Bridge Lane Reopens With Kinetic Flair

A strange thing happened on the Ventura River Main Street Bridge Wednesday: With rain falling above, muddy water rushing below, and “Bridge Over Troubled Water” blaring over loudspeakers, a pair of man-powered fish, on wheels, pedaled into town.

The bizarre, brightly colored contraption served a dual purpose: to celebrate the reopening of the left northbound lane of the Ventura Main Street Bridge, and to promote a proposed Kinetic Sculpture Race in Ventura next fall.

“The Ventura River Main Street Bridge is finally open to two-way traffic after a $2-million repair and seismic retrofit,” Mayor Jack Tingstrom said. “We have many people to thank for the completion of this project, and we’ll have a little fun witnessing the first-ever bridge crossing by a kinetic sculpture.”

Slowly, the pink, yellow and blue fish with Nerf-ball eyes rolled across the bridge.

In March 1995, heavy runoff caused a bridge pier wall to partially collapse. One lane has been closed ever since.

The Ventura River is home to the endangered goby and the southern steelhead trout, as well as many nesting birds. To minimize environmental impacts on birds that nest in the river estuary, the city completed the bridge repairs between August and November.

Hobart Brown founded the Kinetic Sculpture Race in 1969 in Ferndale, Calif. The three-day, 38-mile race of human-powered moving works of art features 75-foot iguanas, giant bananas, lobsters, dinosaurs, birds and fish. The strange sculptures must traverse sand, mud, dunes and water. The kinet-o-nauts can pedal, push or drag their sculptures.

The quirky race is now held in four other U.S. cities--and even in Poland and Tazmania.

Local screenwriter Norma Brody first saw the race at a Hollywood screening last spring, and began the push to expand the race to Ventura. She contacted Brown, and then found Paul Stimson and John Lee, two local veterans of the Ferndale race, to build and power the giant fish.

“We got steelhead trout, a goby and a tidewater duckie,” said Stimson, who used chicken wire, muslin, two old bicycles and paint to build the structure. He said it took a few hundred dollars and a week.

Brody was encouraged by the turnout, but says nothing is definite until she finds enough local sponsors to cover the costs of police and insurance for the race. In her mind, she has already plotted the kinetic course.

“It can run from west Ventura, down along the beach, then into the water to the harbor. The harbor has said we can park the sculptures there along the beach,” Brody said.

Anyone interested in becoming a corporate sponsor or entering should call Brody at 527-2680.