It Took Just 9 Months. Guess Who We Have To Thank?

Early in May of last year, as I watched Rob Perry watch Colarusso put the finishing touches on a freshly repaved 500 block of Washington Street, I made a promise to my readers that I would notify you all of when that thankfully smooth long block west of 6th Street is first marred. I knew that you, like me, were dying to know when that asphalt was finally punctured.  Well, in mid-February, just 9 months after the asphalt cooled, I noticed a 6 x 5-foot rough (as in poor, ugly and lumpy) patch job in the middle of the street close to 6th Street.  It sticks out like a scab over a skin wound, doesn't it?  Except this scab won't dry up and disappear on its own.  And, as narrow as the street is, drivers and riders will feel it every time they make the turn off of 6th to head west on Washington.  Once an asphalt section of street has been dug into, the whole thing has been compromised.  (Notice the cracks already creeping out of the corners of the dig!) 

Unfortunately, a pavement saw was not
used to delineate this excavation.  Rough edges 
like these do not hold up well over time.
It was shit poor work from the start, though
Rob Perry likely didn't care (if he even noticed).

This appears not to have been a DPW excavation and patch, but rather an effort from the Pocketbook Factory.  The patched hole lines up pretty closely with what appears to be a new gas or water valve in the ground at the wall of the building.  They obviously needed to access a pipe of some sort below the street to make a connection to the valve.  Great timing!  Who do you suppose will keep an eye on that patch job (and any others that show up) and repair/repave it when it starts to fail?  DPW will, of course, using tax money to attempt to keep the street from becoming a nightmare again!  Can we bill owner Sean Roland for the work DPW has to do to repair Sean's contractor's failed patch job?  (They all eventually fail, some sooner and more often than others!)

That's Rob Perry in his blue CROCS, busy doing important
DPW business on his personal celphone while ignoring his workers.

With a year or ten to go before the Pocketbook hotel, spa and lah-de-dah whatever finally opens to the visitors looking for a place to park and a place to spend their money, the Pocketbook developers are already making things worse for us here in Hudson.  How many more holes and ugly, bumpy patch jobs full of cracks and compromised pavement do you suppose we will be blessed with on Washington and on 6th before the first $300 pedicure and $25 martini are offered in the building?  And when will the 500 block of Washington need to be repaved next?  And when will the god damn entire block of sidewalk on the west side of 6th alongside the building be reopened to the public?  And when will the several recently posted NO PARKING signs be taken down, along with the lovely tall chain link fence they are attached to?  And when will all the pebbles, stones and clumps of dirt in the street that keep appearing at the end of Prospect go away and stop annoying the crap out of me while I'm bicycling?  And when will they finally turn off all of their hundreds of god damn interior lightbulbs that are on 24/7?  Don't you fret, HUDseen readers, you will be the first to know about any and all of this.  So stay tuned!

More PB digging, this time under the
 forever off-limits and fenced off sidewalk at
6th & Prospect two weeks ago.