Helping our street

Saturday morning, Hilary and I gathered with many of our neighbors to show support for a proposed project to revitalize the street corner of Ohio and Winifred. This hellish turn is plagued with blind spots, crazy intersection angles, and speeding drivers. It's an accident waiting to happen.

We waited for city officials to drive by in a bus, so we held signs that said "Please fix our street" and "Road of terror." Unfortunately, someone either thought we were demonstrating AGAINST something, or that we were a legitimate safety concern, because after twenty minutes of waiting with our signs, a police officer pulled up, got out of his vehicle, and starting talking to us.

Although polite and understanding, the officer explained that someone had called the non-emergency number on us and he came by to see what was the commotion. He stated he was concerned that the gawker effect (someone look at something out-of-the-ordinary) would cause an accident.

Eventually, he left, leaving us all with a sense of civic disobedience. We did not disband, and eventually the big moment arrived. The city officials (twenty or so minutes late) slowly drove by our intersection and continued down Ohio. A very anti-climatic finish to a Saturday morning.