8.03.2009

This is why we can't have nice things

DCist comes through with some reporting about a weekend attack on the city's bus shelters. I took this picture on Sunday at around noon, along 16th Street. This is at the bus shelter for the northbound S buses at 16th and Harvard NW.

Vandals struck at least 20 bus shelters all around the District, shattering one or more panes of glass. I saw another vandalized shelter on 16th Street, near the stop at Irving on the other side of the street.

No leads yet, according to DCist, though DDOT does believe the incidents are connected and are likely the work of the same perpetrators.

Well, gee, you think? My money is on someone who is trying to take a shot at The Man (e.g. Clear Channel Communications) that maintains the new-style bus shelters. Reports are a majority of those shelters hit are the new-style ones. Given that most of the vandalized shelters are in Northwest and Upper Northwest, I'd speculate it's a group of disaffected youth, probably from Tenleytown or thereabouts. Reminds me of the jackasses who vandalized the PNC and Wachovia Banks in Logan Circle as a way to stick it to the IMF and the World Bank. Brilliant.

Or maybe it was a Cleveland Park resident looking for an outlet for their frustration. It appears as though the once nice strip along Connecticut Avenue is now on a fast track to becoming the next Gary, Indiana. And residents are outraged! The economic downtown has hit them hard, in so much as they have 50% less Starbucks within 300 yards and now the nearest 7/11 is in Adams Morgan. CityDesk has a nice video report of a recent adventure to the wasteland that exists between Woodley Park and Van Ness.

3 comments:

  1. Those white bastards. Frank Rich was right.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I knew Cleveland Park was going to be a memory when McDonald's closed a few years back. McDonalds's?? CLOSE?!! That just doesn't happen Anyway, fuck that place, the only useful things there are Vace and Palena now.

    But moving on, I am guessing the people who vandalized the bus stops have a much simpler motive, they just hate busses. Don't you? The bus sucks.

    ReplyDelete
  3. With unemployment overall at 10% in DC and the inequalities between rich and poor not getting any better, these types of crimes are to be expected IMO as popular discontent goes up. At the end of the day its property crime and nobody got hurt.

    ReplyDelete