Does Davenport Need Psychedelia?

(Photo courtesy this guy's cool site.)

So tonight me and my friend Jason went over to the Rhythm City casino. Did we go because we like to gamble? Hell no. (Though, it must be touted, I won $4.60 playing a slot machine called "Wild Dolphins.") We went because we wanted to see this crazy new Skybridge thing for ourselves.

Umm... whoa. That thing is CRAZY.

Point #1: The skybridge connects, essentially, nothing to nothing. If you're going to have a pedestrian bridge 4 stories above the ground, you might want to attach it to something more interesting than an elevator on each side. Really, folks, they're called CROSSWALKS. Not too confusing to use, and they don't require an elevator.

Point #2: So let's assume that, elevation aside, a skybridge is the way to go. I want to know who the person was who stood up in a development meeting and went, "Okay, so what if we took the lights inside the bridge and made them every color of the rainbow, and then let's make 'em flash and do funky patterns. That would be, as the kids say, dope."

I guess I just don't get it. But don't get me wrong -- I think it's super cool... and I'm surprised that the halls of the skybridge aren't already being usurped by college kids on mind-altering substances... coz it really is super neat to check out. But WHY go to the trouble? I'm just a bit confuzzled.

It's like, "Well, you've just lost your life savings on the riverboat. You feel sick to your stomach. Just to add insult to injury, we're going to make you walk home through a five-minute psychedelic nightmare. Come back soon, y'hear?"

It's like me and my cynical friend were saying tonight, it's only a matter of time before punk kids start spitting on people below... or worse yet, some emotionally fragile kid will decide that doing a 4-story belly flop onto the casino's pavement will be a boss way to end it all. Everything good gets ruined by cool kids doing something STUPID, just you wait.

Until then, I'm going to enjoy the tripped-out stroll across the skybridge that connects nothing to nothing. Kudos, D-port, on spending weird amounts of money on weird stuff. Remember that next time the river floods your whole downtown. I'll be safe, coz I'll be 4 stories up watching the chaos from my psychedelic skybridge.