Crowd Closes A1A – Police Say OK !

     The crowd must have been much bigger than the City officials expected tonight for the City’s 100th Birthday Bash on the Fort Lauderdale Beach.

                             

                                          
      It was jammed packed on the sidewalks north of Las Olas on A1A right from the beginning. The Fort Lauderdale Police were trying their best, but were having trouble keeping the people out of the street  –  and the people just kept coming, and coming, and so did the cars! It didn’t look good.

      Something had to give.

     And it all happened rather peacefully, almost like it was planned ( but it wasn’t !) – the Bahamian Junkanoo Band started to dance their way across the road in their giant colorful headdresses, and 100’s of people followed in line right behind them!

     Then, those 100’s of people decided they’d rather stay right there in the road, and another few hundred joined right in!  There would be no more cars crossing A1A tonight!

               

      The police deserve a lot of credit. They could of made it a bad scene, but they didn’t.

     They scrambled. Traffic cones and barricades were quickly reworked, snarled traffic was fed off the beach. Wayfinding signs were relocated before you could say Jack Robinson!

     I asked a Sergeant standing nearby what the hell happened. ” A1A should have been closed to traffic tonight”.

     Now that was the understatement of the night!