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Jones St., BBRPCI, 1984

I saw this BBRPCI stamp on the east side of Jones Street, between Kalamazoo and Prospect, on my walk tonight. It’s not very interesting. There are similar ones all over the neighborhood, and I’ve covered lots of them in the blog. It’s definitely not the most interesting stamp in the vicinity, since there is a Minnis and Ewer stamp dated June 1910 one lot north.

The stamp is illuminated by a streetlight overhead, hence the color.

But this is the real reason I stopped here for photos. The rambling old house this stamp is in front of – while checking the address in the city’s property records, I noticed it was built in 1898 – is decorated to the nines for Halloween. The big street tree out front is festooned with caution tape and haunted by a black-cloaked phantom. There are decorations on the porch and on the adjacent yard (the house seems to be on a double lot). I wish people on my block decorated, but I’m the only person who does much.

Here, enjoy a few photos.

I try to walk different streets throughout the spooky season in search of decorations I haven’t seen yet, and this was a new display to me. When I walk around this neighborhood, I usually stay on Prospect and miss anything south of there, so I’m glad I tried checking some of the north/south streets for displays. I also found a nice one on Virginia.

A view of the lighted spot where the stamp is, for context. East Kalamazoo Street is in view. What looks like streaks of rain is actually caution tape fluttering from the branches of the street tree.
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Lathrop St., spray paint markings

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.

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Lathrop St., Cantu & Sons, 1988

This stamp is from Lathrop Street south of Elizabeth, on the west side of the street. The sidewalk ends here. On the east side of the street it continues, as Lathrop curves around to meet Allen. Unlike other streets nearby that were truncated by the construction of I-496 in the late 1960s, Lathrop would always have ended more or less here, because Stabler Park lay to the south. The turn that joins Lathrop to Allen is now a bit diagonal, in parallel to 496, whereas it used to be more squared off (as I can see on HistoricAerials.com). The result is that while the last house on the east side has survived, the last two on the west side were 496 casualties.

The stamp is on the very last piece of sidewalk on the west side, and I find it odd that it extends a little past the driveway for no apparent reason. Since it’s dated 1988, it was laid long after any houses existed to the south. My guess is that it marks the lot line. The doomed house that used to be next door to this one, 628 Lathrop, sold in 1957 for $6,800 cash. The real estate card notes that it had a dark room in the basement.

A view of the stamp from the south. It’s on the closest edge, facing this way.
Past the fence is I-496, but once upon a time Stabler Park would have been over there.
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Sidewalks in the Comics

I have no sidewalks to share with you today, so instead I’ll share a comic with you that my husband shared with me. He follows the Classic Comic Strips Twitter, and pointed out to me that they had shared the following “Outbursts of Everett True” comic.

“The Outbursts of Everett True” by A.D. Condo.

My husband occasionally likes to share examples of “The Outbursts of Everett True” with me and from these encounters I think I have gotten a feel for what it’s about. It always starts with Mr. True getting riled up about someone’s rude, obnoxious, or otherwise antisocial behavior, and then ends with him pummeling the offender. I think the point is to allow the readers to vicariously live out their fantasies of setting ne’er-do-wells straight.

According to Classic Comic Strips, this strip is dated 6/10/08, making it a touch younger than the oldest sidewalk markings I’ve found in Lansing. One imagines that so-called “artificial stone sidewalks” were coming to Everett True’s neighborhood soon enough. In Lansing, the installation and maintenance of sidewalks is the responsibility of a property owner, and in the old days, the City Council did formally compel owners to have sidewalks constructed. As is true in many cities, it is still technically the homeowner’s responsibility to pay for sidewalk repairs in front of their house in Lansing, but in practice it appears that they have not been charging homeowners for sidewalk work in recent years.

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E. Michigan Ave., AquaShield utility cover

I stopped to check out the newly-renovated Speedway on East Michigan Avenue (the north side, between Clemens and Regent), which was on the eve of reopening. This had previously been famous as the only Speedway with no canopy. The canopy was torn off around 2010 when it became unsafe. I guess their new masters, 7-11, took one look at that and said “What the hell?” Anyway, I noticed this new storm sewer cover amidst the fresh asphalt.

What, no East Jordan Iron Works/EJ? Since the URL is conveniently provided right on the cover (I’m sure that won’t ever age badly) I checked out AquaShield Inc’s Web site. They are a lot younger than EJ, as they have a banner celebrating their 20th anniversary in 2019. Unlike EJ, they don’t just make the iron covers, but offer entire stormwater systems. Their About page doesn’t give much history, but they are based in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

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E. Kalamazoo St., Leavitt & Starck, 2021

I have to issue a partial retraction to my Hall of Shame entry on the Allen Place project (on the north side of East Kalamazoo Street between Shepard and Allen). I had believed that no sidewalk marking was left anywhere on the Kalamazoo side of the building when the new sidewalk was laid. Recently, however, I discovered that there is one solitary stamp in the expanse, located not in the main sidewalk path but on the pavement next to the curb, oddly facing the curb instead of the building. The stamp is, in fact, right in the area that I saw being installed and photographed for a previous entry.

Let’s say I will put an asterisk by the Hall of Shame entry. I still think there should be more stamps for a project this big. By convention, stamps are placed at the start and end of a run of new sidewalk, though that is not required in Lansing (the code here merely says they must stamp wherever they are directed to by the Director of Public Works).

The stamp is in the lower right of this photo.
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S. Foster Ave., DPW, 1938

This is a typical “second style” DPW stamp from the west side of South Foster Avenue between Michigan and Prospect. I actually took the photo not primarily because of the stamp, but rather because it is another example of those odd geometric markings that I do not know the purpose of. It is similar to, though not as large as, the ones on Jerome Street. I hope I eventually figure out what the deal is with them.

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New Posting Schedule

When I reached the second anniversary, I decided to consider changing the blog’s update schedule again. It was originally updated daily, but I cut back to three times a week as I began to run out of new stamps within my daily walk radius. With another year gone by, it’s become apparent that I once again need to make an adjustment to match how many new sidewalk-related tidbits I’m finding on a regular basis. The fact that I am working more hours than I was a year ago factors into this decision too. So, beginning this week, I will be posting each Monday and Friday.

Thank you for reading! Both of you!

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Regent St., Bum Walk on Notice?

Recently, my husband drew my attention to the fact that some sidewalk had just been marked with spray paint by a city employee. I looked over in that direction – the east side of the 400 block of Regent Street – and immediately knew which bit of walk it was. It’s a spot where two slabs have subsided where they meet, leaving a V-shaped valley. It has been a hazard to me on my frequent walks around here because it fills with mud in the summer and ice in the winter and in both conditions it has been the cause of my slipping more than once.

In this photo, the marked area is past the driveway seen center-left. Parked on the street to the right is the city vehicle responsible.

It would be nice to think that the spray paint markings mean that the walk is slated to be replaced soon. In my experience, that is not necessarily true. Often they seem to paint trip hazards just to make them visible, without actually doing anything to rectify them. I’m sure it’s on a list to deal with eventually, but “eventually” can be a long time.

I am a little surprised to see it marked, though, because there are a lot worse sidewalks in the area for being trip hazards. The street trees have heaved up blocks of cement in countless places around the east side and I’ve taken hard falls from tripping on them at night more times than I care to remember.

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E. Kalamazoo St., MacKenzie Co., 2022

Yes, I know. MacKenzie Co. 2022 is the new Cantu & Sons 1987. Don’t worry, I’m almost done with the new construction. This is a new curb cut at the southwest corner of East Kalamazoo and Charles Streets. There is a corresponding new one on the other side of Charles.

Previously, there were no curb cuts or any sidewalk here, just parking lots for Gerber Collision and NAPA. The Gerber lot, which is the one pictured here, had parking barriers at the edge of it, then a grassy strip, then a curb, so it was not pedestrian friendly. Good for whomever decided that should be changed. It does appear to have cost Gerber a little bit of their parking lot.