SQUID FRY: Accessibility Issues

ACCESSIBILITY ISSUES… Squid’s idea of a marathon is a season of Game of Thrones in a day, with a fresh bowl of shrimp-flavored popcorn for each episode. But Squid doesn’t have to train for months (or learn how to train, period), or enter a lottery, or do well in endurance races to watch Peter Dinklage’s Tyriondrink and know stuff. Squid just needs to keep Squid’s HBO Go current.

So Squid was feeling for all the runners and businesses connected with world-famous Big Sur International Marathon, which appeared to be another victim of the cruel wildfire and record rain one-two gut punch, on top of all the ruinous outcomes that include furloughs at Sierra Mar and indefinite closure atNepenthe.

Good news: Squid’s bad… at geography. The broken Pfeiffer Canyon Bridge that currently blocks traffic is south of the race’s starting point, so shuttle logistics will be tweaked but the run should go on, barring complications.

That’s some comfort to balance the bitter irony that AAA’s Via Magazine chose its current 100th-anniversary issue to put McWay Falls (aka Julia Pfeiffer Falls) and Big Sur on the cover, writing how the scenic landscapes of the iconic waterfall area come in “one easily accessible package.” Eeesh. The only way to get to that cover spot currently is by helicopter, boat or kayak. The first two would take a while. The latter would be a – what’s the word – marathon.

YUGE WALL… Squid spent an unsettling number of hours this past weekend banging Squid’s head into a wall, trying anything to take Squid’s mind off of the petulant, disturbingly orange man sitting in the White House.

But then Squid started thinking about “The Wall,” or as Donald Trump has called it, “a big, fat, beautiful wall” along the U.S.-Mexico border that recent estimates say could cost up to $120 per U.S. household. U.S. Customs and Border Protection issued a preliminary request for proposals Feb. 24 to help build the wall, and as KSBW reported that same day, Watsonville-based Granite Construction is a potential bidder. “If we were asked to help build the wall we would do so,” Granite CEO James Roberts told Bloomberg News last November, post-election. Squid reached out to Granite to see what their plans are re: The Wall, and got back a statement that reads, in part, “Our decision to bid and build projects has never been a function of political views or affiliations. As a company, we take pride in maintaining political neutrality.”

Turns out Granite is not the only company with local ties that could profit “bigly” from The Wall: Bloomberg reports that cement manufacturer Cemex, which operates a sand mine in Marina, “would be one of the companies best-positioned to profit from a wall.”

Funny thing – Cemex is based in Mexico.