Broken bridges, Oil Slicks and Gang Rapes.

That snapping sound heard across the Bay Area last weekend were the binds the that help tie this society together fraying at the ends and tearing apart – not just the Bay Bridge.

In one week the whole infrastructure of modern society has come under question right in my backyard.

The ‘89 earthquake shut down the All-Bay world series and prompted—now 20 years of bridge building. 20 YEARS. It is the biggest example of the systemic incompetence of the American way of doing things since the spruce goose or the Iraq War.

Now the bay bridge—the hardest working bridge west of the Mississippi—is a unusable joke made of concrete and steel, spectacularly useless.

Because crowed BART trains are not the business (after the Oscar Grant incident every time I ride the train I heave in my mouth, thinking about that man getting shot in the back by the police and it’s soooo expensive.) I’ve received a car born re-education on how beautiful it is around here, my home… then a goddamn oil tanker takes a miles long leak in my pool.

And at the worst possible time—it is about to be Crab season, there is no real transplant Louisiana Gumbo without local crab. Did this tanker mess that up for us 2 out of the last three years? This has happened before and the Bay will recover but it is a reminder of just how bad an idea oil tankers are. (In dense traffic next to Millbrae it all came into focus. I should have rode BART, it’s better for the environment—but f*&k that.)

The kicker—when the brutal gang rape of a 15-year-old girl in nearby Richmond CA. happens it feels like you are getting a glimpse into the near future of ordinary human behavior in America.

Like Derrion Albert’s murder caught on tape Chicago Ill. – elements of our young people are so desensitized that senseless violence can happen in front of their faces and they’ll watch it like a video game – actively participate in the violence and simultaneously document it.

I have a feeling that years from now I’ll look back and point at this week as the week things started to fall apart in the Bay Area.
—Kevin Weston