BURLINGTON – The city of Burlington has finally reached a decision on the controversial “Everyone Loves a Parade!” mural that has been displayed between Church Street and the parking garage for the past few years. The mural, which cost $100,000 and took 3 years to complete, has been criticized for not being inclusive. With the original mural artist now retired and not interested in adjusting the completed work of art, Burlington has been left with few options.
An option to create a second mural was heavily criticized for echoing the “separate but equal” days of Jim Crow, and the city cannot afford to simply tear the thing down and start over. But a third option has now been found, with a small amount of money now designated to Photoshop some diversity into the already existing mural.
The initial idea was to develop an AR (Augmented Reality) app that people could download onto their mobile devices. The app would then add in some multi-cultural figures as viewers panned over the mural. Unfortunately the app would cost users $9.99 to download, and many felt that this would be prohibitively expensive for most Vermont residents, whose rents often consume up to 97% of their income. Instead, the city will offer a free service on their website that will allow users to upload photos taken of the mural and have developers add in the extra diversity after the fact.
“This is the best compromise we could come up with,” said Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger. “There will be a little more diversity on the wall for those who feel they need it. Anyone can have someone in my office photoshop as much diversity in as they want, free of charge. We’ll even let people choose which historical figures they want to add in to their photos. And if you liked the original mural, you don’t need to do anything. It’s a win-win.”
The only physical change to the original mural will be to replace the name of the artwork with it’s new title, “Most People Probably Kind of Like Certain Types of Parades!”
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