Several years ago, the city of Mazatlán launched a beautification project to make the city more attractive to tourists. One of the first big steps was to plant 115 coconut palms along a

4.5-kilometer stretch of the _malecón_, the concrete boardwalk between the Gold Zone and Olas Altas at the edge of the historic center. When I first heard of this project, I remembered a

statistic about falling coconuts killing 10 times more people than sharks — that’s sharks in the ocean, not falling sharks. Ornamentation with a potential body count — I liked it already.

Since I ride my bicycle along this stretch of waterfront several times a week, I watched this construction parody, from the chalk marks on the concrete to the towering palms with their

apprentice masons, all journey-level masons and, you would think, all architects and engineers. But are perfect squares all that important in the overall scheme of things? If the squares

vary an inch here or there, does it really matter? I mean, these things were just holes to put palm trees into, right? How hard could it be to plant a bunch of palm trees along flat surfaces

with great access? Anybody could do it — right? One of the primary rules when doing repetitious work is maintaining a common geometry so that the finished product is pleasant to the eye.

Laying out something symmetrically allows the use of pre-made patterns and simple math, which can be repeated at every hole the same way, simple in its consistency — dare I say it:

idiot-proof. The squares would need a common point of alignment so that they will all be visually in sync when complete. Using the straight edge of the _malecón_/sea wall on the ocean side

or the straight edge of the curb on the street side would be quick and simple. It would allow the square holes to share two parallel sides with either the curb or the seawall, thereby

assuring close-to-perfect symmetry. However, the city had its own cunning plan for creating holes and planting palm trees. The first to appear were a pair of two-man crews, each with

16-inch, walk-behind concrete saws. Each crew was responsible for drawing its own version of a square on the concrete prior to making the cuts. I watched as the cutting went on for a week

before someone realized that the holes were too small to accommodate a full-grown palm tree. Plan B: instead of enlarging the holes with the concrete saws, they brought in a backhoe with a

hydraulic jackhammer on the articulating arm. So the backhoe hammered out the holes well past the saw-cut lines, thereby rendering the saw-cut process wasted time and money. As the backhoe

worked its way down the _malecón_, the intense vibrations from the jackhammer attachment were transferred through the machine to the tires on the ground. The vibrations from this operation

were so intense, they settled the sand that supports the concrete slabs that comprise the boardwalk. This caused portions of the concrete pathway to collapse several inches into the shallow

voids created by the settling. Plan C: the backhoe was then placed into the closest traffic lane to do the work while traffic was shunted around the working equipment. This must have caused

complaints because the backhoe was back on the _malecón_ a week later. By now, the concrete cutting crew had returned and were cutting straight lines just outside the jagged destruction

created by the backhoe’s jackhammer attachment. This time, the problem was that they did not cut completely through the concrete, so the backhoe with the hammer had to come and finish off

the holes. This caused divots or even chunks to be knocked out of the concrete walkway beyond the saw cut, thereby rendering this saw-cut process more wasted time and money. As all this was

taking place, there was another concrete-saw crew cutting a trench between the tree well holes to accommodate an electrical conduit. The conduit-laying crew must have been kept in the dark

as to where to place the conduit stub-outs at the tree well because there was no consistency whatsoever. The black pipe stubs were mostly in the general area of the soon-to-be-formed tree

wells. After the palm trees were inserted into their holes, the masons were sent in to give each tree well four straight sides, in an attempt to make them appear to be squares, which should

have happened with the first round of saw cuts. After watching the masons for a few days, I realized no one had informed them that the black pieces of pipe that were sticking up needed to be

_inside _the tree well, not on the sidewalk. During the next several days, there was another two-man saw crew out cutting the sidewalk so that the electrical conduit that had been cast into

it could be moved to inside the tree wells. At this point — two months into this poorly managed circus — the vast majority of the holes had become parallelograms and trapezoids with very

few palms actually centered in the geometric blunders. This probably would not have mattered much if the final plan had not called for a two-piece, stainless-steel grate with a hole in the

_center_ to be installed perfectly flush with the surface of the _malecón_. I am sure there was a set of plans somewhere that contained drawings of just how impeccably perfect the finished

project would look. The first stainless-steel grill was fitted at the north end of the project and looked to be custom-made for that particular tree well. I am sure that whoever submitted

the bid to supply 115 stainless-steel grates, _all exactly the same size_, was recoiling vigorously. Needless to say, there were no more stainless-steel grates filling the remaining 114

quadrangles. The accent lights and associated conduit started going up about a week after the single grate appeared. Both the lights and the conduit are held by stainless-steel straps that

encircle the trunk of the palm and are quite tight. I am not sure just what will occur when the palms grow, but these are trifling details to be dealt with by the next city administration.

If from the beginning this project had had just _one_ competent person involved for even a couple of hours per day, significant time and money would have been saved. But this is Mexico,

where it is more important to keep people working and where competence can give way to a bit of cronyism and a complete lack of circumspection. The end result is a _malecón_ with palm trees

fluttering in the balmy tropical breezes. And the growing coconuts will provide a whole new opportunity for fun in the sun. And only obsessive-compulsive gringos like myself will ever notice

any of the discrepancies. _The writer describes himself as a very middle-aged man who lives full-time in Mazatlán with a captured tourist woman and the ghost of a half-wild dog. He can be

reached at __[email protected]__._