Good morning!
We’ve been treated to some rare “West Side” jubilees this week, or at least some of my neighbors further south down the bay have. The Eastern Shore is known for the jubilee, but I’ve learned over my nearly three years on the “trashy side of the bay” that we are allowed them intermittently as well.
The little cove my slice of Heaven sits on may be a bit deeper, or maybe I just got up too late, because there was no opportunity to collect flounder and crabs at the shoreline. But just a little further down the road, friends were snatching up a legally allowed (I’m sure) amount of crabs and “doormat” flounder. For some reason their phones weren’t working and they were unable to call me to come on down.
The fish activity in the bay was amazing for three days this week, as the water was smooth as glass and sea birds were having their way with the massive schools of fish. I even saw schools swimming with their noses poking out of the water. Apparently the word was out, though, and they all cannily stayed just outside of castnet range of my dock.
Somehow in the middle of a fish frenzy, the only thing I caught was a quarter-sized flounder. I stuffed it with a fiddler crab and broiled it.
On Wednesday, there appeared to be about 20 dolphins behind the house chowing down like they were at the Golden Corral buffet, minus the chocolate fountain. They were jumping out of the water and slapping their tails and swimming nearly to the shore in very shallow water. How can you not feel happy watching dolphins on the hunt? It’s a beautiful thing.
This week has been a daily reminder of what a naturally beautiful place we have. As we inch closer to September and October — the holy months — it just gets better and better.
A little customer service, please
I’ll admit I haven’t always been terribly kind to Mobile’s 311 service. I may have even occasionally embarrassed 311 in print when — for instance — I’ve sent in complaints about a massive pile of garbage outside our office for weeks and nothing happened.
This may be another one of those kinds of stories.
For a couple of weeks, there’s been a slow-moving road cave-in taking place on a road near my house. When I first noticed it, someone had placed an orange traffic cone over the burgeoning canyon. After a very heavy rain last week, the cone was gone revealing a gaping hole that would easily have destroyed a tire.
A steel pipe inserted into a road cave in, apparently to alert motorists by tearing out their radiators.
Driving by on Thursday morning, I couldn’t help but notice something unusual — there was a huge steel pipe sticking out of the sinkhole. Whoever put it there had taken the extra care to spray paint the end of the pipe red, I guess to make sure motorists saw the pipe as it destroyed the bottom of their cars.
I’ll admit I don’t know a lot about road construction or sinkhole protocol, but having a very large steel pipe sticking up out of a massive sinkhole — regardless of the red paint on said pipe — seemed kind of dumb. Maybe even dangerous. I sent a picture of the situation to a friend inside the city, who asked that I report it to 311. I sighed and fired up the app on Aug. 20. That’s generally been the first step to total frustration.
A wave of emails followed, letting me know 311 was working on the issue. On Saturday, the pipe was gone, but the gaping hole that looked to be about 10 feet deep under the road was there waiting to engulf someone’s tire. I sent 311 another message on Saturday that the road appeared to be further caving in and they should do something immediately.
I received numerous emails from 311 letting me know they were working on the case. Then on Wednesday I got one that said, “New comment: ' Not city responsibility belongs to MAWSS they have line locates in place ' has been added to Mobile 311 Service Request.”
So it took from Aug. 20 until Aug. 26 to make this determination, during most of which time a huge road hazard remained unmarked. I contacted MAWSS, sent some photos of the washout and the next day they showed up and repaired it.
It always feels like the same thing with 311 — like it’s a game of kick the can down the road. We’re encouraged to send everything to 311, but my experience has been that’s the place where issues go to die.
I won’t even get into how many times I’ve reported the giant live oak in front of our office that has had most of its bark fall off as it appears to be in the process of dying. I guess once it falls into Government Street or on top of our building, the city will send someone to look at it.
City services are never going to get any better if 311 is simply used as a way to allow anonymous city employees to do the bare minimum. I don’t know why it’s so difficult for 311 operators to route issues to the proper department quickly. In the case of our local sinkhole, it just feels like that should have been identified as a MAWSS issue immediately and someone at the city would have then contacted them to explain the severity of the situation.
There’s an opportunity here for better “customer” service, let’s make it happen.
Even the field
Former state Rep. Matt Simpson is asking the Alabama Ethics Commission to consider something unusual — whether he can use what’s left of his campaign warchest to help fund a lawsuit against the dark money gambling PACs that flooded his recent race with defamatory advertising that helped upend the Baldwin County Republican.
Rep. Matt Simpson, R-Daphne
I have no idea what the dysfunctional Ethics Commission will say about this request, but I hope they give him the green light. If you cast your memory back just a few months to the primaries, the amazing amount of outrageous ads being run on TV and radio and showing up in your mailboxes quite simply left no air in the room.
And a lot of this advertising contained either outright lies or highly distorted versions of “the truth.” Simpson, in particular, singled out the Alabama Values PAC for spreading what he said was false information about his voting record. Matt certainly wasn’t alone. State Sen. Rusty Glover was another whose portrayal in those ads was hardly recognizable to anyone who has ever met the man. He won his race, but his reputation took a horrible beating.
If I were someone who had donated to Simpson, I wouldn’t have a bit of heartburn about him using the money I gave him to go after these leaches. One of the things that protects sleazy PACs from paying the piper for their defamatory actions is the very expense of trying to sue them. But if they’re never held accountable for what they’re doing, every election cycle will just get worse and worse.
Our own investigation into this past cycle’s spending showed more than $4 million in dark gambling money flowed into Alabama’s legislative races. These are races that used to attract maybe tens of thousands of dollars in donations. Now those running for office are facing hundreds of thousands of dollars in out-of-state money being spent not only to defeat them, but to destroy their personal reputations in the process.
If allowing politicians to use some of their campaign money to fight against this kind of unethical behavior helps curb it, we would all be better off. Simpson and others deserve an opportunity to help level the playing field against these dirtbags.
MAGA v. Margaritaville v. Dollywood
It’s hard to tell whether Barry Moore, who is virtually guaranteed to be our next U.S. senator, is attempting political jujitsu, massively sucking up or both with his suggestion last week that the coming-soon-to-an-interstate-near-you bridge over the Mobile River should be named after President Donald Trump.
Moore’s comments, as reported by John Sharp at AL.com, came during a breakfast forum last week. To be more specific, Moore suggested the full name of the bridge should be the “Gateway to the Gulf of America, the Donald J. Trump Bridge.” It practically trips off the tongue.
He more or less admitted the suggestion might be an effective method of playing to Trump’s legendary ego, thus loosening the federal purse strings that will help get our 215-foot-tall bridge underway.
“They are working on it,” Moore was reported to have said. “It’s that sort of thing, (Trump) will care about. It will make it to his radar screen. It will make it to him. He’ll have an interest in that.”
Glad to know Moore actually understands the president’s priorities so clearly.
It’s hard to argue with Moore’s logic, though. Trump loves to slap his name on anything that doesn’t move fast enough to get out of the way, so it probably would prove tempting indeed. The bridge will also feature tolls, which could provide an opportunity for the president and his children to put an LLC together so they can grift off a reasonable 60 or 70 cents on each dollar for “naming rights.” Drench that sucker in gold Rustoleum and it’s practically a done deal.
An additional sweetener might be renaming the Wallace Tunnel “Gateway to the Bottom of the Mobile River, Trump Tunnel” and radically redesigning the entrance on each side so it looks like you’re driving into Trump’s mouth. Let your imagination wander as far as what the tunnel exits might resemble.
You can’t blame Moore for trying to find a way to stand out when he joins the U.S. Senate. He’s already gotten the obligatory U.S. Senate helmet-hair makeover, which could make it harder for the aging president to pick him out of a group of other guys with goofy haircuts. But becoming “bridge guy” could land him a cabinet position for a few months.
There are some potential drawbacks to naming the bridge after Trump that should be considered, though. Putting it as gently as possible so as not to offend those who still don’t see what’s going on in this country, this very well could be like naming a bridge after Herbert Hoover. This whole “Golden Age” thing isn’t really gelling right now. I know, I know, “but Biden ….” First one to tell me I have TDS gets a gallon of $2 gas.
Spin the spinner and whichever comes up gets a bridge named after them!
This giant bridge isn’t going to suddenly materialize. We could very well be through another president or two by the time the first car careens down its slope and squeezes onto the relined Bayway/claustrophobia tester. Given that timeline and the breathtaking amount of personal enrichment the Trump clan is engaging in right now, I can only assume there will be an investigation or two over the next decade.
Also, we need toll-payers riding over the bridge and all of the current national polls suggest Trump’s approval rating is hovering somewhere below that of the Longhorn tick and slightly above that of explosive diarrhea-causing lettuce. Combined with the controversial renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, there would probably be some people willing to try ramping their cars over the Mobile River a la Evel Knievel rather than paying to drive across a thusly named bridge.
Moore’s proposal has caused consternation and possibly even blood pressure issues among those who hold DJT in roughly the same esteem as a stopped up toilet. Given GOP politicians’ proclivity for glazing the president, it is indeed likely we’ll see a strong effort to slap Moore’s long-winded moniker on the side of the bridge we’ve been hearing about for 30 years.
Before you tear your hair out, though, let me offer one bit of relief — we don’t call things what they’re actually named anyway, so it probably won’t matter. Everyone here calls the Jubilee Parkway “The Bayway.” Likewise, Battleship Parkway is “The Causeway.” And the Gen. W.K. Wilson Bridge is “The Dolly Parton Bridge.” (Sorry, W.K.)
If someone is determined to put a politician’s name on our long-awaited bridge, chances are overwhelming we’ll call it something else anyway. We just do that.
Late this week there was a new naming effort tossed into the pot when State Rep. Cindy Myrex of Cullman publicly called for the new I-10 bridge to officially bear Parton’s name. I guess we can assume she’s unaware we’ve already organically named a bridge after her, or that short of that particular bit of local strangeness, the late country singer had absolutely nothing to do with the Mobile area. Let’s cool your jets on that one, Cindy.
I’ve long advocated for renaming “The Causeway” the Jimmy Buffett Causeway after Mobile’s most famous son. In the same vein, State Sen. Chris Elliott came out the other day in the wake of Moore’s proposal suggesting naming the bridge after Buffett. I’m down with that, too.
We might actually even call the Jimmy Buffett Bridge by its proper name. And the anti-Buffett contingency is definitely much smaller than those who loathe Trump. I’ve been hoping to see the new airport named after Jimmy, but there’s room for both in my book. Who wouldn’t rather fly into the Jimmy Buffett International Airport to drive across the Jimmy Buffett Bridge than fly into Richard Shelby International to drive across the Trump Bridge?
Even the worst marketer alive would tell you it’s a no-brainer. Margaritaville versus MAGA. I know who makes a better drink and has a better playlist.
We tossed away our “Azalea City” moniker some years back to become the much less imaginative “Port City.” We could reclaim some of that by naming the airport the Jimmy Buffett International and the bridge the Azalea City Skyway. Doesn’t that say a whole lot more about us than naming them after politicians?
But back to the issue at hand — getting Trump to pay for the bridge because he thinks it will be named after him. I say let’s get behind that 100 percent. Tell him people are clamoring for it. Get the money and start the bridge. He’ll be out of office in a little over two years — way before it’s finished — and then we can name it something cool.
I’d feel bad about lying to him, but turnabout is fair play.
(4) comments
The "Mobile River Bridge - Gateway to America's Amazon" or something similar to highlight the importance of the Mobile River delta area. Then it can just be called the "delta bridge."
pretty stupid to box a glacier
Rob, I’ve lived on the western shore of Mobile Bay for over 37 years and jubilees are much more common over here than most people know. Most of them occur in the morning but I have come across a few at night while softshelling. I have observed jubilees just about every year that I have lived here. I remember about 25 years ago we had them 4 days in a row, this was before a creel limit on flounder and in 3 days we got 104 flatfish, yes I shared them with family and friends, sorry but I didn’t know you back then. On day 4 of the jubilees there were no flounder, just huge shrimp, so big I was picking them up by hand. Speaking of western shore jubilees, I once tried to report one to the now defunct mobile register, they had me call the eastern shore reporter since he normally reported on jubilees. He wouldn’t acknowledge the western shore as having the phenomenon and said I would have to get the DI Sea Lab to confirm it. I called the sea lab and the person I spoke to said they don’t. Confirm jubilees. That eastern shore reporter insisted that we had a fish kill, not a jubilee.
I'm definitely learning that we get them far more than I'd ever heard, Steve.
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