And sometimes a lot of people don’t use common sense and it just starts to spread like, well, a virus.
That kind of outbreak could be happening around a Pittsburgh park.
It started with the city’s shutdown of a city skate park in Polish Hill. Now let’s be clear — this may have been the catalyst, but it was by no means a targeted assault. Playgrounds, picnic areas and other gathering places in public and state parks all over the state have been shuttered under Gov. Tom Wolf’s stoplight pandemic lockdown and local implementations of those social distancing orders.
But according to the city’s Director of Public Works Mike Gable, closing meant nothing to some using the facilities. Fences were hopped. Locks were cut. Skaters were still gathering.
...So Gable got down to the nitty-gritty. The really gritty. After seeing sand used as a deterrent in California, his crews put it to work in West Penn Park. Mounds and piles of it cover the broad runs between the ramped slopes.
But never underestimate the prank war response of a skater scorned. Someone seemed to have returned the favor quite literally. Hours after sand was dumped in the park, it was also somehow packed into one quadrant of a revolving door at the Pittsburgh City-County Building.
Yes, the city was doing its job in closing down areas that could lead to more virus spread. But looking at the timeline makes the judgment call questionable. The sand was dumped Thursday. Wolf, as most expected, announced Friday that Allegheny County would move to less restrictive yellow lockdown status May 15.
To be fair, the governor’s orders have been a knot of contradictions, with businesses moving to yellow while individuals statewide have the stay-at-home order extended to June 4. But after seven weeks of kids being out of school and people being behind closed doors, it seems strange to decide to go to war over a skate park right before parks might be allowed to reopen.
Whoever responded by dumping sand at City Hall was in the wrong, but let’s hope everyone has the common sense to call this a draw.
No comments:
Post a Comment