Dear The Blonde Lady With The Rhode Island License Plate SPIDEY,
Maybe you live in some sort of alternate universe in which you are a do-gooding superhero who can do no wrong. Or maybe you just got really excited after catching Death Race 2000 on TV the other day. I’m not sure. But either way, I would prefer it if in the future you tried a little harder not to bulldoze pedestrians while you’re speeding around downtown Providence in the middle of the afternoon.
That means, specifically, that you check the crosswalks before you make left turns. It also means that, if you for some reason forget to check the crosswalks, you try not to look so happy when you almost kill someone that’s spent the whole afternoon risking his life trying to get to the library because nobody in this city plowed their damn sidewalks.* I would have been sooooo mad if I had managed to make it downtown and then broken a leg just because you don’t know how cities and intersections work.
Yours Truly,
Pedestrians Everywhere
(but specifically me)
(*I mean you, 98% of the houses and businesses on Smith Street.)
I never thought I’d catch myself saying things like this, but when Buddy was mayor, the sidewalks got cleaned. I find it infuriating that the worst offenders are big corporations based out of state, like Home Depot and Wendy’s. Which makes no sense. In the daytime, Wendy’s depends on a lot of pedestrian traffic; that’s why they’ve holed up at the margins of residential and commercial areas (Eddy St., Charles St.). And Home Depot SELLS SNOW REMOVING EQUIPMENT. Never mind that it would be swell of them. Never mind that it’s THE LAW. Wouldn’t it be great advertising for them? For that matter, given the serious degree of flagrancy by those who only ten years ago knew to clear their walks and keep them clear, doesn’t this represent an better opportunity for low-grade city revenue than parking tickets?
Yay!
RANT RANT RANT RANT!