April Fool: Mayors get in on the act too (with related video)
It wasn’t only your snarky kid brother or arrested development co-workers who pulled April Fool’s jokes this year. As The Atlantic Cities noted, some major league pranksters in U.S. cities also got in on the tomfoolery.
First up: Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter and his crew created a video promoting the city’s supposed new “E-Lane Initiative.” The idea behind this bold policy move was to create a pedestrian lane devoted solely to texting addicts.
The E-Lane, conveniently marked by a Texter Walking sign, “should make sidewalks safer for the rest of us,” Nutter explained in a video (below). That didn’t help Nutter, though — a texter bumped into him even as he was speaking.
Consider also Austin, Texas, Mayor Lee Leffingwell, who used his Facebook page on April Fool’s Day to announce “far-reaching new initiatives” for the city. Leffingwell’s proposals included limiting the number of buttons on TV remotes, banning use of the abbreviations IMHO and FWIW, requiring mustard be available on all Austin restaurant tables and “an immediate citywide ban on name-dropping using first names only.”
Leffingwell also pledged his administration to implement universal voicemail commands. “Everywhere I go, people ask me to focus on universal voicemail commands,” Leffingwell wrote on his Facebook page. “Folks say, my delete button on my cell phone is my forward button on my home voicemail and the pause button on my work voicemail, and I can’t take it anymore. I feel their pain. What I’m saying today, on April 1st, is that these basic quality-of-life issues are now my top priorities.”