Sidewalk Diatribe

When you live in a city, you tend to walk a lot. Between the traffic and available public transportation, plus huge parking fees, the car doesn’t always get a lot of use. If it’s not your final destination, you’ll be walking to or from the trains to get wherever you’re going.

Match city walking with a northern climate and you reach my least favorite thing about the city in winter. It’s not the cold or wind. It isn’t the darkness. No, it’s the sidewalks. More specifically, it’s the sheets of ice that cover the sidewalk in patches that never were cleared.

Here’s the deal: when it snows, one should shovel. If one doesn’t shovel, the snow gets packed down from foot traffic and eventually morphs into a sheet of ice. And suddenly, walking down the sidewalk a few days after snowfall is tricky.

I headed down the street to watch football with friends on Sunday. And then I would find an icy patch where I would slip-slide away, my feet looking like some Scooby Doo cartoon (you know where the characters start to run away and they aren’t moving but their feet are…). All progress towards the bar was halted and I flung out my arms and tippy-toed across the ice sheet until I made is safely to the area that had been cleared, where I would saunter until I came across the next house, apartment business that couldn’t bust out the shovel.

I don’t know if it happens elsewhere. Truth be told, I grew up with snow problems. But we drove everywhere in Minnesota, and after the snow fell and the roads were clear, the headaches were over. But here in Chicago they keep going. Until spring. So if you see me slipping around town, you’ll know why. And you’ll know I’m not alone.