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Bad Parade! No Biscuit!
So we went to the annual May Day parade down at Powderhorn on Sunday. No, it was not actually May Day. Yes, they know this. It’s held the first Sunday in May each year.
This is not the first time we’ve gone, so all of us knew it tends to have some political overtones to say the least. Those were there, but so was something that I personally found to be in extremely bad taste: a large procession of people carrying a fake bridge labeled “Bridge of Debt” with little cars circling it.
Now I get people trying to figure out how a bridge bid to cost $250 million suddenly got a ‘necessary’ budget of $450 million. I question that myself and have yet to get an answer anywhere near satisfactory. However, protesting that the bridge is not needed and that it’s just waiting for more deaths? Made of fail. Stacking beaten up papier-mâché cars on top of the fake bridge? Made of fail.
The last bridge stood for decades before a mixture of construction work, excess weight, and damaged gusset plates caused a disaster. Thousands upon thousands of cars used it daily. Rerouting the traffic since it fell has caused excessive delays and wear and tear on all the alternate routes (we’re talking honkin’ pot holes here), but a new one is not needed?
Maybe it was just me, but I found this particular demonstration offensive, not just to me (I missed the collapse by just under five minutes), but to the people who died when it fell as well. It was in bad taste, plain and simple. You want to protest the cost? Go right ahead. But there are much better ways of doing so, many of which don’t involve belittling a catastrophe.
This is not the first time we’ve gone, so all of us knew it tends to have some political overtones to say the least. Those were there, but so was something that I personally found to be in extremely bad taste: a large procession of people carrying a fake bridge labeled “Bridge of Debt” with little cars circling it.
Now I get people trying to figure out how a bridge bid to cost $250 million suddenly got a ‘necessary’ budget of $450 million. I question that myself and have yet to get an answer anywhere near satisfactory. However, protesting that the bridge is not needed and that it’s just waiting for more deaths? Made of fail. Stacking beaten up papier-mâché cars on top of the fake bridge? Made of fail.
The last bridge stood for decades before a mixture of construction work, excess weight, and damaged gusset plates caused a disaster. Thousands upon thousands of cars used it daily. Rerouting the traffic since it fell has caused excessive delays and wear and tear on all the alternate routes (we’re talking honkin’ pot holes here), but a new one is not needed?
Maybe it was just me, but I found this particular demonstration offensive, not just to me (I missed the collapse by just under five minutes), but to the people who died when it fell as well. It was in bad taste, plain and simple. You want to protest the cost? Go right ahead. But there are much better ways of doing so, many of which don’t involve belittling a catastrophe.
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A friend watched the parade from about the half-way mark. We were at the end. She swears all they did was march by at that point, and hold signs about the cost. Our best guess is that they were getting giddy by the end and insensitivity was the result.
Still, it was in extremely bad taste. Nearly 10 months to the day, on one of the first warm days since it happened, about two days after the legislature publicly announced payment to the victims? Bad taste.