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Why not allow Cal, Alta Bates to choke all the life out of Berkeley?
Dear Shirley:
I demand we increase the pressure to choke off life in the Elmwood neighborhoods now! We must become Berkeley’s Urban Gray Exhaust Belt!
It is time for the neighbors to line up behind city of Berkeley, Alta Bates, the noble UC, and the Traffic Engineering department.
In these times of homeland defense, we must rally around our values: more traffic! more congestion! Let Fed Ex smack into UPS and cars run over bicyclists!
Let bicyclists run over pedestrians! Let runners run over walkers! Let walkers run over wheelchairs! Support your local body shop, hospital, chiropractor and osteopath with the collateral damage of our convenient way of life.
The Willard and Bateman neighborhoods love being trod upon. Give us more traffic! Remove those horrid barriers and give us your fueled, your speeders, your impatient in our streets!
Plant more orange flags to frame our councillors’ beaming faces on the news while pedestrians take the hit!
Stop trying any measure of safety to slow traffic. It is a lost cause. Put no more strain on our steering wheels! Save the over-worked souls of the traffic and planning departments who want to run more traffic up our streets over our whiny objections! They work so hard to look after us!
We poor wretches of the lesser Elmwood get lost if we can't find a street in a straight line. That’s why we live here! Don’t confuse us! We only know how to find our way by following the roaring herd! No more turns! No more turns!
What a brilliant idea it is to mobilize against more barriers! Alta Bates needs more E-Z in, E-Z out. UC needs E-Z-me-2! Who are we to object?
Let the cars of the world beat a path past our doors. May we choke on the dust of crashes and the fumes of our wasted breath to change our little neighborhood for the better. What a grand view we'll have from the 50th floor of Alta Bates and its magnificent parking garage.
The air will be so much better up there. Then the merchants will rejoice. More parking! Lots more parking!
Sedge Thomson
Berkeley
