I’m a sucker for a new bridge ribbon-cutting ceremony. I’m not sure why. I’m not a public works junkie, nor do I get off uttering the word “infrastructure.” But new bridge openings — like this week’s celebration at Cacique and Soledad streets on Santa Barbara's Eastside — convey a tingle that things can still get done. Despite appearances to the contrary, they remind us that entropy, friction, and inertia didn’t manage to kill us all in the cradle when we were looking the other way.
When I showed up — a few minutes late — City Councilmember Jason Dominguez was wrapping up his remarks. The old bridge had been a rickety, bumpy, jarring wood-plank footpath and bikeway — only four feet wide — that spanned Sycamore Creek. It was buttressed on both sides by wooden railings that looked like they’d collapse if you looked at them crosswise. When I’d ride my bike over the old bridge, I always half expected some troll to rear up from underneath and challenge me to a fight, staff to staff, like something out of Robin Hood.
Dominguez noted that the former bridge — which functioned as the darker end of an already dark street — had been the hangout spot of choice for what he delicately described as “wayward youth,” who used it as an “escape route.” Sebastian Aldana, a longtime neighborhood activist of the old-school variety, put it succinctly. “It was a half-baked bridge with a couple of trash cans and a bunch of weeds.” Much to the chagrin of some residents, that half-baked bridge lay baking in the Eastside sun — which exudes a decidedly distinct quality of light compared to other parts of town — from sometime in the 1970s.