In case you missed it, last week the spirit of Patrick Swayze in Road House commingled with the advent of drone technology to produce an extremely masculine promo for Flanders Crossing, the Pearl’s new I-405–spanning “bridge” (scare-quotes intentional, as it is an overpass). Check it out below:

Flanders Crossing, Portland’s newest pedestrian and bicycle bridge, opens on June 4 at 11:00 a.m. just in time for a summer of walking, biking, rolling, and strolling!

Let’s do this, Portland!#bridgetown #pdxtraffic #pdxbikes pic.twitter.com/2UZL3GobUK

— Portland Bureau of Transportation (@PBOTinfo) May 26, 2021

I have watched this 48-second blast of inexplicable testosterone more times than I can count. The Jack White-by-way-of-Velveeta guitar riffs. The ALL CAPS ANNOUNCEMENT THAT THE CRANES THAT BUILT THE BRIDGE ARE MASSIVE. The centering of its objectively unimpressive 200-foot length. I can only imagine the specific hell of agency briefs and PBOT PR that produced this beautiful artifact, and at the end of the day, I am grateful for it.

Anyway, today was the day: The "bridge," which began construction last year and wrapped several months ago, officially opened (to pedestrians and bikers only) on June 4 at 11 a.m., in a ceremony helmed by Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty. Evidently, Jean-Claude Van Damme, a cluster of scorpions, and the Old Spice Guy were unavailable.

While it is objectively pretty nice that bikers will now have another opportunity to cross I-405 from the Pearl into—what is that? Lower Slabtown/east Nob Hill/north Goose Hollow?—without braving high-traffic Everett or Glisan, we must express our disappointment at a lack of follow-through on gendering the final product. A humble list of suggestions for improvement:

• A playlist that's just Bon Jovi’s "Wanted Dead or Alive," Aerosmith’s "Dream On," and Chicago’s "I'm a Man," to be blasted on said "bridge" during business hours
• Flames! Real ones
• At an undisclosed hour every day, each pedestrian heading west gets a free year's subscription to GQ
• Dirty fries for the first 100 souls to cross all 200 feet
• "Saturdays Are for the Boys" Saturdays, where a rotating cast of volunteers chants "Saturdays are for the boys" each Saturday to all passersby