Keith Reitman Thrown Off West Broadway Coalition, Documents And Details...(Summer Visitation 2009)

Photo By John Hoff


To jump right to the documents, click here.

A couple days ago I was walking to a friend's house to pick up my bicycle, and I just happened to run into Keith Reitman, who doesn't like the word "slumlord" so I won't use it.

In this post.

Among other things, Keith has served on the JACC board under both the "Old" and "New Majority" leadership. He denies heatedly that he goes whatever way the wind blows. A little too heatedly, if you ask me.

But Keith is very affable and has a great sense of humor. There on the 1400 block of West Broadway, near his building painted "ugly ass brown," we had a spontaneous discussion that lasted about an hour, with Keith saying funny stuff like "I'd rather pull a curtain than pull a permit" and even showing me some of the apartments he was trying to rent in his "poster child for West Broadway blight" chocolate-hued building.

Keith tells me that...

...Councilman Don Samuels considers this particular building to be an example of what's wrong with the appearance of West Broadway. I mean, let's just pick the crappiest shade of brown we can find, slap it on the building, and call that done.

Trim? What do you mean TRIM? That sounds like a SISSY word.

Don't have an address number on the building? Oh, gee, I must have a big, fat Sharpie marker in my glove box. Ah, there! Done.

Now, then, let's see what kind of CRAPPY RENTERS come to a building like that. Is it any wonder some of Reitman's renters are...

Well, propriety keeps me from saying. Reitman shared a lot of stuff with me, and I'm not sure what all he expected to see on the internet. He talked about how open he is, how he lets the chips fall where they may, or words to that effect.

So can I help liking Keith Reitman? No, I can't. Because I stood there in the shadow of his building and told him about a dozen different ways how UGLY it was, and, geez, couldn't he just kind of blow along with the wind of urban revitalization? Go with the flow? Spiff things up a little bit and have everybody give him compliments, instead of neighbors organizing angry meetings about his properties and putting together a PowerPoint presentation?

I was all, like, COME ON, KEITH. Come on.

And he just kept smiling and talking about the "big picture." I'm sure almost anything bigger than a Sharpie marker could be considered part of a bigger picture, really, but that's what he kept saying in response to my critique of his ugly-ass brown building. "The big picture."

But I told ol' Keith, hey, you and I...we have a relationship, Keith. We can talk to each other. And, yeah, if you want to get on my blog and comment about WHATEVER, or kick me some documents, hey, I'm open to that. In fact, if Keith Reitman wants to get on my blog and get something off his chest--once and for all--about what exactly happened with the notoriously fraudulent deal at 1564 Hillside Ave. N., I can hardly wait to hit the APPROVE button, especially if certain names are mentioned like "Tynessia Snoddy" and...and...

Anyway, Keith told me how pleased he was that my blog was becoming more "open" after he read something I posted about how I approve the vast majority of comments, seldom failing to approve anything except spam comments about Omega 3 fish oil tablets and penile-enhancement products.

I told him Kieth, Kieth, KEITH. That was ALWAYS my policy, but if he was just now becoming aware of it, hey, that's all for the good. I also told Keith that I don't need to agree with substantive information to print it, and the response I printed from Lennie Chism was proof of THAT.

So a few days later, Reitman sent me some documents about how he was thrown off the West Broadway Coalition. He appears to feel a great injustice was done to him. Readers can look over all the documents--click here for a link to my document support site--and be the judge.

I figure when the community gets organized and tells somebody something a few hundred times--whether it's "fix the butt fence situation" or "make your ugly ass chocolate building look nicer"--and nothing happens, then it's not surprising when a vote gets taken and somebody gets kicked off a board.

Then comes the exercize in alernate universe reality--that whole, "I'm still on the board because something was done improperly, therefore I am the board all by myself and nobody else is the board" thing--but that just causes further loss of public face.

Keith seems like somebody who wants to be liked. He should think very deeply about "why am I not liked? Why am I cast out?" and change accordingly, so he might be accepted back into the West Broadway tribal circle.