Tag: athlone

Damn! Missed!

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As did virtually everyone else. That’s what happens when Dan Plato gets a touch of Premature Eradication and implodes the cooling towers 4 minutes early.

Fortunately, there are a great many videos and pictures of the event around, like these from Times Live and Life Quest, for example.

Everyone at my “secret” location (Public Parking at Groote Schuur Hospital – population about 40) was taken by surprise and hugely disappointed. Alex was also very sad and so later in the afternoon, I took him to Ground Zero and we looked at where the towers once were. This in itself proved to be a tourist mecca and we had to fight through the traffic and the crowds to get a look.

And it struck me that Cape Town now has some iconic chimneys which are quite spectacular in their own right having been rather well hidden before.

More photos from a bit of a disappointing day are on flickr.

UPDATE: Best video I’ve seen of the big event:

Goodbye! :/

Dan’s PR disaster

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With the second biggest event of the year due to take place in Cape Town this weekend (remember that World Cup thing we did?) and following on from his extraordinary comments over the Makhaza toilet saga, City Mayor Dan Plato has lurched into yet another PR disaster.  Helen Zille was always going to be a hard act to follow, but this man makes Nomaindia Mfeketo look good.
And she really wasn’t.

This time it’s all to do with who gets to press the button to bring down the Athlone Cooling Towers. And as the Mayor was pointing out on local radio just a couple of weeks ago, it would be a great honour for some worthwhile member of the community to be able to be the one to trigger the blast. A local charity, Reach For A Dream, which gives dying children the chance to carry out their last wishes was also hopeful of giving some kids the chance to say that they were the ones who demolished the towers.

As Councillor Clive Justus, the mayoral committee member for utility services commented earlier in the week:

It might be the contractors, the mayor, the premier, the Reach for a Dream Foundation – we haven’t made up our minds yet. I will be taking a decision in consultation before the end of the week.
Whoever it is will be outside the 300m perimeter, and it will be very, very sophisticated. The plunger of days gone by is no longer with us.

“It’ll be like pressing a cellphone button,” he explained.

And today – the name of the lucky plunger button presser was revealed – and that person will be…

Mayor Dan Plato!

Why? WHY?!?

Even if this decision was taken “in consultation” and he wasn’t involved in said consultation, why doesn’t he, someone, anyone see what a complete and utter PR disaster this is?
Cape Talk was inundated with calls criticising the decision this evening. And what did Dan have to say about the whole thing?

As time comes nearer I think it will become emotional. I will go down to the towers later this morning to take my own pictures and so on.

Soundbite heaven.

There are still 39 hours before big bang time. It’s not too late to change this stupid decision and to give someone who really deserves something special, the honour. Be it upstanding Athlone community member, be it dying child.

If you’re reading this, Dan (stop sniggering people: I’m going to email it to him and the big lady upstairs) – please just stop and think what sort of message this sends out. Again.
Do the decent thing, give it to someone and make a difference to their life. Be remembered as the man who gave this opportunity to someone else, not as the greedy mayor who kept it for himself.

You can email the Mayor’s office and voice your opinion here: mayor.mayor@capetown.gov.za.

Soon

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The implosion of “Athlone’s Two Old Ladies” as the Cape Times described them recently (thus terrifying half the elderly population of that suburb) will take place at noon on Sunday. These “Two Old Ladies” in question are the cooling towers at the now defunct Athlone Power Station which are in a poor state of repair and need to come down before they fall down.
Although looking at the cold front forecast to come through on Saturday, they might have left it a bit late.

The Athlone cooling towers sit right next to the N2 and are a Cape Town landmark which will be sorely missed. In these respects, they are almost completely undissimilar to the Tinsley Cooling Towers in Sheffield, which were next to the M1 and were a Sheffield landmark which is sorely missed (by some people, at least).
Those towers came down in a dramatic nighttime demolition process in August 2008 (at 3am on the 24th, to be exact – almost 2 years to the day before Cape Town’s tribute act)  and which was more than ably captured by flickr user Julia Parsons (aka wsogmm) and gives us some indication of what we might expect to see on Sunday.

At first, the towers are standing up (that’s them on the left there).

Then they fall down.

So that’s: Standing up. Falling down. Up. Down. Got it?
It’s not rocket science. In fact there are no rockets involved at all. Which is a shame.

The next big question is – where are you going to watch the towers come down from? Based on the fact that the population of Cape Town is approximately 3.5 million, and about 100% of those people want to watch, it’s my guess that the the main vantage sites are going to be rather busy.
Thankfully, the big man upstairs (cough) was thoughtful enough to provide a ready made grandstand for the spectacle in the form of Table Mountain. Regrettably, he failed to consider the provision of adequate parking or indeed decent weather for the occasion – albeit that the demolition guys will be delighted with the light rain forecast for Sunday.

Me? I have my own little idea on a secret location from which to observe this defining moment in the history of Athlone’s skyline, but if you think I’m sharing that little idea with you before the big day, you can think again.

UPDATE: Incoming from my Dad – the video…

which confirms the standing up – falling down routine in real time motion picture goodness.

UPDATE 2: WIN R1,000 just by taking a photo.

Not much longer

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Not feeling great today, so quick quota photo taken from the Elton John concert the other night.

Those are Cape Town’s Northern Suburbs in the sun, Goodwood through to Bellville. And in the foreground, in the shadow of the mountain, Newlands Stadium.
Somewhere between the two (towards the right) is the Athlone Power Station, whose two iconic cooling towers are due for demolition on 30th May this year, prompting a storm of protest from some quarters that it is happening “so close to the World Cup”. 

I don’t think they realise that it’s more likely to take 12 seconds than 12 days.