twin city sidewalks: *** Sidewalk Weekend! *** #52

Sidewalk Rating: On the Brink

Little by little, he passed through new and different streets.

So many streets! They reached far out into the landscape, building after building, even extending up the hill and along the canals, an endless progression of larger and smaller blocks of stone, with apartments carved into them for both the wealthy and the indigent. Now and again came a church—a rigid, smooth new one, or else a stately, tranquil older one with ivy on its crumbling walls. Joseph went past a police building, from whose premesis he had once heard, years before, the screams of a mistreated person whom they had bound and were trying to subdue by beating him with a stick.

Now his path led him across a bridge, gradually the streets were becoming less regular and restricted, and the region he was walking through took on a village-like character. Cats were lying before the doors of the houses, and the houses were encircled by little gardens. The evening sun was laying itself yellowish-red upon the upper walls of the buildings and the trees in the gardens on on the faces and hands of people. He had reached the suburbs.

-Robert Walser, The Assistant.

[Sunset on the Greenway during the coldest bike ride of the year.]

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[Click on images for links.]

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But the big winner was outside on Nicollet Mall. Between 8th and 9th Streets — right outside Target, IDS Center and Macy’s — the sidewalk accommodated 25,000 pedestrians per day last year. That matches the highest volume measured over the last decade.

[via DT Journal.]