Suffolk, Va., May 9, 2010 – With his purchase yesterday of the Mills Godwin Courts Complex, and the Suffolk Municipal Building, developer Mickey Garcia now owns the entire city of Suffolk.

City Council will vote tonight on a proposal to change the city’s name to Garciaburg, which is expected to pass easily. Mayor Garcia said he will excuse himself from the vote because of potential conflicts on interest…

The above scenario, all in good fun of course,

occurred to me this week when it was announced that Garcia had struck a deal to buy the Damiani building. Garcia now owns a lot of downtown of Suffolk and it’s good for us that he does. When he gets his hands on something, it means it’s going to be brought back to life, as well as the taxpayers, and look darn nice when its finished. I hope he’s able to get his hands on more of it.

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Talk about stepping into the Lion’s Den. A representative from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals was the featured speaker at Thursday’s meeting of the Suffolk Rotary Club – not what I would describe as a normally liberal, PETA-friendly audience.

The young man did a good job, however, of not coming off as some kind of left-wing whacko. He seemed like a reasonable person.

Sensing, I suppose, that being in Suffolk he must be talking to a bunch of backwater, gun-toting rednecks, most of his remarks were about hunting. He talked about how PETA does not actively oppose hunting (it’s not part of their mission and in fact it’s PETA’s position that if someone is going to eat meat, hunting is the most humane way to obtain it) and that PETA and true sportsmen share many of the same convictions – preserving habitat, protecting wildlife and opposition to what he called &uot;canned hunting,&uot; in which people shoot animals in fenced in lots.

Personally, I support PETA – not financially, but in spirit. While I think some of their positions are extreme, they know how to draw attention to their causes and it’s usually pretty funny stuff.