Dallas Blog

Flavored vodka snowcones?

Man! That latest rendering convinced me big-time -- this Calatrava bridge thing, in conjunction with an 8-lane tollway at ground zero of the flood zone, is gonna be HUGE for Dallas.

I'm thinking big and living large over here. Well, okay, not living all that large, but with the new Caltrava bridge we're ALL in the "winner's circle." And three (3) minutes closer to the King's X Cabaret.

"What, exactly, do Miles Davis, Jimmy Scott, Lionel Hampton, Gerry Mulligan and Charlie Mingus have to do with the Calatrava bridge, anyway?"

They all blow.

Will this bridge, with the pillars built on sand, replace the Tacoma Narrows bridge on all those bad engineering disasters shows on Discovery?

Lionel Hampton played vibes and Mingus played upright bass (switched to piano later in his career). So far as I know, no blowing is involved in said enterprises.

I don't get some of the hatred towards this bridge. It's not the bridge's fault that there's sand in the levees. The steel was imported from Italy because it was the most cost-effective at the time. What's more, this bridge will allow Continental Ave. to become pedestrian-only. No, I don't get this shindig and the "parading around" of the bridge parts, but this will be a good thing once it's done.

Maybe it's because it's a symbol of how this city gets all wrapped up in giant, expensive projects (no matter how they're funded) that sometimes succeed and sometimes don't while ignoring the fundamentals like, you know, keeping the libraries open or not having to lay off huge numbers of staff people.

Sure, the local school system is crumbling, but at least we'll have a nice bridge (that may or may not have on and off ramps) to look at.

We're only a can-do city in terms of building huge, expensive junk. It'd be nice if we were a can-do city in terms of running a city, instead.

"What, exactly, do Miles Davis, Jimmy Scott, Lionel Hampton, Gerry Mulligan and Charlie Mingus have to do with the Calatrava bridge, anyway?"

They all, despite artistic merit were financial sink holes in more ways than one?

Personally, I don't think that the Jazz music has anything, really, to do with the bridge. I believe it's there to infuse a feeling of innocuous "partying." Then again, there will be vodka flavored snow cones? How innocuous can it be? ;)