2010 Census Circling Angelina Addresses

I hope the headlines hits on Google. Guest speaker David Alexander from the Baltimore Sun lectured our class today on SEO optimization, coding keywords for headlines like search engine slugs for spiders. I saw a 40ish-year-old blond woman in a shiny black sedan circling Angelina circle at 7:45 p.m., on my way to the mailbox.

At first I thought she was lost, looking for a house number, maybe a family member making a reunion? "2010 Census, I work for the government, we do this every 10 years . . . didn't you learn about this in school?" she said. I stared back at her blankly, its spring 2009 I thought. I remember feeling burned, searching census bureau data for sociology class assignments on the dot-gov site. 2000 never felt recent or accurate enough, but if they did it my way, the bill would give Geithner gastrointestinal distress, rivaling our field trip into Iraq.

Approachable, polite and eager to lengthen the life of her Marlboro light while time and light faded into the gray. I was walking to the mailbox with my copy of the Columbia Flier. I decided to place the ads at the communal mailbox as a sort of common courtesy & that's when I saw her. After learning she had ties to 75 and worked for Rouse, Mort & Robert, she rolled away. I photographed the car on a sort of afterthought impulse.


I will give one hundred grand to anyone who can locate Baltimore Sun deputy editor David Alexander. Good hunting--think of it like Highlights for hypertext

idX Brings Business To Columbia

Earlier Wednesday, Wordbones reported on the idX move in Snowden from Odenton. After reading this, I got on the horn to Frank Grelle, the general manager of idX's Baltimore division to get the scoop.

idX manufactures shelves, tables and other store fixtures for Kohl's, JC Penney's, Marshalls and other retailers as well as financial institutions. Based in St. Louis, Mo, idX has offices in Louisville, Seattle, Toronto and Shanghai. The company bought out Russell Williams Ltd in 2005 which was originally based in Columbia but moved to Odenton.

idX in Odenton currently operates out of two buildings catty corner to each other. Grelle describes the move into the Snowden building as more efficient for the operation.

"As we continue to grow, I really needed to be in one building so that I don't have to move finished from the manufacturing building, onto a trailer, move them 50 yards and unload them into a warehouse."

idX is moving it's operation to 8901 Snowden River parkway because the new location has many more dock doors than their Odenton location. The additional space of the Snowden location will also allow Grelle to house all of his production lines under one roof and make the distribution process easier.

“We might ship to 15 Kohl's stores in a matter of three days, so when you've got limited dock doors, you can't stage in advance because you can't block a dock door. In the new building we can say this is store A, this is store B, this is store C, this is store D and we can stage the product that goes on to the truck that's going to that store in advance.”

So will the move into Columbia bolster the local economy and create more jobs? Grelle says yes, but not right away.

“The move probably by itself probably isn't going to create more jobs, you know, other than the jobs created due to tenant improvements to this facility, but by gaining these efficiencies in planning for the future, that's going to help us gain more business which will in turn create jobs.”

Grelle says the company hopes to complete the move into Columbia by July of this year.

Read Between The Lines

An advertisement on the Explore Howard website caught my eye this morning as I scanned the site for something newsworthy to post on. I'm not an advertising major but I enjoy studying the semiotics of print and T.V. ads for their hidden meanings. What does this ad say to you?

Ok you've got a black woman holding a red bag, nothing out of the ordinary here. Shop the VC the ad reads, value & convenience very close to home. To me, the ads reads shop local, keep the village centers alive, don't hit up the big boxes.

Then it hit me. The ad for Columbia only lists six village centers! So what if you live in Owen Brown, Oakland Mills or Long Reach? Don't they have village centers as well? To me this ad says, stay out of East Columbia, it sucks, the village centers are dead. We've let developers come in and fuck them up and now we'd rather you didn't even bother going. Go to these upscale village centers instead.

Take Wilde Lake village center for example. What could that woman possibly have in that bag that isn't seafood, hair care products or alcohol? Would you rather her shop at a village center without a grocery store or a village center without a computer shop? The image of the red bag suggests the kind of shopping she could only do at big box or the Columbia mall.

So am I reading too much into this? Does the ad scream bias to anyone else, or should I put my contacts in before something hazardous happens?