Not again!

We were surprised to hear outside our studio a car-crashing sound that we naturally assumed was not a car crash. Maybe a garbage truck dropping a bin, or a beer truck unloading at Alchemy? But lo, 10 minutes later we noticed a bunch of fire trucks and police cars gathered around Chase Bank across the street. A car had driven through the intersection of Atwood and Winnebago and smashed into the bank, knocking over a huge column (the driver was okay). My first thought was "Not again!", because this exact same thing happened 5 years ago! It's not like they placed the bank right in the way or something--as you can see, these cars have to bust through a big chain, over or around a big rock, and smash the column with enough force to knock it over, which probably means they were exceeding the 25mph speed limit!

We had to take pictures because I happened to be there last time, when I was randomly biking by at 3:00 a.m., and the crash had just taken place. (Those photos were published in the Capitol Times, excitingly enough!) In both crashes, the driver walked away, amazingly. As you can see, with the latest one, the top of the column fell right through the windshield and into the empty passenger seat!

The boy in foreground above was really excited because there were more fire trucks than he'd ever seen in one place, and there were "5 million firemen!"

The last three photos, below, are from 2006, when a 13-year-old took his parents car out of the garage in the middle of the night and crashed it at 70 mph after a high-speed chase. Whoops!