World’s biggest pothole!

Recently, Burnt Ends investigators discovered what had to be a world-record pothole, on 16th Street between Grand and Walnut. It was more than 15 feet long, 7 feet wide and a half-foot deep — big enough for Mark Funkhouser to lie down in and stretch out, with room to spare.

We contacted Dennis Gagnon at the Department of Public Works to inquire whether this was, in fact, a record. Disappointingly, he told us no one keeps stats on street gaps. Besides, he said, we’d probably misclassified our glory hole. “Something that large, I wouldn’t call that a pothole.” But he was rattled. He left the office to get a visual on the site and called us back 30 minutes later. “That’s a water-restoration project,” he said. “That’s not a pothole.” Water Department spokeswoman Colleen Newman confirmed that workers had fixed a water-main break there a couple weeks earlier. “I wouldn’t really call that a pothole,” she said. “That’s street restoration. The street needs to be restored.” She informed us that Gagnon had taken responsibility to fill it. After all, Public Works is the department that handles … potholes.