I noticed a city worker spray painting a low area on Regent Street’s sidewalk recently, and subsequently I’ve seen quite a lot of spray markings on uneven sidewalk edges around the neighborhood, including this impressive sequence of them on the west side of Lathrop Street between Kalamazoo and Marcus. I wonder if the recent activity is the work of Ryan Kost, who is running for City Council largely on a platform of “clean up trash and fix sidewalks.” A recent campaign Facebook post by Kost brags about how many bad sidewalks he’s reported to the city.

I don’t know that the paint indicates the city’s intention to do anything about it or if it’s just a warning. There are so many uneven sidewalks on the east side that they could never mark all of them. When I walk after dark, I look at my feet just about all the time. When an area is particularly dark, either due to a street light or a tree, I slow down to a creep. All that caution didn’t stop me from taking another fall the other night while walking along Prospect Street somewhere around Magnolia. As I stumbled, I knew I couldn’t stop the fall from happening, so I tried to launch myself at the grass for a softer landing. It was a good idea, but I fell just short. Luckily it wasn’t a very hard fall compared with some that I’ve had.