BY DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY

(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, MONDAY MARCH 25, 2019) — Before our regular column, allow THE PLANET to pay a tribute to former mayor Ed Reilly, whose passing came as sad news to all who knew and loved him. We had many encounters with Ed, going back to our youth at his parents’ store on the bend of North and Wahconah streets. We ran against him in ’91, and covered him as a columnist and on the radio as mayor. He was Pittsfield through and thorough — hard worker, good family man, and dedicated public servant. God speed, Ed Reilly, and our heartfelt condolence to his family.

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Good intentions may pave a road, but they can’t keep Tyler Street from becoming Dalton Avenue.

No matter how many taxpayer dollars they blow on the Road to Nowhere, that miracle mile will serve mainly as the east egress out of Dodge to the civilized hamlet of Dalton. A little tour of Tyler presents the picture of roadkill, immune to the Lazarus effect intended by public dollars. That money draws “gimme groups” ready to take the BICs, TIFs, and TDIs of the alphabet soup.

On the right turning from First Street, we find the new gas station. It replaced … uh … the old gas station.  In Pittsfield, “redevelopment.” On the left, the house abandoned by a psychic, whose hasty exit proved her prescience. Further up left, the parking lot of a recent murder. At right, the once-home of Mohawk Bottling Company, now off the tax rolls and oozing Goodwill. After that, we see Yosemite’s rival, Hess Forrest. Don’t go in without a guide, or you might end up in Louis Lent’s basement, now a “hip and vibrant” tattoo studio. There are 18,542 tattoo studios in the city, which makes THE PLANET wonder how middle school kids got their ink back in the day.

Bill Langley Studios once safe-harbored on Tyler Street in a lovely tan-brick building where heavenly windows used to shine. Langley’s dream of Langley Land, however, departed without explanation. Now the building hosts Mickey, Donald, and other cartoon ghosts who overbear the street’s muggers, buggers, bangers, gangers, dons,and cons. Even God left, and now Mr. Carver genuflects at the former church. He’s a “developer.” He wants the city to give him millions. The bells of St. Mary’s stay quiet with pitying tears.

Just before Tyler becomes Dalton you see the former Shedd’s plumbing company. For decades, Shedd built a business only a rogue could destroy. That rogue came after GE exited, setting Tyler Street on a course toward danger and dereliction. A martial arts studio moved in, but as urban archeologists know, when a martial arts studio takes over a once-thriving plumbing business, you’re looking at a future of liquor stores, non-profits, and nail salons.

Enter the Tyler Street Lab.

What is the lab? No one knows. At the Lab’s opening Saturday, director Umbrella Kate talked about “working toward a common goal.” That “goal,” of course, went undefined. She did call Tyler Street “eclectic,” a word indicating the variety of decomposition on the streets and in the shops.

The logo for the Tyler Street Lab consists of a test tube containing “a bubbling crude.” Experts in THE PLANET‘s Secret Lab tell us it’s a new kind of meth. The poor bastards that take it tend to be young, male, jobless, minorities with single-mom girlfriends, a.k.a. Pittsfield’s Finest. They just need understanding, something provided by Shirley Edgerton, well-known “community activist” who’s everywhere, everywhere. The good-hearted Shirl and Umbrella Kate. That may explain the sign at Tyler and First: “The Witch’s Cauldron, One Mile.”

The Tyler Street Lab may get lost in the scrum of agencies and not-for-profits eager to horn in on the free outlay from taxpayer purses. They include (deep breath):

• The Morningside Initiative
• The Tyler Street Collaborative
• Better Block
• Massachusetts Transformative Development Initiative
• Working Cities
• Berkshire Bridges
• The Chill Zone
• Office of Community Development
• Goodwill
• Jerry Mathers as the Beaver

Ponderous, as Marley said of Scrooge’s chain.

We have no doubt that the Tyler Street Lab will become a meeting point for the growing “armies of the road” who also congregate at the Intermodal, Persip Park, HON, and parking lots behind Lach’s. Drug trafficking and pan-handling to follow. Film at 11.

Those who have fallen through the cracks need to know the cracks go both ways. The ticket up and out isn’t through handouts or freebies, guns, or drugs. It’s through personal effort, hard work, initiative, ambition, education, and the refusal to be defined by well-intended “activists” who love to create “victims.”

The Lab has funding for a half a year, but our spies say that enough of the Kapanskis’ dough will find its way to Umbrella Kate and Shirl to keep it going at least until the day after Election Day in November.

Funny how these things work.

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“You can’t test the waters without getting wet” — Sir Tiberius Fruitjuice.

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”

LOVE TO ALL.

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