Tomorrow night, August 5th, at 5:00 PM, a few of the Rail Life crew are getting together with a bunch of geeks friends from Twitter and from the Re.net. (a bunch of real estate bloggers, don't worry, they won't try to sell you stuff. LOL) We are meeting at the Depot Cantina in Tempe. All are welcome, we will be meeting in the bar area and just hanging out for a while. The Depot Cantina has a pretty good happy hour with food and drink specials for you to take advantage of. Sorry, drinks are on you.

Tempe Depot Cantina 300 S Ash Ave
Tempe, AZ 85281
(480) 966-6677

Stop by. I will be wearing an ASU hat in case you want to come say "Hi." (can't wait for football season to begin!) If you are an ASU student, a business owner or someone that is interested in how the light rail line will be impacting our communities, I really want to meet you! Let's talk about how Rail Life will be able to help all of us to learn more about these areas! We are getting close to the launch of the site and your input would be greatly appreciated. Besides, do you really need an excuse to go to happy hour?

Come join us! For residents of Arizona, or anywhere else, if you would like to show your pictures of light rail cars or of the fun places, businesses, housing, restaurants, hotel's, schools, entertainment etc along the 20 mile light rail route, we have just created a "Phoenix Light Rail" group on Flickr. Please join in and participate! I KNOW some of you have some great pictures to share!

In addition to the group, you can view all of Rail Life's pics at http://www.flickr.com/photos/raillifepics/

Do you live near the line? Do you have a favorite restaurant on the light rail line? Are you a student that will be using light rail? Sports fans that can't wait to take the light rail trains to the games? Serious, the choices are endless. We will post links to the best ones from time to time right here on the blog. Hey, there's an idea; maybe a weekly link to our favorite pics?!? We want to help show some excitement for the changes coming to our communities.  So, click on THIS PHOENIX LIGHT RAIL GROUP to join in and share pics as you take them. If you already have some good pics, go ahead and add them..

Basic rules are.. Keep it clean, keep it relevant to life on the line. Have fun! We will be adding pictures regularly and hope you will too. Thanks for stopping by!

How ironic that, last night, some of us from Rail Life were leaving a really cool place on Mill Avenue called La Bocca Urban Pizzeria and Wine Bar. As we left, we were stopped by "G-Money," who asked our opinion of public transportation! :-) We chatted for a minute and then decided, as any blogger would, that we "had" to share this guy with you. When we busted out the handy little flip camera, Mr. Money got a little nervous. Once we let him know we didn't want to arrest him, he decided to play along. The following video shows this mans opinion of Arizona Public Transportation. We hope you will enjoy..

A very special thanks to G-Money for allowing us to share his opinion. We would also like to sincerely thank Melissa from Rose & Allyn for inviting us to LaBocca to meet Julian and his staff. What a great bunch of people. More on that to come..

Light Rail fans might want to make sure and take a look at the upcoming, May 16 issue of the Phoenix Business Journal. They will be doing a feature called "Block by Block by Light Rail" which sounds pretty darn cool.. Our friend Karen sent us this brief description of what to expect..

"The Phoenix Business Journal has a 20-page pullout, Block by Block by Light Rail, coming out May 16. The section focuses on businesses and neighborhoods near light rail stops. There's a feature on transit oriented development (TODs), Apache Boulevard and coverage of businesses that have actually survived construction hassles. The Business Journal also spoke to a number of those in the Phoenix business community about if they think light rail will change the city. The section also includes a list of landmarks near light rail that will be undergoing renovation, a light map, and a time line on the history of Phoenix commuter rail."

Stay tuned.. By the end of the summer, Rail Life will begin to roll out our community pages, hotel pages, shopping pages, sports pages etc., complete with searchable mapping capabilities, line section information, park and ride information and all kinds of really cool "stuff" for you to enjoy. Stick around Phoenix... "Your Life Is On The Line!"