The Wallenda wire-walk.

Mayor Dyster was against it before he was for it.

He was against it until the moment Nik Wallenda stepped off the two-inch cable and set foot in Niagara Falls, Ontario. As the thundering applause of viewers from both sides of the Niagara rose - rivaling the thundering Niagara - Mayor Dyster knew which side of history he had to land on.

So he cynically contributed to the applause.

“Dyster has said his economically struggling city needs to take into account concerns that the event could be perceived as a ‘sideshow’ to the falls,” New York Post, July 5, 2011.

New York State Senator George Maziarz, working off an effort initiated by NFR Executive Vice President, Roger Trevino, who first proposed the idea of having the world’s premier high wire artist crossing the falls. That was almost two years ago.

While the media followed along, tracking the Maziarz-Wallenda-Trevino juggernaut as three men, later joined by assemblyman John Ceretto, pushed the idea to the brink of completion, Mayor Paul Dyster was hell bent on making himself the proverbial wet blanket for an event that was destined for a world-wide audience.

“It is common knowledge that Dyster was opposed to the Wallenda walk from the outset. The Mayor, a staunch preservationist, is a firm advocate of Frederick Law Olmsted, the landscape architect whose 1880’s plan to preserve the beauty of the falls and surrounding parkland.” Niagara Gazette May 3, 2012.

Dyster claims to be a “preservationist” and believer in Frederick Law Olmsted, designer of the State Reservation Park. While (before the walk) he told of how a wire walk would degrade, defile and do damage to the park and the falls, he apparently never took note of the Maid of the Mist chugging to its very brink, acres of paid parking lots on Goat Island and Prospect Park, the tour trolley, the flags and banners, the Maid of the Mist souvenir building, the information center, the restaurant only yards from Terrapin Point and ribbons of asphalt and concrete that deface Niagara Falls State Park. Olmsted vision? Olmsted forbid everyone of these things.

Who are we kidding?

To Mayor Dyster I say, try and sell your vision of Olmsted purity to the Maid of the Mist, New York State Parks and Delaware North.

If they buy into it, then so will I.

Defiling the natural beauty of Niagara Falls with a televised wire-walk? Wallenda’s walk included two cranes, eighteen hundred feet of two inch cable and was over in less than 30 minutes. The next day the cable was withdrawn, the cranes went away and the area was cleaned up after registering the highest non- sport related television viewing audience in the past seven years.

“Once the cameras were shut off, Wallenda walked around the park, picked up cigarette butts and tried to make sure the piles of trash left by media staffers were cleaned up…Wallenda even won over Niagara Falls Mayor Paul A. Dyster who was initially reluctant to promote the stunt because of environmental concerns,” Buffalo News June 16, 2012.

Was he won over? The Mayor never said he was won over. He simply moved, in plain sight, from being totally against the walk to – after the walk succeeded – being totally for the walk.

“Wallenda’s sunny personality made a difference, the mayor said, and distinguished him from other daredevils,” Buffalo News June 16, 2012.

What other daredevils did he know?

More to the point, had Mayor Dyster known from the beginning that Nik had a “sunny personality” would he have blessed the walk from day one?

Hard to believe that, especially when you consider that Mayor Dyster ducked an opportunity to sit in on early key meetings with Wallenda and Maziarz. On at least one occasion he sent city planner Tom DeSantis to represent him when the Wallenda organization clearly wanted to speak to the City’s highest elected official.

We can poke fun at the mayor’s awkward conversion but it is disquieting to watch as the Mayor pretends he was all along very much for something that we all know he was dead against from the start. It’s distressing to see him shape-shift and deny the truth that he fought the Wallenda walk behind the scenes from the get-go.

On June 22 the Mayor changed his Facebook profile photo. He posted a picture of himself handing Nik Wallenda the key to the city.

Looks like we’ll have to settle for that photo as proof of the Mayor’s admission that he’s been wrong all along.