The new 35W Bridge: A few opinions and images
Posted on September 19th, 2008 – 2:15 PMBy Roadguy
Here’s a v-mail message that Roadguy received yesterday morning, a few hours after the new 35W Bridge opened:
I just want to make a comment: That’s probably the ugliest bridge there is in America now.
Indeed, not everyone’s enamored; a few more comments from today’s paper are here. You can decide for yourself at the Strib’s photo gallery from yesterday’s opening. I do like the shot from the helicopter at dawn — if only I were a real photographer, I too could fly around the city. But being on the ground was all right, and parts of the roof and windshield of the Roadguymobile are visible for a moment in this video from opening day.
Meanwhile, I’m clearing out my hundreds of bridge-construction photos, like this one, which was taken as I passed a trash bin in July:
It looked quite a bit like a purple rolling pin, but I never got around to asking what role it might have played in building the bridge. Also don’t think I ever shared this one of my boot, taken by my colleague Boz:
No, Roadguy did not leave his bootmarks in wet concrete. But someone did, inside one of the segments. There were only the two prints, so maybe the guy said “holy crap!” before getting any farther.
Either way, may the concrete remain in place for a long, long time.
4 Responses to "The new 35W Bridge: A few opinions and images"
Picture #2 looks like it was taken on the moon.
The rolling pin is a standard roll of “industrial saran wrap”, used for wrapping pallets of stuff so the stuff doesn’t fall off the pallet.
Roadguy…if your commenter thinks this bridge is ugly, just think what he would have said of the other three proposals, which IMO were even worse.
If the bridge holds up, I wouldn’t care if they painted it purple with yellow ducks. 
