Boisecynic said that people fled for the suburbs. Well, that was the plan that Robert Moses laid out for real estate developers. Most of the kids I cruised with CAME from the suburbs. Some of my best friends came in from Kuna to cruise. Again, you can flee the city but then you want to dive back into it again right away. It’s called having your cake and eating it too.

I will tell you this much, back in the 60s and 70s, downtown during the days were really packed with shoppers. What I see today is a sleepy market that looks real pretty but is pockmarked with commercial vacancies and weird cannibalized stores. So many buildings geared for a particular staple business are now schools and shops that don’t fit their genre. They are cleverly modified and it’s trendy, but it tells us that we are filling in the holes with makeshift services and sales. The real heart of what a successful economy looks like is much different. There used to be tons of market opportunity, but now there are just fads and filler concepts that die off. This is because we don’t build anything that’s tangible in this country any more. We import it and then fill in the local blanks with facades of an economy. I’ve seen both and so I can see the difference.

The people could be in charge, but due to 50 years of complete bullcrap from schools and the media, the people are clueless. The commies have been successful.

We are the gov’t and if a sizable percentage tell our elected reps to enforce this or that law then they should do it. But that’s not how code violations work really. It doesn’t take a percentage to request enforcement. It only takes one.

JJ, your rights to do what you want end at my property line. I don’t see anything in the State of Federal Constitutions giving anyone the right to trespass with engine noise or tire noise.

(Frankly, I always thought Fairview Avenue up on the Bench would’ve been a better place for “the cruise.” But such things aren’t decreed – they just evolve.)

Was it better? I’m sure I see it through the filter of nostalgia, but I think Boise was a better place to live with population 60,000 instead of 260,000. Despite the Connector and the mall and BSU Pavilion… er, I mean Taco Bell Arena.

If only we had a choo-choo downtown, instead of all those noisy little rice-burner cars! (A choo-choo with a little ding-ding bell… NOT a 3-trumpet Union Pacific horn!) /sarcasm

Nice to know these elite never cruised a car when they were young, played their stereo too loud, drove too fast, revved an engine past 3,000 RPM, or any other such nonsense.

People go downtown at night for the action and the noise, those complaining have lost touch with what downtown is all about. See and been seen, people watch, enjoy the action. I am downtown a lot, I am not young, these cars are not a problem worthy of focused enforcement. Sure…. enforce the laws we have the books with a steady hand, but increase resources to avoid an interruption to someone’s dinner conversation, no.

I would rather live with cruising cars downtown, than in a society where the government thinks they need to remove such a freedom to protect me from choices.

On the urban development districts- “Don’t let the neighborhood go to heck in the first place” would be much easier if all the tax dollars were available to ALL of the neighborhoods.
CCDC creates inequality (that thing liberals love to hate). In this case it is geographic inequality. 10million dollars being generated from downtown is being spent on only downtown(elitism) instead of being spread throughout the city. Result – the Bench, South Boise, West Boise get ignored. Example- sidewalks on Hervey street get ignore (wait, there aren’t any sidewalks there for kids to walk to school. Granted, that is also ACHD’s problem). Meanwhile, CCDC money pays to rip up perfectly good sidewalk, cut down healthy trees and replace it with a brick sidewalk in downtown (2015).
The primary liberal theory is, take from the rich (downtown) and redistribute to the poor (South, West) to make sure the disadvantaged “don’t go to heck”.
That doesn’t happen with a URD. Instead the rest of the city degrades or has to pay more in taxes in order to keep up.

Exactly. And that’s why people fled downtown for the suburbs, by the thousands, no by the millions in every city in the land. And it’s why downtowns everywhere died a slow death from absentee land lording, neglect and disinvestment.

Which lead directly to urban renewal programs which BG readers love to hate so much. You don’t like TIF urban renewal schemes? Huh? Then don’t let the neighborhood go to heck in the first place. Logic, how does it work? An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, right?

Remember when Giuliani saved NYC by cracking down on all the petty crime? No, it’s not as simple as that, but NYC, in an astonishing turn of events is now one of the safest cities in the USA. And not because there’s more guns. Oops, that’s another topic. Strike that, Judge Frazier.

You CAN NOT ignore the petty crimes. Broken Windows Theory, study up:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory

The CURRENT Boise Ordinance matches the state law:
Section 10-14-03 REQUIRED BICYCLE EQUIPMENT
No person shall operate a bicycle without the following equipment:
A. Brakes..
B. A -seat…
C. A bell, the human voice or other audible warning device…
D. When in use at nighttime, a red reflector on the rear visible from a distance of three hundred feet
(300′) when directly in front of lawful upper beams of a motor vehicle, and a forward-facing white light attached either to the bicycle or the bicyclist which is visible from a distance of at least five hundred feet (500′) in front of the bicycle. A bicycle shall be equipped with a front facing white or yellow reflector when the bicyclist uses a generator powered light which is unlit when the bicycle is stopped.

Not to be to far off-topic, but this is another example of the people coming from another state (or century) that expect Boise & Idaho law to match their previous experience.
I recently read about people complaining of drivers “running the red light” because they didn’t understand the difference of “permissive yellow” and “restrictive yellow” traffic lights.
Depending on where (or from whom) you learned ‘what is running a red light’, the answer is different.
Or in this post, perceived bicyclist behavior is based on ‘when’ one was born. 🙂
I talked to 2 BPD motorcycle cops last summer and they expressed ZERO interest in citing cyclists without a light- literally while dark bicycles rode past them. Must not be “enough revenue” to the city, eh?