05 March 2014

Mardi Gras vandalism


Josh Voorhees has a Slate article about things gone bad during Mardi Gras:
You might only live once, but the same can't be said for the sign out front of Loyola University in uptown New Orleans, Louisiana. Local affiliate WDSU reports that school officials woke up this morning to find the first four letters of a concrete sculpture that spells Loyola on the campus' front lawn had gone missing. The school told the station that it had been a "victim of Mardi Gras", although I suppose you could also say it was a victim of Drake. (For anyone who hasn't put it together by now, it wouldn't take a lot of effort to reorganize the stolen letters to spell YOLO.)
If your first thought was how the heck hasn't that happened before, the answer is: it has; apparently a lot. "It happens during normal times even when it's not a holiday," Meredith Hartley, the school's director of public affairs, told the Times-Picayune newspaper. A quick search of the New Orleans newpaper's archives suggests that is indeed the case. Not only has the sign suffered similar YOLO-themed damage before, Hartley told the paper last year that the sign is damaged so often— sometimes on purpose, sometimes on accident by people posing for pictures— that the university actually keeps replacement letters on hand just in case.
School officials say the letters will be back up once the school's facilities operations team returns to work. (It probably goes without saying that by waiting, the school ensures that most of the Mardi Gras crowd will either have headed home or will be too hungover to do much repeat vandalizing.)
Rico says they take a more casual approach in The Big Easy...

No comments:

 

Casino Deposit Bonus