Finding the Naked City

I've been trolling through our new charlotteobserver.com Web site, which looks a lot better, IMHO. But is it just me, or is it harder to find The Naked City? Granted, this smacks a bit of Al Franken's old schtick ("How does that affect me, Al Franken?")

You'll now find blogs from those of use working in the Editorial department (Jack Betts, Kevin Siers, Ed Williams, Daily Views) under "Opinion" at the top of the page -- but you'll no longer find our blogs listed on the Opinion main page. (Columns, yes. Blogs, no. Who knows why? I'll ask around as soon as our excellent online folks recover from their exhausting roll-out-the-new-site week.)

Nor will you find us on the main homepage unless we've posted in the last few hours.

If you're an occasional Naked City reader or a newcomer who found it skimming through the online newspaper, let me recommend bookmarking the site or setting up an RSS feed. Otherwise drilling down to find this blog might take longer than you care to spend.

And here's a kicker some of you anonymous commenters will surely want to know: We're moving to a new blogs platform sometime soon and registration will be required for anyone commenting. I'm told this will allow commenters to keep the same moniker and to look back on all their comments. Love it or hate it, I have no control over it. Just wanted to warn folks.

Until then, it's easier to have a conversation if you'll post using a name so we don't have to refer to "Anonymous 2:57 p.m" and so on.

Now, feel free to go back to commenting on the Overstreet Mall and uptown retail. As to the use of "vibrant" -- I agree it's overused and under-defined, and you'll note I didn't use it. "Vibrant urban village" is a phrase that has grown especially cliched among planners and developers.