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captainsblogMy neighbor called today to ask if I'd noticed any heavy red markings on our sidewalk.
The way it was raining and disgusting the past two days? I don't think so.
I went out, though, and checked. Sure enough, Hester Prynne's racer cousin had marked two of my sidewalk slabs with his scarlet signature.
Sally fared worse. Close to a dozen X's surround her corner lot, and this after a few years ago, when she'd already replaced a sidewalk stretch right on our lot line after some tree roots had raised them close to a foot above the rest of the passageway.
She's now received her Official Letter from the town, telling her that these X'd-out slabs have to be hauled up, the offensive natural things underneath them conquered, and new sidewalk laid- all by June 1st, failing which fines and (not bloody likely) imprisonment will follow.
I was shocked, SHOCKED!, to hear that the local masonry trade had already been tipped off to this effort. They've been following the X's like Brothers Grimm breadcrumbs this week, leaving their flyers at the homes of various serial sidewalk-killers. Sally was offered a price of $100 a slab, "since they're doing work in the neighborhood anyway."
I told her not to sign anything until at least our four adjacent homes on either side of the street (we're the luckiest, with only the two) could have a chance to discuss making a combined bid for all the work.
----
I see this as the parting shot of our asshole town supervisor, an engineer and UB faculty member, who rode into Amherst Town Hall four years ago by claiming to be a reformer. We knew better; Eleanor was working in landscape lighting at the time, and he'd consulted her for a bid on his outdoor lighting work. He proved to be a domineering, control-freaky cheapskate in his dealings with her- facts which we were among the first Amherst residents to find out about. I see his fingerprints all over this effort to make the town all anal-perfect before he leaves office (he's not running for re-election and John Wayne Gacy would've had a better shot of winning in a fair fight).
He also is likely behind the idiot decision to make it illegal for me to turn left out of my subdivision, which I discovered last night when driving Emily to a friend's house and seeing freshly-painted diagonal lines in the "suicide lane" which I use to avoid 20-minute delays making that left turn. (Apparently, there was an accident there last week; they showed up with the yellow paint in a damn hurry.) As these things go, it's one of the safest places to enter from a side street, since there's no side street on the other side of the main highway within several hundred feet of it, and since the nearest street beyond that point is controlled by a traffic signal. As it is now, to avoid ticketing, I will need to make my left turns out of the only other egress road onto Sheridan Drive from the subdivision, which is (a) beyond that traffic light, (b) much closer to traffic flying off the 290 off-ramp at close to 70 miles an hour, and (c) virtually forming a four-way intersection with a side street on the other side of Sheridan, thereby making the suicide lane much more suicidal at that point.
Personally, I'll risk the ticket.
The way it was raining and disgusting the past two days? I don't think so.
I went out, though, and checked. Sure enough, Hester Prynne's racer cousin had marked two of my sidewalk slabs with his scarlet signature.
Sally fared worse. Close to a dozen X's surround her corner lot, and this after a few years ago, when she'd already replaced a sidewalk stretch right on our lot line after some tree roots had raised them close to a foot above the rest of the passageway.
She's now received her Official Letter from the town, telling her that these X'd-out slabs have to be hauled up, the offensive natural things underneath them conquered, and new sidewalk laid- all by June 1st, failing which fines and (not bloody likely) imprisonment will follow.
I was shocked, SHOCKED!, to hear that the local masonry trade had already been tipped off to this effort. They've been following the X's like Brothers Grimm breadcrumbs this week, leaving their flyers at the homes of various serial sidewalk-killers. Sally was offered a price of $100 a slab, "since they're doing work in the neighborhood anyway."
I told her not to sign anything until at least our four adjacent homes on either side of the street (we're the luckiest, with only the two) could have a chance to discuss making a combined bid for all the work.
----
I see this as the parting shot of our asshole town supervisor, an engineer and UB faculty member, who rode into Amherst Town Hall four years ago by claiming to be a reformer. We knew better; Eleanor was working in landscape lighting at the time, and he'd consulted her for a bid on his outdoor lighting work. He proved to be a domineering, control-freaky cheapskate in his dealings with her- facts which we were among the first Amherst residents to find out about. I see his fingerprints all over this effort to make the town all anal-perfect before he leaves office (he's not running for re-election and John Wayne Gacy would've had a better shot of winning in a fair fight).
He also is likely behind the idiot decision to make it illegal for me to turn left out of my subdivision, which I discovered last night when driving Emily to a friend's house and seeing freshly-painted diagonal lines in the "suicide lane" which I use to avoid 20-minute delays making that left turn. (Apparently, there was an accident there last week; they showed up with the yellow paint in a damn hurry.) As these things go, it's one of the safest places to enter from a side street, since there's no side street on the other side of the main highway within several hundred feet of it, and since the nearest street beyond that point is controlled by a traffic signal. As it is now, to avoid ticketing, I will need to make my left turns out of the only other egress road onto Sheridan Drive from the subdivision, which is (a) beyond that traffic light, (b) much closer to traffic flying off the 290 off-ramp at close to 70 miles an hour, and (c) virtually forming a four-way intersection with a side street on the other side of Sheridan, thereby making the suicide lane much more suicidal at that point.
Personally, I'll risk the ticket.
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Date: 2009-04-05 05:27 pm (UTC)There is a same "no turn" suicide lane near my in-laws house. I regularly turn there anyway -- for much the same reasons you listed -- and if I get ticketed I'll just point to my TN tag and be "lost."