Saturday, April 23, 2016

America & Fort Worth's Biggest Boondoggle's Berserk Signage

I am almost 100% certain I am not the only person who has noticed the proliferation of signage, such as what you see here, and wondered what fresh tacky hell is this?

The Trinity River Central City Uptown Panther Island Vision, also known as America's Biggest Boondoggle, has long loved spreading propaganda signage all over the area where The Boondoggle does its boondoggling.

Some of the signage has been of the "Trinity River Vision Underway" sort. I first saw those over a half decade ago, near where the now defunct Cowtown Wakepark sits.

Speaking of Cowtown Wakepark, way back when that easily predicted to fail operation opened, an earlier version of The Boondoggle's signage showed up along the Trinity Trail, informing trail users of the direction and distance to various features one might find along the trail.

Such as the Cowtown Wakepark.

I remember taking a picture of one of those signs and asking what happens with the signage after the easily predicted failure of the Cowtown Wakepark?

As in, does The Boondoggle come along with whiteout and strike out that Cowtown Wakepark element on the sign?

And then there was the follow-up iteration of The Boondoggle's signage, as in the thing you see above.

These signs, to me, look like someone's 1960s idea of something looking futuristic, like one might have seen at a World's Fair, way back then.

The signs are made of thick plastic. Is the design supposed to be some sort of abstraction of a flower opening?

Below is a new Boondoggle sign installation, not yet completed, which I saw yesterday in Gateway Park, near the new Observation Deck on the west side of the park.


How much has America's Biggest Boondoggle spent on all this ridiculous, tacky, cheap looking signage? Should not that information be available to the public? These signs may look cheap, but I suspect they are quite costly to produce.

What with each one needing to be a one of a kind type deal with the special info which that one sign needs to convey, such as we see on the sign at the top, pointing us to two parking lots, a dog park, soccer fields and that aforementioned observation deck.

I do not know how anyone could manage to find the parking lots, dog park, soccer fields or observation deck without this useful sign......

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Taking a trip back to your former stomping grounds, did you notice the 1st St. bridge over a rather swollen Trinity River? Close enough to finished to have some strange ornamentation on each corner...

Steve A said...

Actually, many claim Bertha and the tunnel in Seattle are America's biggest boondoggle. As noted at http://grist.org/cities/seattles-unbelievable-transportation-megaproject-fustercluck/ officials are beginning to face the possibility that the tunnel will wind up being abandoned. We shall see if it gets stuck under the viaduct. Kudos to former Mayor McGinn for resisting the temptation to avoid saying "I told you so!"