Sunday, February 24, 2008

A Nuremburg trial in SF for architectural atrocities

Allan Bennett in the January 3, 2008 edition of the London Review of Books tells us what he would do with those responsible for trashing the town of Bath. We might consider something similar for all the "progressive" rulers and citizens---a list that will include, for openers, Dean Macris and most of the Planning Dept., Ross Mirkarimi, Chris Daly, Bevan Dufty, Gavin Newsom, John King, Rob Bregoff, Robin Levitt, Paul Olsen, and Jason Henderson---who are now in the process of destroying this once-beautiful city. Like Oliver Cromwell's, the late Patricia Walkup's bones would also need to be disinterred:

I'd hold a show trial in Bath, a Nuremburg for all the perpetrators of its architectural atrocities, the money-grubbing councillors who sanctioned it, the mediocre architects who did their bidding, winkled out from their wisteria-covered vicarages for proper retribution. Many of them are of course dead but like Cromwell they could be disinterred and their remains stowed under some sort of monument in the centre of this coming mall, a reminder of the crime they have committed...As the train pulls out I think this is not a city I want to visit again. Before they are artists, before they are craftsmen, be they genius or mediocrity, architects are butchers.

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