London Bridge (Lake Havasu) | Hacker News Reader

London Bridge (Lake Havasu)

en.wikipedia.org

43 pointserex7820 comments

Ha! Lake Havasu City is largely where I grew up -- fun to see a link in HN. Havasu is a huge party town, so often throughout the summer you'd see hundreds of boats and drunk partiers around the bridge. Really weird sight.

The movie Piranha 3D was filmed in Havasu. Don't remember if they feature the bridge.

Spent summers out there - it was nice to get on the lake during the Mojave heat waves

There's this crazy thing that always strikes me about Wikipedia articles. I read or skim through the text in a linear way, out of habit. Until inadvertently, I get to the "In Popular Culture" section, and it seems the article turns on me and attacks me with ridiculously nerdy content.

Pinky and the Brain? Heck, this is beyond nerdy. I don't even know how to qualify it, but it always makes you snap back to the fact that you are not reading a normal run-of-the-mill encyclopaedia. (And it makes me wonder, who even takes the time to write this kind of incongruous cross-referencing?)

Nerdy shows are more likely to reference the sorts of things you'd read about on Wikipedia, hence the frequency with which you might see shows like Futurama show up in the popular culture sections of Wikipedia articles. And, of course, Wikipedians are likely to be nerds who catch those references and rush to update the appropriate article.

If you think that's bad, have a look at TVTropes, which is basically Wikipedia's "In Popular Culture" cranked Up To Eleven and turned into its own separate encyclopedia.

It's a bit of a problem that Wikipedia has a list of fictional ducks, but doesn't have a lists of olympic athletes -- because an olympic athlete is not notable.

Er...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Olympic_competitors

Bit more useful organization:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Olympic_competitors_by...

Thank you! I was wrong and I'll have to stop using that example. How ever, it took a lot of arguing to get those archers from 1904 to be included. I think the discussion is on village pump.

The problem seems to be with discovery. Notice it's "Olympic Competitors" and not "Olympic Athletes". Most people would think to search or look for "athletes" and it takes a bit of Google-Fu to even find the competitors list.

So I can understand thinking it didn't exist! It actually took me a good 10 minutes or so to find it on Google (and most searches take < 30 seconds!)

This is why Wikipedia is great unlike stuffy and backward encyclopaedias.

What's the point of reading about a bridge in the middle of nowhere. Absolutely nothing. Except it's a great story.

Which is why derivative stories are also interesting.

Was the Pinky and The Brain story boring. Yes.

Was the Falling Down story interesting. Yes. It was about a hidden Easter egg referencing the bridge and the location it’s in.

As someone else points out who cares about lists of Olympians from 30 years ago, no one. Some random name ran around a track. Who cares about fictional ducks. Most people. Donald Duck alone must get a lot of the population, he has had a real (good/bad) but remembered impact to most people’s lives.

You're taking about a quality issue. Not a nerdy issue.

I lived in Lake Havasu City for a while as a kid - I've always found it amusing to tell people about the London Bridge in the middle of the desert.

Growing up in Austin, I remember my dad telling me about this after hearing the lyrics to the song they used for the theme for Austin City Limits (the PBS show not the festival). Good ol' Texas country.

"Well, when you're down on your luck, and you ain't got a buck, in London you're a goner. Even London Bridge has fallen down, and moved to Arizona"

London Homesick Blues, Gary P. Nunn

How much did the bridge cost to purchase from London? I don't see that mentioned in the Wikipedia article.

$2.5MM to purchase and $7MM to reassemble.[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Havasu_City,_Arizona

Well they should buy the Thames Tunnel to go with it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thames_Tunnel

I'd rather they didn't, it's quite often my journey to work.

That bridge is so much more aesthetically pleasing than its replacement. There is an oft repeated myth that they bought the wrong bridge by mistake but that is clearly denied in the article.

To be fair, if I spent over 9 Mil buying the wrong bridge, you'll hear me deny it was a mistake as well.

Yeah, or if I sold the wrong bridge.

Best part that the whole city was created for this one company

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