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Show OPINIONS VOLUME LI. ISSUE 34 JUNE 20, 2011 WWW.UVUREVIEW.COM Idiot's Guide to Living: White Kids with Dreadlocks We're not trying to tell you how to style your hair. We're trying to tell you how not look "" dork. " BY JOHN-ROSS BOYCE Opinions Editor PHOTO COURTESY OF STOCK.XCR NG For Provo residents living by the train tracks, a full night's sleep is a dream derailed. For whom the horn tolls Despite promises made and measures apparently taken, train horns are keeping Provo up at night. Provo has been playing thequiet game for almos two years now, and losing miserably BY JOHN-ROSS BOYCE Opinions Editor Citizens who live near the railroad tracks are more intimately acquainted with this defeat than anybody else. On a nightly basis, trains on their way to the switching yard in southeast Provo, announce their presence via a blaring, whining horn. The noise is enough to startle a person awake — particularly when a train is passing through a residential area at three in the morning. Adding insult to insomnia, many citizens feel as though it has taken an inordinate amount of time to establish Quiet Zones — railroad crossings where alternative safety measures have been taken, so that trains do not need to blow their horns upon approach. Talk of Quiet Zones at seven railroad crossings in town (200 West, 500 West, 700 West, 900 West, 820 North, 1680 North & 2000 North) began just under two years ago, in conjunction with construction of UTA's Frontrunner project - another project that won't see completion until 2014, apparently. According to an October 2010 post on Provo Mayor John Curtis' official blog, the implementation of Quiet Zones requires three things to happen: 1. File a Notice of Intent to implement a Quiet Zone with the Federal Railroad Administration. CONTACT: 2. Completion and certification of the required crossing upgrade improvements. 3. File a notice to establish the Quiet Zone. Essentially, it is a threestep process, wherein two of the steps involve completing and filing a form. Despite the fact that implementing Quiet Zones are an unfunded project, Curtis described the efforts to establish them as "serious." So, why is it June of 2011, eight months after Curtis' confident blog post and over a year after original projections for the establishment of these quiet zones, and the horns are still blaring incessantly? According to the Federal Railroad Administration, Quiet Zones may only be established after increased safety measures have been constructed. The whole reason the horns sound all night in the first place is because there is nothing in the residential neighborhoods to stop an animal, errant toddler or late-night speed-walker from wandering onto the tracks and getting crushed by an oncoming train. That means in lieu of horns, the City of Provo would have to construct a four-quadrant gate system or medians as a way to protect pedestrians and motorists from a latenight obliteration. A statement on Mayor Curtis' blog earlier this month read, "the process that we had diligently followed was not actually sufficient for establishment of the Quiet Zone." Apparently, although the physical changes necessary were beyond question, some- thing, somehow, had gone awry in the filing process, forcing the City of Provo to undergo a more extensive process for application and approval. It was not explicitly stated when exactly that process would be complete. Laborers with early clockin times, weary students and growing children are all being regularly jolted from their REM cycles, with no respite in sight. Communication on this issue has been sparse at best. The city was apparently notified of its failure to fulfill paperwork requirements in February of this year — yet we're only getting an update four months later. And it's difficult to know at whom we should direct our frustrations. If city administration is to be believed, the physical work has been completed, and our current and conspicuous lack of Quiet Zones in Provo is due to errors in filing. Such an explanation seems plausible, considering that red tape and filing errors have long been a stereotype of our Federal Government. On the other hand, it's not as if Provo's own local government officials and workers are novices themselves when it comes to filling out forms, getting them notarized and delivering them to the proper authorities. These tasks come with the territory of small town government. In fact, it's sort of difficult to comprehend what other things our city officials might be doing with their time and the with the posts to which they've been either elected or appointed. Essentially, if the work has OPINIONS EDITOR John-Ross Boyce adfafil@gmail.com been done already, how difficult is it to tell a suit at the Federal Railroad Administration that our city intends to establish Quiet Zones? How difficult is it to get another suit from the same department to come out and approve of the labor that has apparently already been completed? It cannot be that arduous a task. It cannot be that complex a system. It cannot be such a large step to fulfill what government purports to be its single purpose — serving the people. Therefore, when the bleary-eyed, sluggish citizens who live within range of these loud train horns ask themselves "Why am I so tired?" the answer might be because someone isn't doing their job — either at the Federal Railway Administration or in the city of Provo. If a person in the private sector were charged with the task of implementing Quiet Zones in our town, they would be roundly canned and sent to the unemployment office. If a clerk at Burger King were so laissez faire in communicating why your number two with cheese was so late in arriving, you would ask to see the manager. You would demand that person's head on a pike, proverbially speaking. Why then, would we not act accordingly with the people who purport to manage our towns? As we ask ourselves these questions, the horns keep whining long and loud into the wee hours of the morning. Perhaps it is time the City of Provo demand an administrator who will answer that call. DESIGNER Andrea Whatcott andreawhatcott@gmailcom Now that we're in the year 2011, it's pretty safe to say that if that nasty rash of 80's retro nostalgia isn't dead, it's definitely hacking up wads of black stuff into a handkerchief. Hipster Law dictates that twenty years must pass before a previously embarrassing era can become hallowed and respected. Therefore, the advent of 2011 means the beginning of Nineties nostalgia. Before long, you will all be replacing your skinny jeans for JNCOs large enough to shelter a family of Bosnian refugees and trading your Members Only windbreakers for long Trenchcoat Mafiaesque dusters. You will all look like fools and you will be lauded and praised for it. Such is fashion. Not one to be left out, I've been revisiting the 90's via the Internet. In dusting off the hits from that decade, I discovered an incubus from my junior high years I had assumed was long banished from my psyche, a repugnant creature, born of a psychotic God, whose twisted visage inspires disgust and fear in my heart of hearts: Adam Duritz from Counting Crows and his ridiculous dreadlocks. Make no mistake: "Round Here" is still a pretty good song, even if the lyrics are overly melodramatic. And it's undeniable that Mr. Duritz has some decent pipes. However, those limp little tubes of hair just look stupid. It is safe to say that 8 out of 10 psychologically-balanced people, upon seeing what the Counting Crows frontman actually looks like in the flesh, would contemplate throwing their copy of "August and Everything After" in the trash. It's not just Adam Duritz and the chumps from Korn. It's also a third of the world's anthropology majors and every middle-class white guy who's ever owned a Bob Marley poster. I'm not saying that the hairstyle is unhygienic. Contrary to popular belief, dreads do not come from neglecting to wash one's hair. I'm not saying that a person with dreadlocks is automati- cally deficient in their critical thinking skills. There are a lot of very talented, very intelligent people who choose to do moronic things with their hair. All I am saying is that it takes an average of seven seconds to make a first impression on someone. If the characteristics in the box below fit you to a "T" and you're comfortable with who you are and what you do with your spare time, then wear your dreadlocks proudly, let your freak flag fly unfettered, and don't let me and my stupid article make you feel inferior. Just know that potential in-laws, employer and juries of your peers will most likely think like I do. Also know that, in addition to having an outlandish melon, you also look like the kind of guy who appropriates other people's cultural trappings as his own. In that regard, you are no better than the middle-class white kid who tries to act like Dr. Dre. You're no better than the guy who paradoxically sports a Maori tribal tattoo on his bicep and has never even met a Maori, let alone has any actual emotional or cultural ties to those people. You may not have intended to pirate another people's shtick. But look yourself in the mirror and honestly ask yourself if you decided to wear the locks before or after you heard "I Shot the Sheriff," or watched that documentary on the Maasai. Honestly ask yourself if you truly identify with the tenants of Rastafarianism, or if you just like smoking ganja. There is more than one way to look like a fool. The same principles that apply to white guys with dreads apply to guys in their late twenties/ early thirties that still sport Mohawks or anyone who gets a face tattoo or a gigantic ear gauge. In each case, you're basically begging everyone around you to marginalize you. You're formally requesting a lifetime of low-paying gigs and friction from cops. You're holding up a big sign that reads, "Please assume that I am obnoxious and not very intelligent." You may claim that you don't care what anyone else thinks, but that's just bogus. These kinds of antics go hand-in-hand with an unyielding desire to fit in. Bear in mind that "fitting in" almost always gets in the way of simply "being." When the rest of us see you and your mane of dreadlocks here is what we immediately assume: You do not bathe. You smoke lots of marijuana and you're the type of pothead who plays arrhythmic bongos until four in the morning and has a really trippy" theory about the Federal Government. You do not own a single shirt that isn't tie-dyed. When your brother got married last summer, he had to-buy you a regular white dress shirt. Which you tie-dyed the day after the reception. You claim to love Reggae music but you've only listened to Legend by Bob Marley, which is a greatest hits record and therefore does not count. Your Psych-Fusion jam band totally sucks. |