Post by Chips on May 4, 2008 14:30:31 GMT 9.5
Kev the rev makes a grand stand
PETER GOERS
Adelaide is one of the world's best planned cities. Planned by Colonel William Light it is well laid out and surrounded by parklands. Every year we have a street race for the V8s called the Clipsil 500. The government wanted to build a new Grandstand in the parklands but the Adelaide council kept knocking the plans back.
The map below shows the street and parklands race track marked in red.
~Click to Enlarge Map~
THE great grandstand solution is the funniest thing that has happened in Adelaide.
A rare triumph for the proletariat. It's as though we woke up on Monday when the news was announced and the statue of Colonel Light had turned around and raised his finger in the air to North Adelaide. Up yours, and not before time.
Yes. Wow. You can fight City Hall and win.
Deputy Premier Kevin Foley gazumped the reactionary Adelaide City Council and pompous, meddlesome North Adelaide residents who stopped the grandstand in the middle of Victoria Park.
The same forces keep Barton Tce West closed to traffic to preserve Mills Tce as an enclave of privilege and stymied development on the Le Cornu site on O'Connell St for 20 years.
They can all get stuffed.
Now the grandstand will be temporary – the largest demountable building in the world, and will take 11 months to build.
The audacity of this solution is the triumph of Port Adelaide over North Adelaide.
The Deputy Premier from Port Adelaide is right to say he listened to his critics and gave them what they wanted, which came as a big surprise, and if anyone doesn't like it they can complain to the Adelaide City councillors and/or Jim Daly, president of the Adelaide Parklands Preservation Association, Barton Tce West, ph 0429 235 545. This number is listed in the Adelaide White Pages.
"Sometimes you should be careful what you wish for" said Foley, the Deputy Premier.
And St Teresa must be his patron saint because she said "sometimes there are more tears shed over answered prayers than over unanswered prayers".
I'm no fan of the Super-Duper-Vroom-Vroom-Car-Race. Yearly I wish it were somewhere, anywhere else in Adelaide or SA and it would never have survived in the West Parklands.
I'm wrong. Clearly I'm a born-again silvertail in the eastern suburbs. Every year 250,000 people prove me wrong as they go to Victoria Park and use it productively watching vroom-vroom and groping grid girls.
Meanwhile, five people from Rose Park, Toorak Gardens and East Tce can't walk their stupid dogs. Who cares?
In the 17 years I've lived less than 2km from Victoria Park I've been there once – to attend the car race – a carbon circus that ain't my bag but it gives bogans something to do between Royal Shows, allows yobbos from Melbourne to come here and spend lots of money to throw up in our streets and gives corporate types a noisy place to get pissed, and no one can hear what they say. Fine.
Otherwise, Victoria Park is a waste of space and even the SA Jockey Club thinks so.
I'm beginning to think the parklands are a waste of space unless they are used and developed for the widest possible enjoyment for all.
No one would argue the necessity of a high school, a university, a hospital, a bowls club, a railway station, a parliament house, a library, musea, botanic gardens, theatres and a pretty oval all on the sacred parklands.
New York's Central Park is chocka with amenities and green space and it's used by millions. The parklands are convenient for passing shows – ethnic festivals, the Fringe and Festival, and 150 years of circuses.
The South Parklands could be wetlands and help us.
Closer to Colonel Light's time his sacred parklands were used for public hangings, a slaughterhouse and a big manure dump. I rather like the idea of the last, and perhaps it could be revived on Mills Tce. Steaming.
Col. William Light - Adelaides' designer.
JUST like public hangings, the fashion for the Super-Duper-Vroom-Vroom-Car-Race will expire and the temporary grandstand will go away, and we won't be stuck with a huge building that will have to be turned into a big pokie parlour. Win. Win.
Finally, the lesson from this is everything – in the fullness of time – is temporary. Let's have more of it.
What about temporary tunnels or overpasses at the Britannia roundabout or a temporary vision for Victoria Square which would be better than no vision as usual.
Or perhaps we could move the race to Mills Tce and Barton Tce, North Adelaide, just temporarily for 25 years and let the Brahmin class of pompous obstructionist North Adelaideans put up with it. Let's see how they like it.
Meanwhile the dogs bark and the caravans move on leaving only fingers pointed in blame but, for once not at Kevin Foley, who gets the thumbs up.
Kevin Foley is a Power fan who has kicked the goal to win the flag – a checkered black and white flag to start a new era of the car race. Ha!
Onya Kev the rev.
PETER GOERS
Adelaide is one of the world's best planned cities. Planned by Colonel William Light it is well laid out and surrounded by parklands. Every year we have a street race for the V8s called the Clipsil 500. The government wanted to build a new Grandstand in the parklands but the Adelaide council kept knocking the plans back.
The map below shows the street and parklands race track marked in red.
~Click to Enlarge Map~
THE great grandstand solution is the funniest thing that has happened in Adelaide.
A rare triumph for the proletariat. It's as though we woke up on Monday when the news was announced and the statue of Colonel Light had turned around and raised his finger in the air to North Adelaide. Up yours, and not before time.
Yes. Wow. You can fight City Hall and win.
Deputy Premier Kevin Foley gazumped the reactionary Adelaide City Council and pompous, meddlesome North Adelaide residents who stopped the grandstand in the middle of Victoria Park.
The same forces keep Barton Tce West closed to traffic to preserve Mills Tce as an enclave of privilege and stymied development on the Le Cornu site on O'Connell St for 20 years.
They can all get stuffed.
Now the grandstand will be temporary – the largest demountable building in the world, and will take 11 months to build.
The audacity of this solution is the triumph of Port Adelaide over North Adelaide.
The Deputy Premier from Port Adelaide is right to say he listened to his critics and gave them what they wanted, which came as a big surprise, and if anyone doesn't like it they can complain to the Adelaide City councillors and/or Jim Daly, president of the Adelaide Parklands Preservation Association, Barton Tce West, ph 0429 235 545. This number is listed in the Adelaide White Pages.
"Sometimes you should be careful what you wish for" said Foley, the Deputy Premier.
And St Teresa must be his patron saint because she said "sometimes there are more tears shed over answered prayers than over unanswered prayers".
I'm no fan of the Super-Duper-Vroom-Vroom-Car-Race. Yearly I wish it were somewhere, anywhere else in Adelaide or SA and it would never have survived in the West Parklands.
I'm wrong. Clearly I'm a born-again silvertail in the eastern suburbs. Every year 250,000 people prove me wrong as they go to Victoria Park and use it productively watching vroom-vroom and groping grid girls.
Meanwhile, five people from Rose Park, Toorak Gardens and East Tce can't walk their stupid dogs. Who cares?
In the 17 years I've lived less than 2km from Victoria Park I've been there once – to attend the car race – a carbon circus that ain't my bag but it gives bogans something to do between Royal Shows, allows yobbos from Melbourne to come here and spend lots of money to throw up in our streets and gives corporate types a noisy place to get pissed, and no one can hear what they say. Fine.
Otherwise, Victoria Park is a waste of space and even the SA Jockey Club thinks so.
I'm beginning to think the parklands are a waste of space unless they are used and developed for the widest possible enjoyment for all.
No one would argue the necessity of a high school, a university, a hospital, a bowls club, a railway station, a parliament house, a library, musea, botanic gardens, theatres and a pretty oval all on the sacred parklands.
New York's Central Park is chocka with amenities and green space and it's used by millions. The parklands are convenient for passing shows – ethnic festivals, the Fringe and Festival, and 150 years of circuses.
The South Parklands could be wetlands and help us.
Closer to Colonel Light's time his sacred parklands were used for public hangings, a slaughterhouse and a big manure dump. I rather like the idea of the last, and perhaps it could be revived on Mills Tce. Steaming.
Col. William Light - Adelaides' designer.
JUST like public hangings, the fashion for the Super-Duper-Vroom-Vroom-Car-Race will expire and the temporary grandstand will go away, and we won't be stuck with a huge building that will have to be turned into a big pokie parlour. Win. Win.
Finally, the lesson from this is everything – in the fullness of time – is temporary. Let's have more of it.
What about temporary tunnels or overpasses at the Britannia roundabout or a temporary vision for Victoria Square which would be better than no vision as usual.
Or perhaps we could move the race to Mills Tce and Barton Tce, North Adelaide, just temporarily for 25 years and let the Brahmin class of pompous obstructionist North Adelaideans put up with it. Let's see how they like it.
Meanwhile the dogs bark and the caravans move on leaving only fingers pointed in blame but, for once not at Kevin Foley, who gets the thumbs up.
Kevin Foley is a Power fan who has kicked the goal to win the flag – a checkered black and white flag to start a new era of the car race. Ha!
Onya Kev the rev.