If anything you pulled your punches on oil. You didn't even mention another key drawback, one best explicated by Tower of Power *checks notes* 51 years ago.

It feels like after the live-action one the rest of Headgear grounded Oshii from working on Patlabor. Which is ... pretty funny.

The placement of Patlabor 3 into that is so odd—I didn't know there was anything unclear about its canonical place? Sure, it's a weird sidestory thing, but I didn't think there was any question that it took place on the OVA/movie timeline.

I've always kinda wondered what happened to them. They were, clearly, very active in the Bay Area back in the day. I have great respect for them for releasing all these movies before the cognoscenti caught on, presumably primarily for Chinese-American audiences.

This is WILD. I have a bunch of Tai Seng releases on laserdisc—they were quite active on LD. Eastern Condors, Heroic Trio, Black Cat, My Lucky Stars, among others. In some cases they're just the Hong Kong releases (which all had English subtitles anyway) with an English OBI slapped on the cover.

The annoying thing about this is that, just prior to Crunchyroll, Gundam physical media distribution in American had probably never been better. You could get basically everything on Blu-ray easily for a reasonable price.

Halcyon times, as it turns out.

Not to be a gloomy gus^2, but this ought to be taken with a grain of salt—it's a survey from United Van Lines, so, not the most definitive of data. Still good news and I do sense we're trending positive, but it's a thiiiiiiiiiiin margin. Gotta keep eyes on the ball.

All good! I'll sample the NA drinks in the meantime!

I assumed that if you were going to convert it to a regular park, you'd at least make some landscaping changes and additions that would bring it in line with other parks. For comparison, the upgrades to Parklane Park, which is 25 acres, cost $30 million.

I'm a little confused as to how that would work? You'd stop letting people golf on it, but you wouldn't make any other upgrades that would make it more attractive for non-golf uses? Even if you did that, you'd still have to pay for grounds maintenance (which is currently covered by golf.)

I should clarify that I think any pushback against the 70s greenway project (and a better path around the course, a la the Glendoveer one) are dumb.

But converting even a single one of these facilities would cost tens of millions at a time when Parks is cash-strapped, and at least in the case of golf remove a thing that is generating revenue. And it reduces the variety of types of things Parks can offer, whether that's golf or bike races at PIR.

I can't speak to the lead contamination issue, because I'm not familiar with that. But I guess that's where we have a philosophical difference. PIR is already there, and does have an appreciative audience. Same for the golf courses. If we were starting fresh from a blank slate, I might agree.

That seem high-ish? But then, PIR takes up 300 acres all on its own for, I'd argue, a more niche case. Now, if you expand the scope to the total acres of the park system (11,000, which includes a lot of natural area like Forest Park), it comes in at a much more modest 7 percent.

I suppose what we're talking about here is an issue of fairness. Are the resources given to the public courses unfair or disproportional? This is all very back of the envelope, but: the public courses take up around 800 acres. That's around 20 percent of the built acres of the park system.

To be clear: I'm not a golfer myself, so I have no dog in this fight. But I have no objection to golf as one parks amenity in the city's portfolio of them, particularly if it makes the sport accessible to people who could never afford to play at a country club. Which is most of us.

I don't disagree with the idea of better incorporating multiple uses—FWIW, Glendoveer already has a 2-mile nature trail that I've used (and is quite lovely.) That's laudable. But removing the courses, particularly when there's already other parks right there, feels like yucking someone else's yum.

I mean, I’d get it if it felt like we over-serviced golf at the expense of the parks more generally. But I feel like our number of public courses is reasonable for a city of our size, and our portfolio of parks in general is excellent.

Sincere question: what’s wrong with the public courses? They’re reasonably affordable and accessible, they generate revenue for the parks department, and they have other parks both nearby and adjacent to them (Rose City Park, Glenhaven, East Holliday Park, John Luby, the Glendoveer disc golf course)