I've been trying to paint my cardboard box since the beginning of the year, and all the rain we've been getting keeps washing it off. My neighbors keep complaining that the colors don't match with the natural theme of the creek and are threatening to call the city of San Luis Obispo Architectural Review Commission.

I'll have to beg for forgiveness from the nitpicky building commission just like Stalwork Inc. did in 2017 for a paint job that didn't fit in with the "character" of downtown—sort of.

All Stalwork had to do with its gigantic, black monstrosity on the corner of Santa Rosa and Marsh streets was paint it a lighter shade—which I would call very dark grey—when it got in trouble for not asking for permission from the commission, so what's the worst that could happen to me? Maybe I'll be forced to fish another cardboard box out of the dumpster.

I wonder which SLOcal yocal is going to complain first about the same shade of controversy that's covering the building next door on Santa Rosa and Higuera that Stalwork just remodeled. They saw a red brick building and they had to paint it black.

Maybe the city's self-appointed cultural adherence brigade has become numb to the outrage that is black paint on downtown buildings—it's become the new norm, so people just, like, don't even see it anymore.

That's definitely not the case for Cal Poly's attempt at a "hip" new logo for the social media age. Students are not having it! They just can't even with the hammer and quill. So much for a university trying to design something for the kids.

Act your age, Cal Poly! You're, like, more than 100 years old. Sheesh.

KCPR general manager and business administrative student Archie Mitchell, penned a piece in Mustang News telling the university that it's OK to "swallow its pride" with the logo rebrand and go back to square one. Mitchell describes the new logo as a "digital turd." Touché.

"The entire project reeks of this administration's lack of any real desire for student input and lack of faith in the 'Learn by Doing' motto," Mitchell stated in his opinion piece.

Only, Cal Poly put out a survey on that crappy logo months ago, and it was really long—like 20 to 30 minutes of questions about how Poly should market itself in the future. And it included several renditions of a new logo! And it went out to everyone with a Cal Poly email address! And those people include every single student at the university—including budding think-piece writer Mitchell.

Apparently 5,000-plus students who signed Poly student Drake Murphy's change.org petition to "stop the rebrand" didn't bother to check their emails either. Poly, for once, actually wanted student input. Only no one was paying attention: #sad. Now petition-signing students are loudly whining about the results of that survey months later—acting as if this is the first they've heard of it. Geez, kids, your age is showing.

It reminds me of Caltrans. Only, the controversy is a bit more real than a logo that kind of looks like it takes inspiration from the Soviet Union flag.

Vintage Wine Estates, the sparkling new parent company of Laetitia Vineyard & Winery, put its Champagne-inspired stamp on the county by filing a lawsuit against Caltrans, effectively halting the agency's better-late-then-never plans to close four intersections on Highway 101 between Arroyo Grande and Nipomo.

The lawsuit accuses Caltrans Deputy Director for Planning and Local Assistance Aileen Loe of saying the decision to close the intersections was political and not based on an emergency and that the agency would "stand down" if there wasn't so much public support.

Umm, OK. Well, it's not like this whole dangerous-intersection issue is a new thing for the agency.

James and Becky Grant have been fighting for the closure of the El Campo intersection since they lost their son to an accident in 2018, but that little stretch of South County Highway has been on Caltrans' docket since at least 2005. In a 150-page memo from 2009 (yeah, aren't you glad you don't work for Caltrans?) about closing intersections along the very same stretch of highway, the agency cites a study between 2005 and 2007 that counted 188 collisions along that stretch of highway, 21 of which were at the El Campo intersection and seven were at the Laetitia Winery intersection.

The memo stated that these rates "exceeded the state average" and cited the need for an overpass. Laetitia threatened a lawsuit over the proposed project—because how else are all the winos going to weave across traffic to pull safely into their driveway—and Caltrans stood down. I guess there wasn't enough "politics" or "public support" to do anything about it. At least two people have died at El Campo since the initial project finally fizzled in 2011 and countless others have been injured.

Now Vintage Wine Estates is saying it wants a guarantee that an overpass gets built in the next five years—that's going to cost a cool $20 million to $30 million. If Laetitia hadn't flexed its greedy little muscles in 2011, we might be halfway toward building that overpass everyone's opining so hard for. Δ

The Shredder knows the facts are sobering sometimes. Send comments to [email protected].