- Guys who claimed to have found a Sasquatch in Georgia are holding a press conference today.
- The Star Wars Clone Wars movie opens today.
- Judge says Saudi Arabia is immune from Sept. 11 lawsuit.
- Forecasters say we’re about to hit a dry spell.
- Scamorama assembles all those scam e-mails you get.

-Julia Child worked for the OSS, according to newly unclassified files.
- Wal-Mart profit up 17 percent.
- Victims of sexual assault will no longer have to pay for the rape kit.
- Rove sees four key battleground states.
- The Triad’s future could be in aviation.
- Fall movie preview from Entertainment Weekly.
- College football blog of the day: The Quad is the New York Times’ college sports blog.

- FCC commissioner says the Fairness Doctrine could mean government regulation of content on the Internet.
- Mark Chapman refused parole again
- The Unabomber is not pleased that his cabin is on display.
- Haaretz is reporting that we refused to help Israel with an Iran attack.
- CNN is planning a Triangle bureau.
- College football blog of the day: ACC Football Report.

- Newsweek has a roundup of the best stories of the day called The Filter.
- You gotta run. Gotta gotta gotta.
- As I perused Slate’s look at cheap American beer, I realized these guys aren’t as cheap as I am.
- The French Broad River is at its lowest level in at least 100 years.
- According to a Congressional report, 2/3 of American corporations pay no federal income tax.
- Books by politicians can be a hard sell.
- U.S. to have five strike forces in the Middle East this week.
- Info on the season five premiere of Lost.
- College football blog of the day: In the Bleachers.

- Some blogger wonders if the New York Times is about to go under.
- Rolling Stone is going smaller.
- Hot dog. Check. Beer. Check. Glove to catch fly balls. Check. Lottery ticket?
- Charlotte Observer sums up the rise and fall of John Edwards.
- College football blog of the day: Eagle in Atlanta is a BC fan exiled in the South.

Forget all your worries and go downtown

I always get the same reaction as I hurry through the heat, my tongue darting like an overheated dog’s so I don’t drip.

“That looks good.”

“Where’d you get that?”

“Do we have an ice-cream parlor downtown?”

Apparently, few people know about the ice cream at Alamance-Andrews Drug on Maple Avenue. You can get a huge scoop in a cone or a cup for 85 cents. With the cost of everything going through the roof, it’s one of the best deals around.

The challenge of getting a cone from Alamance-Andrews to the newspaper in 95-degree heat without getting my hands messy is my favorite way to break up the afternoon. The old drugstore is also one of my favorite parts of downtown.

I spend a lot of time walking around downtown during the week, mostly because having a toddler means I have a lot less time to run or go to the gym and I need to move my fat butt. It’s also relaxing.

I miss talking to Diane Ingelheim at the newsstand, but I like going by the library, and reading in the sunken theater at the depot. The helpful ladies at the Burlington Woman’s Club thrift store put handwritten tags on all the clothes so you don’t have to dig around looking for the size, making it my favorite thrift ever.

I like downtown Burlington, but I’m only one person. Making downtown even better will require more people, and more people with some money, to feel the same way.

For the first time in a while, I think that the city’s leaders may be on their way to making that happen.

The Burlington Downtown Corporation is moving from organizing downtown events to becoming an economic development agency and has a new master plan.

Burlington City Engineer Jim Lauritsen this week suggested the city spend $700,000 to put in tree planters and decorative brick pattern stamping at crosswalks. Lauritsen also suggested changing the parking pattern to allow for more spaces on downtown streets and replacing the downtown power poles.

It will take private investment to make downtown better, but hopefully a commitment from the city and a plan from the downtown corporation will make downtown look like a good place for that money to go.

Now, a few other suggestions for downtown.

I understand that parking must be enforced so workers can’t take up prime parking in front of retail spots from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. By the same token, I’ve seen business owners who have to keep a stopwatch so they can move their cars several times a day to avoid a ticket. Let’s find a middle ground.

Bribe Stephen Cox to serve lunch again at Roasters Café. There are other places to have lunch, some of them pretty good, but none have the atmosphere of Roasters. When Cox was serving lunch, it was the best gathering place downtown.

The shift in focus for the downtown corporation is encouraging, but paying an extra property tax for business owners who are probably struggling is tough. The city should do anything it can do to reduce the downtown district levy.

Six words: patio bar, patio bar, patio bar.

As cooler weather approaches, and I don’t have to sprint to get my ice cream back into the air conditioning, I hope I’ll be able to take a leisurely stroll through a downtown that is growing and becoming even better.

 City editor Brent Lancaster can be reached at brent_lancaster@link.freedom.com or 506-3040. Read his blog at brentsblog.freedomblogging.com.

- App will rock the throw-back uniforms for a game this year.
- Grassley wants to investigate the anthrax investigation.
- This is not good.
- Slide oil prices, slide!
- Save your goatee.
- The empty mall phenomenon.
- College football blog of the day: Rocky Top Talk covers the Vols.

- Edwards urged to quit saying “I don’t talk about tabloid stories” and answer the question.
- Border patrol has standoff with Mexican soldiers.
- Copy of a poll given to Manhattan Project scientists to gauge opinion on how and whether to use the bomb.
- Breast-feeding lags in North Carolina.
- Onion story of the millenium.
- The Salon guy continues blogging on the anthrax case.
- NASA plans test of a rocket that could get you to Mars in two months.
- College football blog of the day: The Pack kicks off the season in Columbia three weeks from today. Garnet and Black Attack seems to be one of the main South Carolina blogs.

- Average ER waiting time reaches an hour.
- Athletes in Beijing starting to worry about the smog. I’m telling you, we should have sat this out.
- Bruce Ivins revealed to friends the tactics the FBI was using against him. And a judge today unsealed the investigation documents.
- Another foot washes up, this one in the U.S., not Canada.
- In a reversal of white flight, American cities are turning themselves inside out, with those who can afford it moving to these downtown condos and those who can’t moving to the cheap suburbs.
- Our friends from the South are bringing TB with them.
- I signed up for a free daily edition of the The Sporting News e-mailed to me every day as a pdf of an actual magazine. This Salon guy has a take on it.
- College football blog of the day: College Football Resource.

- A Gotti charged with murder. I have no idea which one this is. I was hoping it was one of the brats on that stupid reality show.
- Slate has a nice photo slideshow on Coney Island.
- The Montauk monster was probably an animal whose skin had been removed by the saltwater, says this guy.
- Bill Easley signed into law allows ticket scalping over the Internet, but only for a year.
- The anthrax story continues to be the best thing ever. The FBI claims Ivins was obsessed with sorority girls, specifically Kappa Kappa Gammas, and that he mailed the letters in a mailbox across the street from the Kappa house at Princeton. The New York Daily News claims to have an unnamed source saying the White House pressed the FBI to link the anthrax to Al Qaeda. Of course, at the time someone used ABC news to try to pin it to Iraq, and a guy at Salon is doing some very good stuff on why unnamed sources who lie to journalists to advance their agenda shouldn’t get to remain unnamed sources. And, of course, why in the world would anyone believe anything the FBI says after what they did to Steven Hatfill, so there’s a growing call for the bureau to show its cards.
- The Olympics circus might actually end up being more interesting than anthrax. American cyclists arrive in Beijing wearing breathing masks.
- College football blog of the day: SI on Campus is football, basketball, college culture and everything else.