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More winning. DC is removing the giant yellow "Black Lives Matter" lettering on 16th street to make friends with Congress with respect to highway funds.
In 2020, at the same time the founders of BLM were absconding with enormous sums of money to buy expensive real estate, the District of Columbia decided to spend $8 million to convert the three blocks of 16th Street leading to Lafayette Square in front of the White House to Black Lives Matter Plaza.
The original design called for the elimination of vehicular traffic to create an open area for pedestrians (picture at the left). There are only a couple of upscale restaurants in that 3-block area, no public facilities or museums or monuments, and no real reason for anybody to congregate. The elimination of vehicular access for the office buildings, hotel and other uses would have been a logistic horror show.
So, because that design would have been impractical and vehemently opposed by lots of influential people, a more expensive, even less useful design was needed (this is Washington, DC after all).
Under the finished design, there is a three-block pedestrian island between two one-way side lanes. There is a row of lamps to delineate the borders of the island and prevent vehicle crossing. The additional electrical cables required digging up and repaving the street to accommodate the electrical wiring. That configuration also meant there was even less reason for anyone to congregate in the "island." I passed by there a number of times during the day on my way to and from my former office and never saw anyone on the "island" who was not merely crossing the street. There are no benches nor any street vendors clueless enough to set up there.
The huge letters, presumably visible from space and right under the view of the White House residence of then-President Trump, made a statement. The Nazca stick figures on the ground in Peru, only viewable from high above (according to some loons, they were drawn for the benefit of alien spacecraft), were a more rational undertaking. The BLM Plaza was ultimately a loud but incoherent statement, much like BLM itself.
The upscale St. Regis Hotel on the corner at K Street may have to redo its letterhead and mailing address back to 16th Street rather than 923 Black Lives Matter Plaza. Somehow I don't think they will mind.
Discussion (20)
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Eight million dollars is a lotta money. It's sad the taxpayer was once again the victim.
This reminds me of the time I put traffic bumps in our townhouse neighborhood because of a complaint by an owner about reckless driving. The county came to me and said to take them out because the housing complex gave the county right to access for snow plowing, and snow plows don't like bumps.
The better solution to reckless driving is traffic circles with tight passage, they said, so the county installed them on the main road. Every couple of week we had a car up on the sidewalk or banging into trees.
After six months the traffic circles went away, and just the narrow passage was left. Lots of black marks on the curbs after that....
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The work was an atrocity from the beginning. Good riddance.
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The slogan was brilliant from a marketing standpoint, because it doesn’t really mean anything real, but is very effective as a weapon to ram your political opponents with. Its creators got rich, we all got hosed, and a lot of public space was defiled.
It could be made to make sense by merely adding an “O” at the beginning of the Lives part. Then it would be definitely true, but mostly only when ordering a pizza.
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If they were smart, they held onto the old stuff.
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I was astonished at the time that an American civic government gave public space built for common use (transportation by and for anyone) to an overtly and obviously violent political group, for messaging.
That the government of Washington, D.C. allowed such politicization of public spaces told me (an older white man with generally orthodox Christian beliefs and conservative political views) that my nation's capital city was not safe for me to be in. And I even if I had ventured into the city, I would have assumed that any business that adopted as its address a politicized address like "Black Lives Matter Square" was not a safe place for me.
The people who advocate such politicization of public spaces are the same people who say no government functions or paid-for functions can be had in any space that has even a hint of religion.
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