Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Playing Dress-Up

When an international summit is dropped on your plate with a notice of less than 6 months, you don't have time to rebuild your city. Instead, you drape it in canvas. Or at least that's what you do when the public eyesore is interrupting a spectacular view.

My only question is why did we wait so long? Why is it OK to buy a building, plan to transform it into a hotel/condominiums but in the meantime leave a vacant mess awaiting a wrecking ball that is smeared with graffiti? If you buy a building, you're responsible for it. If the Reddup crew can fine me for not weeding my property (they haven't, by the way), then major developers should be fined until they clean up eyesores around town.

If we act like a city that could get picked for an international summit location all the time, when it happens, we won't hear a chorus of: "Why Pittsburgh?"

2 comments:

Nick's Blog n@ said...

My question is, why are we "prettying up" the city for a bunch of people who are only going to spend a week here? Why not make it look good for ourselves since we see the place every day and will benefit from having a nice looking city much more than some people taking a short trip here and probably won't see much more than the inside of the convention center...

n'at said...

I guess it depends on the visitor. We have a few thousand friends come over everyday, and they don't seem to mind the filth. When someone new comes over for dinner, however, we dust off the vacuum, pick up after ourselves and cover that hole in the wall with a nice dollar store painting.

Don't forget to warsh the Bonneville, and cascade the fine china!