Culture

How to Get the City to Notice Your Damn Pothole

A citizen’s guide to wacky schemes, from impromptu hot tubs to “birthday parties.”
Who needs a spa when you can lounge around in crumbling infrastructure?Courtesy of Daniel Trussel

Winter’s long over but its corrosive effect on roads—coupled with drenching warm-month rains—survives. Municipalities across the U.S. are still struggling to deal with persistent, pernicious potholes. In places like Washington, D.C., and Seattle, work crews have turned out in swarms for ”potholepaloozas,” blitz events to fill as many voids as possible in a short time. In other cases, locals are assisting cities with fix-ups, reporting potholes via phones and apps and, in a musical twist in New Orleans, by banging pots and pans to try to shame the government into action.

But what of the pothole on your block that sits there un-remedied, growing larger and belching more gravel as each car passes by? A citizen aggrieved by government inertia can be deviously clever in luring official attention. Here are the more unique tactics people have used to get their pothole noticed.