Come See Our Hideous Slab

[dweller]

As the world swoons over France's soaring beauty of a bridge, S.F. gets slapped with an eyesore
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

And did you hear the one about how those gul-dang baguette-sucking antiwar French just completed work on this astounding new bridge, a soaring, airy, delicate thing erected in southern France, and it's all over the international press and the French people are justifiably proud and even the venerable Le Monde has deemed the new Millau bridge a "work of art," and the amazing pictures are being featured everywhere, for good reason?

And you look at the photos and see the breathtakingly elegant architecture (it was built by the same company that did the Eiffel Tower) and you read about the bridge's world-record height and its classy designer, renowned British architect Norman Foster, the man who also designed the Millennium Bridge in London and who believes, crazily, that "works of man should fuse with nature," and his bridge is already being hailed as an instant landmark.

The Millau. Its pillars poke the clouds and its design inspires the spirit and it will surely be a major tourist attraction for decades to come -- a fact that, of course, means little to most Americans, because most red-blooded patriots never venture past the Wal-Mart on the outskirts of their home state. But still.

And if you care at all about industrial design and the splendor of pure function and of humankind's aspirations toward anything resembling ideals of grace and simplicity and beauty, you take one look and you can only go, whoa.

And then you get to spin right around just in time to have your face slapped by Arnold Schwarzenegger, a giant slab of a B-grade actor and C-grade politician who is right this minute advocating throwing a giant slab across S.F. Bay and calling it the new Bay Bridge redesign, when anyone who looks at the artist rendering just sort of feels this nasty tightening in their colon and they go, oh Jesus, what the hell is wrong with us?


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[Demeter]

1. It's A Functional Bridge

If it doesn't fall down in an earthquake, like some bridges I could mention, then you are MUCH better off than you were. You could still have nothing: would that suit you better?

Some people don't know when to be grateful.

[Stuckinthebush]

2. Sometimes you have to go with function over form

especially if you live in an earthquake zone.

It would be nice, however, to see the two intertwined somewhat.