pathholes and other hazards of walking

Looking down the top section of the Loma Linda path, at Queens Road.

The Berkeley Hills just northeast of the UC Berkeley campus have a number of short, often steep walking paths stitching between the more circuitous roads through the area. While the streets that automobiles drive on in the Hills are narrow, difficult to navigate, and a spaghetti-mess of more-or-less intact asphalt, the paths cut alongside seasonal creeks, at fence-lines and under bay laurel, oaks, and redwoods. Often the paths cut straight down toward the lower neighborhoods, eventually depositing the walker on Euclid or another main road that funnels traffic toward to the university campus, or drops further, toward the Shattuck Avenue commercial corridor and the Gourmet Ghetto.

In August I was in Berkeley for a day and was able to explore the La Loma Path, which is on an existing but newly opened section of public right of way. The paths are built, restored, maintained, and advocated for by a local group called the Berkeley Path Wanderers Association, but a situation has emerged common to the NIMBYism (not in my backyard) often found in cities like Berkeley--especially in the very wealthy areas such as the Berkeley Hills--where this new path on public land has become a contested element of the landscape. The property owners adjacent to the path seem to feel that the occasional walker is a nuisance and a danger, as indicated in the hand drawn, chalk signs depicted below. Regardless, the trail is an excellent addition to the neighborhood and I encourage those readers in the Bay Area who have not yet explored the trails to do so. A map of Berkeley's Pathways is available at many bookstores as well as at the Path Wanderers website.

What follows is a short photo-essay of the walk, with some commentary in the captions.

A path-side fence note, indicating where either humans or perhaps dogs should shit.

More fence notes written in chalk on the newly opened pedestrian right of way, noting: "GO HOME PATHHOLES!!! WE WANT QUIET!!!" as well as "EMERGENCY + 12 kV [electrical power] lines = French Fried Path Critters! Yummy!". Electrical lines pass by overhead; the neighbors are either worried for people walking on the path, or threatening that walking the path could lead to death. But then wouldn't living next to the path also be dangerous?

Where the path cuts across Campus Drive there is a campaign asking people to "Join the Kindness [R]Evolution Today!" The smaller sign to the right implores  "Neighbors please be civilized and considerate: Dear Berkeley,
Please help our music teacher regain her essential privacy and safety in her own home and use the easliy available alternative walkway on Glendale Ave just across the Glendale - La Loma intersection (at the bottom) an only 3 houses north (at the top). She needs to have peace and no more disturbance (after 10 months of horrors) in order to recover from injuries of a car accident caused by a drunk driver and more recent police brutality during her unfair arrestes in her own home. May G-d (sic) allow you to fill your heart with the compassion to the suffering of those you meet on your path!" There is a link to the Kindness Revolution website as well. While it is unfortunate that the resident is suffering from many injuries of various natures, I wonder if directing anger and frustration about these issues is best done in through a sign that reflects more-so frustrations that what was considered a private part of one person's backyard is not part of the Berkeley's foot-based transportation network.

The path alongside the music teacher's house.

A dragonfly waiting on a not-quite-ripe blackberry for the August fog to burn off and the air to warm. The blackberries were not quite ripe.

As a perk for winning a Nobel Prize, UC Berkeley faculty are given access to the areas where parking is restricted only to Nobel Laureates. I'm guessing the house in the background here is the residence of an emeritus faculty member who took his or her sign with them upon retirement.

Bamboo acting to fence a property in, with a redwood in the background, banana trees and a palm of some variety in the middle ground.

Figs and apples ripening together, overhead. Berkeley and the Bay Area in general are such a mixture of ecosystems, including, in this case two fairly different types of fruit.

and the airports

Looking north at Philadelphia International Airport, from Hog Island Road. October 2012.

The very sites they were most drawn to--the business centres, the shopping plazas, the franchise restaurants, the tourist spots and the airports--would appear slightly illusory, never really experienced in spite of the photographs taken, the souvenirs bought and the money spent. -- from The Beautiful and the Damned: A Portrait of the New India by Siddhartha Deb (p. 52)

municipal adaptations, by humans and by vegetation

The sidewalk ends but a path continues. South Broad Street, far south Philadelphia. October 2012.

One of the more enjoyable Internet-based finds I've made over the last year has been the work of Chris Berthelsen and his Tokyo-based urban lab, a-small-lab. His weekend explorations to the metropolitan fringes of Tokyo, walking around and exploring for the tiny disruptions of gardens in the concrete and asphalt landscape of urban Japan, or the  creativity of Tokyo's residents to improve upon or fix small elements of their day-to-day lives is a window into the small details of living in a city and a country that has, for me at least, remained foreign aside from the writings of Haruki Murakami, the films of Hayao Miyazaki, and assorted articles about Japan's place global economy or awesome espresso. And perhaps Murakami, films, and articles all conspire to keeping Japan foreign. But Berthelsen's work opens up the urban fabric of Tokyo, the little pocket gardens along a sidewalk or the place of semi-mythological feral raccoon-dogs in the nighttime streets and back alleys is an enjoyable, informative, and highly insightful diversion from my scholarly research on and daily life in cities in the United States.

In the spirit of Berthelsen's work, I've attempted over the past month to first 'see' and then to document similarly unique and/or strange but normal elements of Philadelphia. In the photo above is a local adaptation of an poorly-thought out sidewalk situation. The road on the right merges into Broad Street on the left, the main north-south artery through central Philadelphia. Rather than continue the sidewalk to cross to its continuation, the planners just ended the concrete, leaving residents to continue the path themselves. The three photos below, while perhaps not fitting with the DIY impulse that a-small-lab seeks out, document vegetation overtaking views in Fairmount Park. The benches at one point presented a view of the Schuylkill River, along with the Delaware River on the eastern side of the city, one of the two rivers that define central Philadelphia's boundaries. The park's gardeners come through and mow the grass regularly, but the fringe of shrubbery and trees has completely overtaken any view, leaving the benches to present a scene of urban nature likely not intended by the landscape architects who located the benches where they are. The three benches are ordered with the first one furthest downstream and consequently closest to the city itself, and the other two progressing out and upstream toward the city's edge.

Bench 1 in Fairmount Park along West River Drive. At one point this bench overlooked the Schuylkill River, but the riot of growth now interrupts the view.

Bench 2, also not overlooking the Schuylkill River.

...and Bench 3, looking out at trees instead of the river. These three photos from mid-September 2012.