John Boston | City Hall’s New Eyesore of Giant White Salamis

John Boston
Share
Tweet
Email

Old-timers love to wax nostalgic about the good old days, how beauty and poetry flew lazily across the Santa Clarita Valley, like butterflies and whippoorwills floating on gentle spring breezes. 

I grew up here. It was an armpit. With dust. I remember being a boy, sitting on a hill, saying goodbye to dusk. House lights were separated by miles, not microns. Night’s a good thing because it hides blemishes, like mediocrity. We don’t have as many oaks today as dotted the valley in the 1950s. But, we have more trees by ten thousand-fold. One thing The Newhall Land & Farming Co. and the city of Santa Clarita did, not just right, but beautifully, was Orchard Village Road. It connects ancient Newhall with yuppietown Valencia. From the medians to the shady pathways along Orchard Village, planners, gardeners and bureaucrats created just the perfect, sigh-bringing distraction to our woes and problems. In its simple, tree-lined beauty, Orchard Village would bring a tear to the eye of Vincent van Gogh. 

And then, some knucklehead or pride of knuckleheads at City Hall had to go and not just spoil it, but ruin our pastoral pathway. 

What buck-toothed knave is responsible for installing these primitive, yard-tall phallic symbols along both sides of this former bucolic avenue? Is there a name, title and department that goes with the designer of these Easter Island statues in the shape of appliance-white giant plastic salamis?  

What. The holy heck. Were you. Thinking. 

????????????? 

This eyesore? It’s city-sponsored graffiti. It’s a thrown can of motor oil onto Renoir’s La Grenouille.  

Orchard Village’s new, mile-long stretch of erect, plastic tubing with the eerie radiation glow? It must be The City of Santa Clarita’s Bicycle Lane For Dumbbells.  

Even in the waning, insane throes of woke, DEI, PC, pearl-clutching government we’ve suffered the past decade-plus, I’m not against dumbbells being designated their own bicycle lane. 

To ride a bike, in the privacy of your own bordello or on a city street, you don’t need to take a mandatory 50-hour test. Well. Yet. You don’t need to answer to someone in a beige shirt with an oak tree logo holding a clipboard that tires (two) go on the ground and seat points toward the stars. We’re still a republic, so blessed with freedom that we can clamp two, heck — seven — little annoying bicycle warning bells onto our handlebars without fear of an FBI visit. If you’re dumb enough to climb aboard a bike without brakes or you wearing shoes — Have. At. It. 

May the Thinning Of The Herd god warmly welcome you. 

Politically? I’m very libertine. Bicycle-riding dumbbells should be able to share the highways with us regular normal people in pickup trucks with the cattle catcher bumpers in front. I’d also support dedicating some 50 feet of a distant, unused canyon for a special city of Santa Clarita Dumbbell Bike Lane. I’d also be in favor of constructing picnic tables or set of bleachers, a place where locals could sit, lunch, sip wine and enjoy a few innocent chuckles as hapless, grinning-out-of-context cyclists spectacularly crash into oaks or disappear into bottomless roadside barrancas. I’d even bring my own yard-tall non-serif numbers from 1-to-10 to hold up and grade the crashes. 

The city has chosen to deface possibly the prettiest, tree-lined street in town by carving it up into some dystopian Cirque du Soleil set, just to accommodate not stupid people, but alleged stupid people. 

Of course, someone at City Hall will sniff and shakingly utter the Holy Safe Word, which is, “Safety.” They’ll quiver and, mom-like, point out that they’re “… only doing this for your own good.” Which is a fib.  

On any given day, SClarita City performs 10,000 wonderful things. But, like most institutions, City Hall has to justify their existence. Being essentially regulators, they have to birth regulations non-stop, even if it means lining a major thoroughfare with municipal day-glow salamis that are the laughing stock of everyone in town except for the mutts with 274 paid government holidays who came up with the idea. 

If we don’t stop this Design By Teenage Bureaucrats, I’ll tell you what’s next. You’re going to start seeing lime-green footprints dotting our sidewalks, instructing pedestrians how to walk properly and where — exactly — to place their — next — step. With no one complaining, you’ll see the city gain courage. They’ll start painting seven different sizes of feet diagrams, accompanied by $18,500-each OSHA-approved green signs touting the recommended city of Santa Clarita stride for each foot size. 

Down the line, sidewalks can be widened to accommodate people with wooden legs. One lime-green footprint. One lime-green 2-inch circle for the peg. Step-clunk. Step-clunk. Step-clunk. Etc., etc. 

Regulators gotta regulate … 

If City Hall wanted to make the bike ride from McBean Parkway to Lyons Avenue completely safe for people posing as Italian Tour de France racers, there’s a much better albeit imbecilic and Rube Goldberg way to address the problem. 

Purchase several official city cattle trucks that run 24 hours a day. You just roll your bike into truck and have city transportation drop you off — safely — at the other end. Bonus? Have the cattle trucks run on natural gas and wind turbines. Or, we could defund the police and have the former gendarmes just toss the bikes into their former squad car trunks and Uber them across Valencia’s Highway To Hell impassable concrete ribbon. 

I suppose, like some communities with guns, we could have an annual Bicycle Buy-Back Program. You show up to the local sheriff’s office and they buy your bike, no questions asked. When bicycles are outlawed, only outlaws will have bicycles. 

Oh, sigh and dear me. 

What’s next?  

Will the city of Santa Clarita bureaucrats give the green light to building an open pit atomic lithium battery storage facility right in the heart of our pristine community? 

With more than 100 major writing awards, the SCV’s John Boston is the most prolific humorist/satirist in world history. Visit his bookstore, online shoppe and commentary website at johnlovesamerica.com.  

Related To This Story

Latest NEWS