Tuesday letters
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Guns, rich people and R-rated movie previews in today’s letters to the editor.
Pick of the day: Roanoke’s ‘No Fun’ zones
What caught my attention about the sign wasn’t the omnipresent message, but the uber-official Roanoke presentation of it, massive city branding and all. The sign read “No bicycles or skateboards.”
That’s what the text read, but the true message is: “Go away, kids. We don’t trust you, like you or want you here.” This message appears at churches, schools, businesses, in public and private places — it’s everywhere.
Every day, while kids wish they could kick, push and pedal through life, we trudge along worried about heart disease and obesity. About children disconnected from family or society. About sedentary lifestyles and violent media. And, recently at least, about the lack of funding for mental health resources to help troubled teens and young adults who, alienated from the world, might vanish into the recesses of their basements and their minds and come out wielding a gun.
Maybe we should consider the message that’s sent to them every day, practically everywhere you look. That sign in Grandin Village might as well say: “Go inside. Sit down. Stop living life. Stop being social. Stop having fun. Stop playing. Disappear. We don’t want you here.”
How would anyone react to a message like that?
WILLIAM ALEXANDER
ROANOKE
January 22, 2013 - 6:12 AM
This is absolutely true. I know a young man who got a ticket, a moving violation, for riding a nonmotorized scooter on the sidewalk. He was going from Maiden Lane to 7-11, a distance of a half-block. He had to go to traffic court, where he said “yes your honor, I did ride my scooter on the sidewalk,” and he then had to pay a fine plus court costs and then go to defensive driver training class in order to have his ability to get a license reinstated. That’s right, his ability to get a license. Because he doesn’t even have one. That scooter-on-the-sidewalk charge is the legal equivalent of reckless driving.
But of course, cars going in and out of the 7-11 parking lot block the sidewalk they’re driving on day in and day out, and that’s ok. Car culture reigns in this town, and it’s a shame.