The Tale of the Millennium Bridge
Sep. 18th, 2003 07:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mishalakIn Denver there is a bridge officially called the Millennium Bridge by the city government. However to many of the residents of the city it is known as Webb's Yacht Mast. It is named for Wellington Webb, who was mayor of Denver from mid 1991 until 2003. The Mayor was obsessed with the idea of making Denver "world class" and embarked on many projects to this end. No one was quite sure what being a "world class city" actually meant, but in Denver when the mayor wants something chances are he can get it.
Midway through his term the mayor was visiting a city somewhere exotic as he liked to do, calling these vacations trade missions. Well it seems that the local potentate, some sort of city ruler for life in Frankfurt or Lagos, has a rather impressive yacht. The mayor upon seeing this was totally enchanted and came back to Denver saying the city needed one of these to impress foreign dignitaries with the world-class qualities of our city.
As with most of these engineering projects it fell to our city Chief of Mechanical Wangling and Special Contracting (commonly called the Chief in Grief because of all the problems mayors give to the holder of this office to solve or make), Joseph Milligan to build the flight of fancy out of steel and cable. Mayor Webb gave Mr. Milligan a single vague directive about building his ship and meeting venue.
The Chief decided it would be impractical to build an actual ship since Denver does not have anything resembling a navigable waterway. So he took the directive to mean build a hall with a ship like atmosphere and look including mast. He did a phenomenal job, really. The SS Denver looked very impressive as it appeared to sail near the Plate River opposite Paris on the Plate, a rather nice bookstore.
Unfortunately the Mayor had rather different ideas and perhaps not as much common sense, and Milligan was in the mountains busy repairing the skyline. Discovering the ship nearly done after another extended trade trip Mayor Webb decided to take it for a test spin. Finding that the ship was not actually floating he ordered two units of fire fighters to get enough water under the ship to slide it into the river.
The volume of water was enormous, but it only succeeded in creating an enormous volume of mud. Despite being a building and not a ship the S.S. Denver began to move rather in a ship like manner after three hours of pumping. The mayor stood at the helm as the ship's sail caught a favorable breeze... back towards the city. The building-Ship slid along nicely through the railroad tracks and then began to go down. In less than five minutes nothing remained of it except the 100 foot mast pointing like a dagger back towards the city.
The Mayor slunk away, rather embarrassed, and uncharacteristically without much commentary or assigning of blame for the mess. He thought it best to try to pretend nothing happened. To that end our Chief in Grief used the mast as the support for a rather too stylish bridge over the repaired railroad tracks.
But it didn't entirely succeed as I noted earlier many still call Webb's Yacht Mast.
Midway through his term the mayor was visiting a city somewhere exotic as he liked to do, calling these vacations trade missions. Well it seems that the local potentate, some sort of city ruler for life in Frankfurt or Lagos, has a rather impressive yacht. The mayor upon seeing this was totally enchanted and came back to Denver saying the city needed one of these to impress foreign dignitaries with the world-class qualities of our city.
As with most of these engineering projects it fell to our city Chief of Mechanical Wangling and Special Contracting (commonly called the Chief in Grief because of all the problems mayors give to the holder of this office to solve or make), Joseph Milligan to build the flight of fancy out of steel and cable. Mayor Webb gave Mr. Milligan a single vague directive about building his ship and meeting venue.
The Chief decided it would be impractical to build an actual ship since Denver does not have anything resembling a navigable waterway. So he took the directive to mean build a hall with a ship like atmosphere and look including mast. He did a phenomenal job, really. The SS Denver looked very impressive as it appeared to sail near the Plate River opposite Paris on the Plate, a rather nice bookstore.
Unfortunately the Mayor had rather different ideas and perhaps not as much common sense, and Milligan was in the mountains busy repairing the skyline. Discovering the ship nearly done after another extended trade trip Mayor Webb decided to take it for a test spin. Finding that the ship was not actually floating he ordered two units of fire fighters to get enough water under the ship to slide it into the river.
The volume of water was enormous, but it only succeeded in creating an enormous volume of mud. Despite being a building and not a ship the S.S. Denver began to move rather in a ship like manner after three hours of pumping. The mayor stood at the helm as the ship's sail caught a favorable breeze... back towards the city. The building-Ship slid along nicely through the railroad tracks and then began to go down. In less than five minutes nothing remained of it except the 100 foot mast pointing like a dagger back towards the city.
The Mayor slunk away, rather embarrassed, and uncharacteristically without much commentary or assigning of blame for the mess. He thought it best to try to pretend nothing happened. To that end our Chief in Grief used the mast as the support for a rather too stylish bridge over the repaired railroad tracks.
But it didn't entirely succeed as I noted earlier many still call Webb's Yacht Mast.