The Editor's Back Fence

Yes, it was an April Fool's joke. No one, as far as I know, is planning to turn the Berkeley Marina into a container ship dock. But as I told author Paul Kamen, it's hard to satirize the Berkeley planning process, which is deep into self-satire these days. I thought Paul's picture of a huge red circle in the middle of the road at the Marina was Paul's clever Photo-Shop construction, but much to my horror, when we drove down to see the sunset last night I discovered that it's really there. It's horrendously ugly, of course. What were they thinking? What's it for? And I never thought I'd be one of the kind of people who are always asking this, but how much did it cost?