94. 410 in three inch high black and white stick-on numbers

Some things just bother me. One is incorrect street name signs. Louisville has more than its fair share, signs which call avenues streets and spell names like Bellevue as Bellview. And all those signs that don't know an east from a west, or in which "hundred" block a person might find themselves. It is an issue about which I have been complaining since Jerry Abramson's first term as Mayor of the City of Louisville and nothing has changed since he became Mayor of Louisville-Jefferson County Metro. Apparently, such minutiae is not as important as balloons and begonias.

But that's not what is bothering me today. It is the placement of two sets of three numbers upon blacks of marble. Huh?

In 2004, the new Metro government bought the old Federal Reserve Bank building, a branch of the Saint Louis Distict, a rather opulent building built in the 1960s, located at 410 S. 5th Street. The city paid Uncle Sam $4,000,000.00 for the structure. We have since undertaken to spend $70,000,000.00 - that's Seventy Million Dollars - to make it work as part of our Metro Safe program, tying together all the Emergency responders in the region, truthfully a noble purpose.

We have laws in Louisville which say you must have you address in at least 3" high numbers on your building. The now-called MetroSafe building has almost 12" tall numbers identifying the property's address as "410" etched into the entrance windows. Nonetheless, someone following government regulations decided the building needed to be identified a second, and yet a thrid time. So they have bought two sets of the cheap black and white stick-on numbers and have stuck them on the two slabs of beautiful black marble which serve as an exterior wall of the building on either side of the entrance. Tacky.

I've never been accused of being a part of the fashionista corps. But I suppose there comes a time and now is it. Just in time for Derby, we've adorned one of our more beautiful government buildings with two sets of 3" high black and white stick-on numbers, identifying for all the world to see a building that is for the most part closed to the public, that its address, should one miss the elegantly sketched foot-tall numbers in the windows, is indeed 410 S. 5th. In fact, they did it twice just in case. Tacky. Tacky.

Today is the Great Steamboat Race in Louisville.
Tomorrow is Parade Day along Broadway.
Friday is Oaks Day.
Saturday is Derby Day.

Blogging will be light.