New York – August 22, 1997 (Full Issue)
NEW YORK
August 22, 1997
| Related Links: Alley to Valley Rally official site. Courtney’s Journal TeamNow’s Web site Write to Courtney on the road |
WELL, THIS week has been a highly digital week for me in a completely different way. I’m taking a break from the NYC Cyber Scene–but not from digital madness entirely. Thus far the Alley to Valley Rally for me has been a digital drag-race. We rev up our computers and digital cameras and sprint, then crash. Problems with connectivity, dialing through a PBX line, missing dongles, broken CD-ROM players, broken images, digital camera software gliches, not enough time!, dialing long distance into our local providers, etc. etc. and more you can’t imagine.
* August 21 — Enjoyed my interview with Tim Renshaw of KGLO in Mason City, Iowa. Tim runs a cool Web site at http://www.radiopark.com. At the Kentucky Dam One Stop, Earl Shrum, an older, lake-tanned, and water-wise fishing guide, had several prize catch already de-scaled and packed in the cooler. As I was mentioning the Internet and our website, he said, “sure, we know about that stuff.” Earl said that he had some pictures up of his fish on a site. We pulled into Marion, Illinois for a quick bite at Burger King. I loved the pretty flowers on the counter, a small assortment of fresh cut red, pink, yellow roses, carnations, daisies, and assorted wildflowers. A man named “Bill” brings them in every day. That’s all they know about him other, than he wears a white cap, and tips all the employees $1 every day. Just across the street, the Ford Dealership had a sign reading “www.marionford.com.” Final stop was St. Louis. My hands were shaking as I entered St. Louis Post Dispatch headquarters on Tucker Boulevard, and was greeted by a bust of Joseph Pulitzer–yes, my famous relative–and quotations on the walls. After a few calls by Ernest, the nice night security guard, I went up to the newsroom and met with the crew in the “Digital Square,” the Post-Dispatch’s Web group. They were polite, but I got the sense I wasn’t appreciated for owning the pulitzer.com site: “Oh so YOU’RE the one who has the name?” and “We heard you wanted A MILLION dollars for it.”
* August 21 — Today Dave Brown (the CDnow honcho and my traveling partner in TeamNow) and I went back to the St. Louis Post Dispatch headquarters to run my @NY chat. Despite my uneasiness, the Web crew was very generous and let me come back and conduct my chat from their offices. Fortunately the tech gods were looking down kindly on me and I connected using Greg Elin’s 14.4 cellular modem, but the Java gods were not so generous. Error message: “Applet can’t start:exception:Java.lang.NullPointerException” This is not the kind of message a tense traveler with deadlines and points of destination, tech problems, and the will to ENJOY herself needs to encounter five minutes after a chat has started. Sure, sit back and chortle that we didn’t prepare enough. But none of us–excepting AVR founder Greg Elin–has ever done this before. Naive? Maybe, but I’m an optimist, and think my fellow Ralliers are as well. We believe in the technology and are struggling to make it work.
After my chat, Dave and I got some pictures of the St. Louis Post Dispatch website crew. They use Lotus notes in a publishing program that allows for reporters to click and code their pages without ever having to learn a
tag. Editor Virgil Tipton explained that it’s the largest newspaper with an extensive restaurant database. They also created a unique navigation system of expandable folders when clicked on, similar to clicking on a Windows or Mac folder. Virgil created this program, and I was really impressed with how robust and complete it is. Healthfront.com has a “navigator” that uses the same technology.
* Somewhere in America — Shortly after, we left St. Louis, me with bittersweet feelings. I got to ride on the back of Paul Eisenberg’s bike through to St. Peter’s. We stopped at a Denny’s there and talked about how ridiculous it is for cartoons these days to always have some side-kick stuffed animal and prank. So what’s the plan? We’ll s-l-o-w-l-y progress towards Kansas City today, and then after that westward to Burning Man and a big wrap party in San Francisco. On the way out from St. Louis, we past an apartment complex (http://www.discover-riverfront.com) and glided past pillowy billowy clouds hanging low in a bright beautiful blue sky and SUN!
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SO WHAT HAVE we found so far? The cyber scene is alive and well beyond our bookshelf coasts. It is in gas station marine supply shops, car dealerships, and new home complexes. While there aren’t computer terminals available to logon at these spots, there is genuine interest and curiousity. AOL may be large, but the yellow page sections under “Computers — Internet Services” and “Computers — Web Design” are growing larger by the month as well. The Internet is slowly becoming more and more mainstream. Maybe one day during a Alley to Valley Rally we’ll see @Cafe chains next to Shoney’s and Wal-Marts. One thing that’s for sure, with road trips like this, and getting the word out there in newsletters, radio staions, websites, business cards, and generous sponsors, more and more people will have the opportunity to explore the very issues we’re exploring on this trip as well.
See you all in September! 🙂
(Check in with Courtney “Hunter S.” Pulitzer daily at http://www.avr.org and follow the Alley to Valley Rally cross country.)
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