Friday Afternoon Video: A La Dolce Vita Moment

So there we were, heading south on Montrose on Thursday afternoon, ready to take advantage of the super warm weather with a run in Hermann Park. Suddenly, we spied a shower of debris blowing across the road in front of us.

At first it looked like paper, white and airy, but as we got closer we realized it was giant clumps of soap bubbles, blowing forth from the Mecom Fountain (yep, that's its name). The clumps were so large some of them looked like sudsy tumbleweeds. Our first reaction was to squee with glee. Our second reaction was "What an asshole!" since that's an awfully big mess to make someone else clean up.

Still, Houstonist -- along with a handful of other people, including one man with a child -- romped through the soap while it lasted. We snapped a few quick camera-phone pics before continuing on to our jog.

The whole affair felt so quirky and unusual that it reminded us of the iconic scene below, from Fellini's La Dolce Vita:

At the end of our run, we passed by the fountain again to see that a maintenance man and a security guard had turned the water off. The maintenance worker was sloshing through the fountain with a plastic bucket, scooping the heaps of foam from the surface. Poor guy.