The Bryant St. Bridge is a bike/walking path that crossses I-5. Most afternoons it’s encouraging to ride over it and look down on the freeway traffic jam below. The bridge fence curves to discourage people from leaping onto the highway.

Not much else happens on the bridge but I did see a couple of Bernie Sanders supporters hanging a Bernie banner in the fencing. For whatever reason the sign was gone the next day.  There were also some traffic counters I spotted decked out in neon vests with each counter assigned a lane. It’s not a busy bridge besides the occasional pedestrian or fellow biker. So it makes sense to reflect on (yes, pun intended) these mirrors that hang from the gray sound barriers.

I can’t remember when the public art display first appeared. My initial reaction was that the framed mirrors were too cutesy and juvenile in their primary color scheme of red, orange, green and yellow. I rode over the Bryant St. Bridge not too long ago and it hit me that I was dealing with a potential blog post. This meant I needed to consider the mirrors for longer than it took to ride past them. I want them to have some meaning more than being decoration but I’m not sure what it is. I have to admit they do break up the monotonous gray sound barrier walls. Some color, any color brings a bit of excitement to the drab exterior of the industrial wall color. I also realized the mirrors serve to allow me to see oncoming bike traffic around a blind curve while making my exit off the bridge.

While the mirrors attract graffiti, they may in the long run focus vandals attention on a smaller target and keep them from trashing the hard to clean sound barrier stucco walls with spray paint.

Grafitti on the mirror not on the wall!

Then there are the strange reflections that you may only experience if you stop and take pictures. If inclined, you can check your look in one of the multiple mirrors that dot the walls. But that’s probably not an incentive to stop a bike ride.

Strange reflections indeed.