the story behind their hit song, “Jeremy,” because as cool as the song and the video is, the real answer would be disappointing. Certainly I can remember looking up Toad the Wet Sprocket’s “Hold Him Down,” which has a lot of violent imagery, and learning that it was really about beating up his brother as a kid. Gee. That’s exciting. (blink) Okay, what’s next?

So when I write about the Terran Associated States, and you think to yourself, “Wow, that’s a cool term–where’d you come up with that?” I should probably keep my mouth shut. But because I’m a fawning attention whore, I’ll more likely blurt out, “It came out of a game I played at a church picnic.” Plus, all the normal names for governments have been taken in other sci-fi universes: Federation, Confederation, Republic, League, Union, Alliance. You have to find more obscure references in history: Madras Presidency, Anglo-Irish Ascendency, Brotherhood, et al.

Have you run into this trouble before? Or does finding out the truth behind the art make it more significant to you? Let me know in the comments below!

Rules for Thee, Not for Me

It used to be great to be a celebrity–you could drive drunk and the cops would escort you home without a ticket. Well, this new reality has come home to politicians in the United States–that you can make a rule and think it doesn’t apply to you.

Before I start blasting both parties, let’s start with a recent celebrity who made the news: The Boss. Now I’m not a Bruce Springsteen fan. I kinda like his music and I -really- hate his insufferable political rants. It must have been the Vietnam War when we started caring what politics a movie or rock star had. (Sidenote: Vietnam vets STILL hate Jane Fonda.) However, I have a problem when a park ranger decides to make an example out of Bruce by daring to defy his orders. He took one shot of tequila–still below the legal limit–and then got on his motorcycle. But because the ranger specifically told him to not do it, this woods cop got his butt hurt, he arrested him.

What I find even more insufferable is that this happened in November, and some a-hole decided to use it to blast him for his super bowl ad in February. I kinda liked the ad, but when I realized it was the Boss talking, I thought, “How are we supposed to meet in the middle when you claim loudly that everyone to the right of Trotsky is evil?”

In the end, I don’t mind celebrities getting away with rule breaking because their actions don’t affect me. I don’t buy the Boss’ music, I don’t go to his concerts, I don’t fund him–but enough people do that allow him to rant all he wants. He gets to do that. Politicians thinking they can do the same thing DOES disturb me, because these people DO affect my life.

Take Gavin Newsom, governor of California, who has maintained the highest level of lockdown in his state due to the COVID outbreak. I’m not here to argue whether that was a good idea; I know that Gavin thinks its stupid because he decided to go out in public, in a large group of people, unmasked. He supports keeping public schools closed for “safety,” because it doesn’t apply to his daughter, who goes to a private school which has been open. The rules for you people, who don’t how to run your lives, but Gavin is smart enough to run his own… so why should he follow the rules that he himself wrote.

Hypocrisy runs on both sides of the aisle, say when Senator Ted Cruz decided to take his Cancun vacation while his state froze and had unbelievable power shortages. Now you might say that Ted is a US Senator and really doesn’t have much direct action that could help his constituents, but he could have been on the phone, bugging the president, and making an effort to help them. I don’t need him to fly back to Texas and hand out cups of soup, but staying in his office in Washington would have sufficed.

But to go on vacation is really tone-deaf. Plus there was the lame excuse of “oh, I was just escorting my daughter.” Sure, once you get to Cancun, the resorts are like little fortresses, and they’ll be safe, but your daughter has a daughter has a mom that could escort her just fine. Were you gonna jump back on a plane to Texas? Hell, no–so own up to it! Say, “I planned this trip to Cancun months ago and I’m going to go. I can call the president from there!”

But that looks bad and it should. You can’t preach against gay rights and then have gay sex in an airport terminal. You can’t send elderly folks back to infect their nursing homes and then claim you are a paragon of leadership. Own it and let the voters decide if you’re the person they want to represent them.

Okay, I’m off my soapbox, but what do you think? Did I hit both sides equally? Should politicians be accountable to the same laws? Let me know in the comments below!

Whatever you’re doing, it’s not enough.

Every so often, my wife makes me read non-fiction books. If she’s read them as well, then they’re pretty good. Then there are the books she suggests “you should really educate yourself.” So reading a book about raising daughters turned out to be an exercise in futility.

Naturally, I want to be a good father to my daughter. She’ll be hitting puberty any day now and it’s important to be prepared for lots of things. So I ended up reading Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters by Meg Meeker, MD. I mean, after all, she has an MD after her name, she must know something, right? And she does cover a lot of different topics. Things to do, things not to do. How to be supportive, but allow her to independent. Girls are different than boys (I know, radical statement), so naturally how they approach different milestones is different than how I would approach it with my son. Plus, since he’s my clone, I can understand him a whole lot better, because I’ve been through most of the same situations.

But with girls, I don’t have the same experiences, so I read this in order to be ready. After a few chapters, I noticed a pattern. The chapter would start off with 1) Here’s what you do, 2) here’s what you don’t do, but as they get older, 3) something outside your control might screw up all your hard work. For example, a father “is the first man a daughter falls in love with.” Model healthy relationships, treat her with respect and love, show her how she should be treated with friends and family. However, they might fall for a guy who treats them like crap, and this causes emotional scarring that will undo a lot of the work you did before.

Thanks, Meg.

So what you’re saying is “the only thing you can really control is how your daughter perceives you.” Life has a way of taking you places you weren’t expecting to go. (That really should be one of my maxims.) Fair enough. Often when I don’t feel like playing with my kids, when they prompt me, I do it anyway. Because I think of it as an investment in the future. “Remember that guy who took care of you and played with you the first 20 years of your life? You don’t want to throw that old guy out on the streets, right?” 🙂

So putting Meg’s advice aside, perhaps the best advice was one that I read was a post that said, “I want you to have bad sex.” (I wish I could find it.) It was beautifully written, but it was a father writing to his daughter saying, “I want you have all these experiences. Some of them will be bad, some will be good, but I want you to have them all.” So if all I can control is my own actions, then I’m going to do the best with my daughter… but accept I can’t control what happens when she goes out the door.

I don’t wrap her in bubble wrap, but comfort her when things go wrong. I have to accept things will go wrong. That’s the true strength of being a father–seeing your kids go on without you. And the easier you make that at the beginning, the easier it will be when they finally leave.

But I could be talking out of my behind–what do you think? Is there a better book that gives advice to fathers? Is there advice you wish your dad told you? Let me know in the comments below!

The Neighborhood’s Gone Downhill

“Gentrification”–such a weird word. Taking a neighborhood, improving it, then making it too expensive for the original inhabitants to live in. The alternate is to let it rot that even the inhabitants don’t want to live there. Do you take the tradeoff?

I was thinking of Baltimore, because I’ve been reading The Expanse books, which one of the main characters actually faked his own death to get out of. Having worked in Baltimore for six months, I can sympathize. Where I worked was one of the snazziest, gentrified places in the city: Harbor East. Right on the waterfront, yachts, restaurants, walking paths, new buildings–absolutely gorgeous. But it didn’t take much to figure out that they had to demolish a bunch of really old houses in order to build this modern marvel.

In fact, I could walk about a quarter mile and see exactly what Harbor East replaced. Bad neighborhoods that you only dared walk through during the day. Murders every other night and plenty of lesser crimes in between. Downtown even looked shabby compared to Harbor East. This is not that unusual in the world. Even my town of Tempe, Arizona, Apache Boulevard which runs out of Arizona State University used to be where all the fraternities had their houses, liquor stores, and all the low-cost motels for the visitors. Not the nicest of places. Then then ran the light rail through there and poof! All those houses disappeared and got replaced with nicer apartments. Because now those with money could afford to live further away from campus.

The liquor stores shifted to lesser desired neighborhoods or renovated other buildings to fill that gap. The cheap motels were replaced by AirBnB years ago. The frats were moved to a consolidated block years before, anticipating the move. And the poor housing? Moved down the line; they could use the light rail, too, but less conveniently and a longer commute.

To quote one of my favorite movies, “We’re now a nice local bar none of the locals can afford.” Gentrification may be inevitable. You can only live in a new suburb as far out as you are willing to travel for it. Yes, you can take the commuter train from Harper’s Ferry, WV to Washington, DC, if you’re willing to ride for 2-3 hours. Which means it’s more convenient to live closer to where you work.

Or is it? The one good thing about the pandemic is that it finally made companies realize that you CAN work from home for most white collar jobs. So why should a company be based out of New York City when they can save money basing themselves out of Pigeon Forge, TN? You don’t fire anyone and save state income tax. And if the cities aren’t pulling in that income, how are they going to maintain this infrastructure? If the neighborhoods go downhill, why won’t those who can move to Pigeon Forge? We’re already seeing this in California.

Honestly, I’m not against gentrification, mostly because it’s not my neighborhood. I grew up in a small town where the lack of the factory means it’s slowly falling apart. So if a NYC company came to Morrison, started putting up their flat pizza stores and Starbucks, a lot of the locals would complain… but they’d still be local. Then again, I’m more of a gypsy, but what do you think? Is there a balance between gentrification and maintaining the local culture? Let me know in the comments below!

Stranger in a Strange Book

Who is John Smith? The protagonist in most books has a simple name, understandable motivations… in other words, forgettable. They are taking the place of you while you walk through the universe. Because there’s a price to be paid if your protagonist is too exotic.

After reading The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi, I realized that he rotates between three or four main characters, of which one is American, two are Thai, and one is Chinese. It’s set in Bangkok, so that makes perfect sense, and you’d think that a guy with a complicated Portuguese name is going to be comfortable with characters with strange names to American ears. But Paolo struggles with this same problem. When you have to crank out a last name like Chulalongkorn (actually the name of King Rama V), you start using nicknames or first names fast. When I lived in Thailand, it seems Thais understand that, and are comfortable being referred to by their nickname because their real name is so long.

However, it doesn’t have to be just names. For example, when I sat down to write Drag’n Drop, I thought I would make my main character the dragon, because… that sounded really cool. However, it quickly became clear to me that if I wanted a two-ton flying machine running around an alternate New York, and not have him be a shape changer… he wasn’t going to be in all the scenes. So I invented a guy and a girl to hang out with him to go to all the places where a big green dragon just wouldn’t fit in.

The more I thought about it, though, my main characters were generally white guys, but do NOT have easy names, because… well I’m a white guy with a slightly uncommon name. You would surprised how often Marcus Johnston becomes Mark, Marc, or Markus Johnson. I generally refer to my characters by nicknames. In Defending Our Sacred Honor, I thought it would be fun to call my main character Javier Jackson, but he became Jax instantly. Fatebane is the name of the main character, but it’s not the name he was born with, for reasons that are clear in the book.

Predatory Practices is the only book I was involved with that where there was a non-human main character. However, his name was Heth… because the complicated three name alien nomenclature wasn’t practical most of the time. Mind you, I wasn’t the main writer on that, but I thought Ed did a great job creating a believable alien culture that was still relatable to the reader.

In the end, though, I am an American, and although I reach out to readers all through the world, I’m sure when I slip, my references are uniquely American. Since I prefer to write sci-fi, I hope it’s more universal. However, I’ve read books that use references that are distinctly English or Irish or Japanese and my mind hits a speed bump when I read them. I remember reading an article by a Czech, and since I was working through Google translate, I didn’t catch an idiom when I was writing it down. It was only talking with my Czech friends that they explained the reference.

What do you think? Have you been taken out of a book by all the strange names? Or do you not mind a main character named Massaponax? Maybe it’s better if he goes by Mass. Let me know in the comments below!

Sometimes Madame LaFarge Has to Die

As an author, I get it–it helps to kill off a main character now and then to keep the stakes real, and not feel like a comic book. However, it needs to be important to the plot, and not just… happen.

I don’t wanna give away the spoiler for what I was reading, but man, it really irked me when one of the main characters (not the POV character) suddenly dies. I had to actually go back and read the scene again because it happened so fast! The character just dies and the author just moved on to the next scene! Apparently the author addressed this in a later interview, “We were telling a war story, people die in war, and I realized that our characters hadn’t really felt that loss yet.”

Seriously? When the author killed another character earlier in the book, at least it was the chapter end, and it was very obvious. “Oh, you blew his head off.” It was important, it was clear, and even if it seemed random, it advanced the plot. This read like an afterthought. At this point, I should remember what my father-in-law said, “If you don’t like my story, write your own!”

But I also remember what my friend Nathan said when he had to read A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. He said, “I love Madame Lafarge. It’s obvious the author loves Madame Lafarge. But the entire plot was leading up to her and the guillotine. Sometimes Madame Lafarge has to die.”

I liked this phrase so much that–although it’s not one of my maxims–it is one of the guiding stars when I write my stories. It IS important to have the stakes be high in a story. In a comic book, the main characters will never die. Or they’ll die, but come back in a couple episodes. Or they’ll die and become the villain. But they always come back. When you have to kill a character, the other characters should have to deal with the consequences. It SHOULD make the struggle real. In real life, people die suddenly and without warning. But this is a story–you don’t invest several hundred pages just to kill someone off as an afterthought. That’s not making the struggle real–that’s a late edit.

Oh well, not my universe. Thinking back to Dickens, my grandpa used to misquote the famous lines at the climax, probably he never read the book either. “It is a far better thing I do… then to say hello to you!” I thought it was hilarious. But what do you think? Have you run into senseless deaths in stories? Killing off the POV character at the end of a book is material for another post. But have you ever thrown a book across the room because you were so mad? Let me know in the comments below!

What is obvious to some…

I made sure to introduce Monty Python’s The Holy Grail to my son at the earliest age possible. So when we sat with other geeks, Asher knew all about it. Then someone asked, “has he seen Life of Brian yet?” I said no. Why? Because he simply wouldn’t get it.

Why wouldn’t he get it? Because he didn’t grow up in a Christian culture. He went to Jewish schools until he was in 3rd Grade. We go to synagogue every week. The only connection he has with Christians are his friends, and as teenage boys, they’re less likely to talk about faith except in the passing. He barely knows about Jesus’ story, Christian holidays, and the New Testament… except from what we taught him.

So although it’s an incredibly funny film, for my son, most of it is only funny in context. Which means I’d have to explain the film as he watched it; that would make it homework and kill the joy out of it. So I figure he should probably discover it later on his own. However, that’s led to another problem… all modern comedy is based on Python. Every single comedic ensemble that Asher enjoys learned initially from watching Python. I tried showing him an episode of Flying Circus once and… he just didn’t get into it. Some of it dated, but more to the point, he’s seen so many other groups do similar jokes, or (gasp) do them better.

It’s like having film students watch Citizen Kane. By modern standards, it’s an okay film; solid, not amazing. It’s only when you have someone explain why the film is amazing that you actually understand. Before Orson Wells, all films showed a scene in front of a backdrop–the camera didn’t move, the lighting was always bright to show the actors on screen, there was no variation. It was much more stilted production. Citizen Kane created cinematography.

The reason you don’t see that when watching Citizen Kane is because every film after that is based on Citizen Kane. So all the ingenious concepts got copied by everybody else. It’s like rewatching The Matrix–you’re not wowed by bullet time or the inventive use of green screen. Thankfully, it’s still a good film; the fight scenes are still enjoyable, but you’ve seen similar stuff since then.

So will Asher seek out Life of Brian? Who knows? But he’s not clamoring for it. There are so many options–so many other movies he wants to see–that unless someone watches it with him, I don’t think he’ll seek it out on his own. Which is a different post for a different day; the loss of a common canon. But what do you think? Would Life of Brian still be good without knowing much about Christianity? How many films do you drag your kids (or someone else’s kids) to, because you know that if they watch it long enough, they’ll love it? Let me know in the comments below!

Non-Political and Totally Educational

I listen to a lot of commercials, so naturally, I hear a lot of BS. So when I hear a pro-life non-profit suggest that they are “non-political and totally educational,” I have to question that statement. But maybe it’s not what you say, it’s the way you say it.

This is not a post about abortion; this is about the messaging of abortion. The folks who put out this radio ad are called Pro-Life Across America. Now I don’t like this ad, not because I’m pro-choice, but because it’s so cutesy. You’ve got either a sister or a mom talking to their five year old about how you can hear a heartbeat at 18 days, or moving at 10 weeks, or smiling at 12 weeks. Then Mary Ann Kuharski, the director of PLAA comes on and tells you that they are “non-political and totally educational,” and how you can help.

Now my initial thought was, “the second you promote pro-life, you are political,” but when I thought about it… they’ve got a point. Take the more activist version of the pro-life movement. The old guys who stand outside of abortion clinics with giant signs, usually VERY graphic, and shout at women who try to go into the building. To quote a great song:

Mary got pregnant from a kid named Tom that said he was in love
He said, “don’t worry about a thing, baby doll I’m the man you’ve been dreaming of.”
But three months later he say he won’t date her or return her calls
And she swear, “god damn, if I find that man I’m cuttin’ off his balls”
And then she heads for the clinic and she gets some static walking through the door
They call her a killer, and they call her a sinner and they call her a whore
God forbid you ever had to walk a mile in her shoes
‘Cause then you really might know what it’s like to have to choose

Everlast, What It’s Like

PLAA is not marching in front of the Supreme Court building (although some of their members might), their job is reach out to scared, recently pregnant young women, and convince them to keep the baby. They do this through ads and billboards. In my town, there’s a place near Arizona State University called “Crisis Pregnancy Center,” which I know is a pro-life center, but most people don’t. Politics aside, they are totally educational. They’re not going to provide you any drugs, no medical visits, they’re going to point you to folks who will help you through the pregnancy and beyond.

There is a whole network of services out there to support new mothers, shelters to live, day cares to help with the baby, ways to help pay for medical care… but you need a way for these young women to find this information out. So yeah… the more I look into it, the more I respect their approach. I disagree, but it takes away one of my arguments: “You care about having the baby, but don’t give a damn what happens to the baby after that.”

Doesn’t mean I like the cutesy approach any better, but at least, I can see that they’ve thought this through beyond putting up billboards. But what do you think? Is better messaging the key to avoiding political blinders? Is my definition of “political” too broad? Do you get annoyed at cutesy ads too? Let me know in the comments below!

The More Laws, the Less Justice

Yesterday I wrote about stupid signage, which I think speaks to a deeper trend in American society. There are those who believe that we just don’t have the right laws on the books and those just wish those laws would leave them alone. Where do you stand?

I think you can guess where I stand from the title of this post, but let me be charitable with those who don’t think like me. Take that water quality standards legislation I mentioned–why doesn’t every state have Oregon’s standards? You should be able to eat 6 ounces (175 g) of fish per day without getting sick. Completely agree–however, the moment you write that into law, there are consequences. After all, “there are no solutions, only trade-offs.”

Say you are a PRP (potentially responsible party) who dumps pollutants into the water. Although you could–in theory–be a local business or light industrial, usually the EPA only goes after big companies. So that factory has a choice. In order to comply with the new standards, the factory will have to start storing the waste in 55 gallon barrels, and then find a new hazardous waste dump to store it at. You can’t keep it on your own premises for more than 90 days. That costs money. Does the cost mean the price of our product has to go up to pay for it? Are the fines for pollution cheaper than price to pay to responsibly dump it? Does the cost of the pollution make the factory not profitable? If you’re not making money, then there’s no point keeping the factory open.

So Oregon may face a problem–if you lose a factory, you lose the taxes that factory paid, and the hundreds of jobs that factory created. And you get VERY angry voters. Guaranteed, Baja California don’t care about water quality. And if you’re trying to build a new chemical factory, Oregon is not going to be your first choice. So state legislators have to decide how to balance the environmental quality versus economic development.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt talked about the “forgotten man” when trying to sell his New Deal to the American people:

These unhappy times call for the building of plans that rest upon the forgotten, the unorganized but the indispensable units of economic power, for plans like those of 1917 that build from the bottom up and not from the top down, that put their faith once more in the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid.

FDR’s speech, April 7, 1932

But who pays for these grand plans? I hate to turn to a Yale sociology professor, but a hundred and fifty years ago, soc classes were a lot different:

As soon as A observes something which seems to him wrong, from which X is suffering, A talks it over with B, and A and B then propose to get a law passed to remedy the evil and help X. Their law always proposes to determine what C shall do for X, or, in better case, what A, B, and C shall do for X… What I want to do is to look up C. I want to show you what manner of man he is. I call him the Forgotten Man. perhaps the appellation is not strictly correct. he is the man who never is thought of…. I call him the forgotten man… He works, he votes, generally he prays—but he always pays…

William Graham Sumner, The Forgotten Man, 1876

In the modern world, no one is truly independent. What happens in China affects Oregon. The entrepreneur living in Portland has the choice to set up his business across the river in Vancouver, Washington if the laws are more favorable to him. States and countries compete for businesses because they need the tax money. And if Citizen C can’t get a job in Oregon–or pays too much in taxes–he can move somewhere he can pay less and still work. So I don’t believe you can legislate yourself into a utopia, because the smart man will always find a way around them.

However, I only see this from my perspective. Like I said, I like clean water too, but there’s a reason why the national standards are so low–because they’re trying to not kill business while saving the environment. But do you think? What am I missing in this argument? Let me know in the comments below!

Why use two words, when you can use several?

From the “none of us are as dumb as all of us” department, I happened to see this post and smiled. Recently, I’ve had to endure a lot of environmental legislation, so someone thinking that “no fishing” wasn’t encompassing enough puts a lot more faith in humanity than I do.

Contaminated fish IS a serious problem. Trust me, I’ve seen so many different diagrams about how pollutants accumulate in the bodies of plankton, which then accumulate in higher amounts with fish that eat the plankton, that accumulate higher in creatures that eat the fish (including us). The point being that most fish that you pull from your local rivers are not safe to eat… or at least, not safe to eat a lot of it.

So… how safe is safe? The national water quality standards for eating fish (to avoid pollution) in the US is 17.5 g. Most of my readers outside the US would think, “Damn, that’s small,” but although scientists use the metric system here, most Americans don’t. My mind (and most voters) don’t know from grams, so I would transpose that into ounces. Seventeen and a half ounces seems perfectly fine–and it is–that’s 500 grams. So when setting the water quality standards, most people would just shrug at 17.5 g and move on.

It took a lot of work by environmental groups to educate the public that 17.5 g was NOT acceptable. The most effective way is the dinner plate graphic that I show here. When you see the amounts of fish on your plate, suddenly it makes a lot more sense. They used that information to convince Washington State lawmakers to change the standards. And if you happen to be tribal or Asian or urban poor and feel the need to fish to add more protein to your diet, this is a major concern.

Which brings us back to that overly verbose sign–someone thought “If we just say, ‘No Fishing,’ then someone will say, ‘Well, I used a bucket, that’s not fishing, right?’ So best to cover all bases.” They didn’t go to the obvious “Some idiots won’t read your sign.” I remember when I lived in Virginia Beach, Virginia, I was walking along the canal and saw someone taking old chicken wings and using them to bait crab traps. There was a sign that said “no fishing” within easy sight distance. This fisherman didn’t think, “Why don’t I just fry up this chicken?” No, he said to himself, “I want crab and I don’t care how I get it.”

Eating crabs or fish from the Elizabeth River probably wouldn’t hurt if you did it once in a while. If you did it all the time, you’re gonna start losing hair. So why use two words when you can use several? Because people are trying to avoid frivolous lawsuits. There’s nothing on the bottle that says you can’t use Gorilla Glue on your hair, but if you took a moment to think about it, you wouldn’t.

I should go into a rant about “poorer but wiser,” but I should save that for another post. But what do you think? Are you start fishing off the city pier? Should we be stricter about water quality so you CAN fish off the city pier? Should we have any signs at all? Let me know in the comments below!