Five years ago, the city of Albuquerque retreated from one of its great urbanism experiments by closing the Fourth Street pedestrian mall, returning this quiet little street south of city hall to cars.

It was frankly, as news reports at the time acknowledged, a clumsy policy response to the fact that the two block pedestrian mall had been taken over by the homeless.

So imagine my surprise when, on an early bike ride this morning, I found Fourth Street temporarily closed to traffic so that a movie crew could build a fake homeless camp.

As a newsroom colleague once said years ago, “You just can’t make up shit that good.”