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Kings Island, Hicon Inc., 2011

I’m a roller coaster, carousel, and general amusement park enthusiast, and I recently returned from a trip that included a stop at Kings Island in Kings Mills, Ohio (near Cincinnati). I didn’t see any concrete markings there, but I did find this brick with the logo of Hicon, Inc. in the Oktoberfest area. There were several such bricks set here and there in the brick walkway.

Hicon is a masonry and paving contractor based in Cincinnati. According to their About Us page, they were founded in 1977, the same year the Demon roller coaster (now defunct) opened at Kings Island, and a couple of years before the famous Beast.

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S. Fairview Ave (Alley), graffiti, 2003

Bored with all my usual walks around the east side, I decided to walk through one of the many alleys that run north-south in between the neighborhood streets. Some houses have their garages facing the alley, others facing the street; I don’t know why they are not consistent or what led to preferring one over the other. I have rarely if ever seen the backs of all these houses before, so it was a strange and disorienting experience, which served to make my walk a lot more interesting. The alley I chose was between South Clemens and Fairview Avenues, and is asphalt. There is obviously no sidewalk, but I began checking some of the driveway entrances for stamps. To be honest, all the garages back there looked pretty tired, and in a couple of places there were mysterious concrete pads where a garage or shed was probably demolished, so I wondered how old any stamps I found would be. I didn’t find any, but I did find this piece of graffiti.

Was “Brain” a nickname, or did Brian somehow manage to misspell his own name? I’m guessing the latter, but what do you think?

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Ed Brackins, 1960

I picked up this relatively rare Ed Brackins stamp on my walk tonight. It’s the latest dated one I have; the two others with dates are from the early 1950s. I think it says 1960, but I can’t be entirely sure of the last digit. I also failed to note where I found it, so I know I was somewhere in the area bordered by Regent, Lathrop, Kalamazoo, and 496, but that’s the best I can do. I will look for it on an upcoming walk and come back and edit this once I have found it.

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Auditorium Rd. (East Lansing), Lansing Poured Wall, 2004

I made another expedition to my alma mater, MSU, to pick something up from the library. I parked in my favorite lot, the metered spaces arranged in a horseshoe by the Hannah Administration Building, and walked across the expansive pavement there. It brought back a distinct memory of marching in front of the building sometime around 2003, chanting union slogans, in the early days of the Graduate Employees Union. I had the honor of being one of the founding members.

Today – May 5 – is the 20th anniversary of the day I defended my dissertation at MSU. I don’t recall seeing this sidewalk being laid, and don’t know whether it was before or after my graduation. It is right out in front of the admin building, and I surely walked over it or its predecessor during that demonstration.

My back is to Hannah the building here, but Hannah the bronze statue is visible in the upper right distance.

This is only the second place I’ve found a Lansing Poured Wall stamp. The other ones were on Jolly Road in front of Capital Honda, also dated 2004.

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W. Circle Dr. (East Lansing), Granger, 2000

Continuing (belatedly, it’s been a hard couple of months) my walk around MSU’s campus, I also collected this Granger stamp in the Beal Botanical Garden, near the Library.

Also, here’s a bonus squirrel who was hanging out nearby. I wish I’d had a good camera on me, instead of just my tiny phone’s toy camera.

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Auditorium Rd. (East Lansing),TCI, 2011

I went to MSU’s campus for the first time in years today, and rambled around once-familiar places that now feel like somewhere remembered from a dream. Outside the Auditorium Road approach to my old haunt, South Kedzie Hall, I found this stamp.

Pardon my foot.

I presume the TCI behind this is the one from Eaton Rapids, Michigan. Google reviews suggest it went out of business within the last couple of years.

The TCI stamp is on the other side of the crosswalk. The stamp in the foreground of this picture is Central 2016, but I seem to have somehow put my finger over the lens while photographing that one. I was feeling rushed by the fact that cars kept stopping thinking I was trying to cross.
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Sidewalk-adjacent news

Sidewalk-adjacent news: they have started clearing trees away for the “Michigan Avenue Rehabilitation” project, which is supposed to improve the Michigan Avenue corridor from Pennsylvania to 127 – in other words, the length of the east side – for pedestrians and bicyclists.

Fans of the blog know I’m inclined toward anything that improves sidewalks. I’m also in favor of bicycle lanes, especially when they mean cyclists won’t be risking collisions with pedestrians on the sidewalk. I get why they ride on the sidewalk, and when I rode my bike I would ride on the sidewalk on Michigan too since the alternative is worse, but I’d still rather not have them scare me by blowing past my shoulder inches away (often without warning as they should).

The trouble is that I’m also generally opposed to anything that involves removing mature trees. The honey locust trees on this stretch are pretty, making for nice shade and pleasant colors. They stand in dedicated little holes in the sidewalk that I’ve always found a bit fascinating. According to the official phasing map, the city is going to replace them one to one – actually better than one to one in some blocks – but a tree that has already had decades to grow is always better than a new planting. I wish they had tried harder to work around them, at least keeping the ones that could be kept.

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S. Magnolia Ave., EPM, 2024

They have started to replace the sidewalks that were removed during the recent gas pipeline project on East Kalamazoo Street. This one is near the southeast corner of Kalamazoo and Magnolia. Someday some new resident of the neighborhood will wonder what happened in 2023-24 that so many sidewalks are embossed with those years, just as I once was with Cantu & Sons 1987-88.

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E. Kalamazoo St., McClain, illegible date

At first I thought this one was just plain illegible, but after studying my photo at home, I realized it is probably McClain. I have done them before, and their other stamps have also tended to be blurry. The date is hopeless.

It’s in front of Edge Partnerships, a PR firm, on the north side of East Kalamazoo Street between Grand and Washington. This building was formerly home to longtime business Wolverine Typewriter. I am not sure when they first opened and finally closed, but as they were in this location from at least 1949-2001, their employees probably saw this sidewalk laid.

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E. Kalamazoo St., F & M, 2009

I walked downtown along East Kalamazoo Street to check out the going out of business sale at venerable jeweler Linn & Owen. I didn’t buy anything, but I did see this F & M stamp and, in the distance beyond, the ghost sign advertising three locations of Beaner’s. Today Beaner’s is known as Biggby and only one of these three locations is extant, the one on Allegan.

There isn’t much else to say about this stamp, besides that it’s on the north side of East Kalamazoo Street, east of South Grand Avenue, in front of the Michigan DHHS’s South Grand building.