Once again the Bay Area has beaten Beantown to the newest fad, burning (literal) bridges. On April 29th, there was a fire on Oakland’s MacArthur Maze freeway overpass. The tanker fire and freeway collapse was captured in a video, although some doubt the official story on the cause of the blaze.
Sure enough, Boston is playing catch up with our fire on the Longfellow Bridge between Boston and Cambridge. The story claims a homeless man’s cigarette was the cause of the snarled traffic and Red Line delays. (Although I think it is too early to rule out another Aqua Teen Hunger Force prank.) Again, the West Coast clearly has better financing (fuel truck vs. misplaced cigarette) than the Hub.
And in the wake of these two stories, the Bay Area folks are learning lessons about “Citizen Journalism”, while Boston is trying to repair the Internet2 OC-192 connection that runs across the Longfellow Bridge. Yet another case of the West Coast focusing on consumer technology and the East Coast being about network plumbing.
The final insult was that last night at Fenway the Oakland A’s robbed the Sox by taking Papelbon deep in the 9th to tie it, and winning in extra innings.