Historicist: "The city that nobody loves"
Elsewhere in the Ist-a-Verse
With this morning's surprise snowfall, Toronto pedestrians are once again relegated to nimbly navigating slush-covered sidewalks—an unpredictible process that leaves us carefully weaving through each other like mountain goats passing on a cliff.
What really gets our goad, however, is one of winter's notorious peeves: the lazy sidewalk shoveler. Mandated by the City to clear the sidewalk within twelve hours of a snowfall lest they face a $105 fine, the lazy shoveler quickly does the minimum amount of work, leaving a single shovel-width of clear space that gets filled back in with slush within mere moments as pedestrians step around each other in single file. If the weather remains cold, this teeny trail turns into a knobby, hard-pack terrain of bonded ice, immune to future shovel blades.
Of course, there are also those homeowners and store proprietors who are apparently expert property surveyors, stopping their work with laser-accurate precision right at the property line, even if there is only a half-metre strip of snow left by a neighbour that might be removed with a single push of the spade.
It was frustrating this morning observing senior citizens, a blind person, a mother pushing a stroller, and someone in a wheelchair trying to maneuver their way around our city sidewalks. The sad irony is how the lazy shovelers seem to have no problem keeping their driveways clear.
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I propose that the aged and infirm be equipped with shovel-tipped shoes so they can contribute to the greater good as they shuffle along the pavement, risking life and limb during these inclement times.
Heck my dear departed grandmother had a flip-down spike attachment for her cane to aid her winter progress. It also made it more menacing when she brandished it while admonishing underperforming bank managers who wouldn't hold a place in line for her or ne'er-do-well grandsons who forgot to swivel her seat for her at McDonald's.
My gramma had the brass! People these days are too soft.
Don't get me started-- the city sends out crews of yellow-trucked shovellers to clear and salt the sidewalks of the old and infirm, but that don't really help anyone if ten feet down the walk from a nicely cleared section is an icey death trap.
As spring approaches, get to know the north side of east-west streets, and the east side of north-south streets. Due to Toronto's geographical placement, these are the parts of the city that thaw first.
Bring back the Wendel Clark PSAs.
If something needs to be done, or maintained, and it costs money, but there is no profit gained in doing it, then more than likely it will be done half-assed and under-staffed. It falls upon us to take the wheel. It is simply up to us to look out for our own. Someday the person who can't walk down a street will be you or I. When I was a kid, my dad had a snowblower (1970's) and he lived for this sh*t. Not only would he get up at 4:00 Am to do ours, he would go up and down our little street and do the neighbors, then take it over to my grandmother's street and do the same thing.
Just like Ben Wicks used to say...
"Be Noice, Cleah Yer Oice!"
If you want to talk about blocked sidewalks, one has to look no further than the lazy ass motorists who cheerfully park 3/4s of their SUVs on the sidewalk in an act of 'consideration' for (who else?) other drivers so they can maneuver their own filth bucket around them. Of course, they're only inconveniencing the 'unimportant' pedestrians, elderly, mothers with strollers and cyclists who are often forced into traffic. (This is especially rampant outside my building because of the Starbucks downstairs....who woulda thought?)
I used to live above both a Starbucks and a Rogers video, which, to top it all off, was on a part of the street with no parking spaces. This apparently gave a lot of people license to park on the sidewalk to run-in and return their videos or pick-up a chai latte. Sadly, one of the worst offenders for the sidewalk park coffee run were EMS workers. Who's gonna complain about an EMS SUV sitting on the sidewalk, right? (On a side note, that Rogers location has been a horrible corporate citizen to the people who live in the condo above.)
There's a huge SUV on the street where I live that parks in a driveway, but ass-end into the sidewalk. The reason for this? Because they've set up a portable basketball net for their kids that prevents the vehicle from pulling forward off the sidewalk.
The other thing that irks me about winter sidewalk is people who dump ten kilos of rock salt on it and walk away instead of shoveling it, turning the sidewalk into a pool of slush and toxic salt.
During the last big snowfall, people along my street had to dig-out their cars. Where did they put that snow? On the sidewalk, of course. They don't have to walk on it. Also, people like Steve's dad who plow their neighbours' walks without any expectation of reward are fantastic.
Oops. Sorry. I was a lazy shoveler this morning. I plead lateness for work, a co-op apartment building [five doorways that need paths! a courtyard! a sidewalk! and a garbage hut!] and the fact that when I did everything perfectly the last time it took me 20 minutes longer. But I did shovel the slush onto the upper part of our lawn, and not into the street as so many people mistakenly do.