Steve Mensing, Editor
♦ Salisbury Streets Alive could’ve been deemed a success had the promoters done either one of two things:
• Get Salisbury’s army of psychic investigators to count ghosts.
• Turn Fibrant’s crack counting team loose, using the same unique counting methods employed to arrive at the padded stats ballyhooing 3,000 alleged bodies for Fibrant.
Okay not too many kids, parents, or even bicyclists showed up yesterday to pleasure themselves in the empty streets of downtown Salisbury with its giant checkerboard.
In truth these closed streets events appear to work best in very large urban venues like my hometown of Philadelphia or New York, or L.A. In such urban venues possessing populations of millions, a lot of “leftovers” can be found in the city on summer weekends.
The promise of giant checkerboards and unobstructed bicycling isn’t exactly a lure. Downtown Salisbury Inc. needs to employ a better Venus Fly Trap.
Closing several blocks to traffic from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. on a July 4th as a test case for “Closed Streets” struck me as wildly hopeful. Why?
• Life forms seldom venture to Salisbury’s dead zone downtown. The empty weekday streets and vacant storefronts attest to that.
• On July 4th everybody dwelling in this humble burg either attended a backyard BBQ, traveled to the mountains or the beach, or motored to Faith, N.C. to enjoy their legendary 4th of July Parade and Fair. Most people are elsewhere on July 4th.
Maybe the same Salisbury’s Koolaid keeping “true believers” hallucinating a vibrant downtown area or even seeing any future here was at work during the planning of Salisbury Streets Alive?
