1. A Zipline / Hanging Bridge from East Rock to West Rock
I recently went to Costa Rica, which I never fail to mention during casual conversation. And during my trip, I discovered that the two best ways to get around are, of course: ziplines and hanging suspension bridges.
Why don’t we have one? Or both? What, I’m supposed to DRIVE across town? In my CAR?
What next? Ride a BIKE? Get EXERCISE?
Maybe Jordan’s Furniture will foot the bill if we just convert West Rock into a furniture store. Win-win.
2. Turn Yale Into For-Profit Prison
Why wait for these monsters to get confirmed onto the Supreme Court and strip away from our basic human dignity? We need to cauterize the festering wound before it grows too great. If we wait until the Yale/Harvard game, we can get a two-fer.
Luckily, Yale already built a bunch of gates around their prison anyway.
3. Beineke Should Let Me Touch the Gutenberg Bible
I promise I’ll wash my hands.
Image stolen from Yale, (c)Kevin Eng
4. Don’t Make Pizza Our Whole Personality
Listen, I get it. We have great pizza. I’d put Modern against anybody.
But also, it’s just pizza. It’s not going to slow our descent into fascism. Though it might make the descent taste better.
5. What if there was somewhere fun to work
Listen, I don’t want to knock Yale Correctional Facility, but it would be cool if there was SOMEwhere else to work. Anywhere, really.
One of you nerds need to start a start… up. A cool startup. With ping pong tables and free coffee. And you need to hire me. Also, you need to pay more probably more than I’m worth. Also, I don’t get a lot done on Fridays. Or Mondays.
6. Bulldoze English Station and turn it into a Public Pool
LOL just kidding the Mayor actually thinks this is a good idea and something that’s definitely going to happen and I’m sure will only cost $25 million to remediate and we definitely won’t look back at this in ten years as utterly ridiculous.
7. Turn New Haven Green Into Casino
Sure, sports betting has already completely ruined all commercials and sports.
But could it also ruin New Haven Green?
Of course! We simply bulldoze the Green and replace it with the New Haven Green Casino + MGM Parking Garage. The garage should be 50 stories tall — twice as tall as the next tallest building. And it should take two hours to escape.
8. Build More Highways on the Coastline
New Haven’s “Food Truck Paradise” (I guess we’re going with the first idea on that?) remains a very popular destination where people can enjoy a wide variety of food trucks, ranging form tacos to tacos.
There’s just something about eating a taco next to a highway that screams, “The American dream is dead.”
Just kidding, guys. There’s already literally a highway on every single part of coastline in Connecticut. We literally couldn’t design it worse if we tried.
9. Each Of Us Gets To Try Opening a Store on Chapel Street Once
Oh, did you hear that boutique closed down? I can’t believe it. I thought for sure selling $50 scented pillows was going to work.
Instead of letting entrepreneurs (whatever that means) open places in the ever-present Chapel Street vacant storefronts, I think each resident should get to do something for one week. It’s like a pop-up store but the failure is built in! You don’t need to buy your own cash register to realize The Belt Store is a bad idea. And why are all of the customers so sad looking?
Oh god.
Tellmeimok, CC BY-SA 4.0
10. Make Buses Free
But what if—and hear me out—we made it easier to take the bus than to drive? Crazy, right?
Like, what if you could just… get on the bus? And the buses came often enough that you didn’t need to memorize a schedule? And routes actually connected the places people need to go?
Nah. That’s too insane. Better stick with the zipline.
