To recap: Blogger gets ticketed for not scraping his sidewalk down to the bones according to Ordinance No. 445, then realizes that the city has a few spots where a fellow might bust a hipbone, because the city -- aka "the people who brought you Ordinance No. 445" -- didn't shovel enough. Local writer and photographer Abraham Piper, who blogs at www.downhillbothways.com, walks around the city a lot, taking pictures; when he encountered the sheets of Antarctic-quality ice on public property, he posted some examples and made a proposal. To wit:
"1. The city of Minneapolis should obey Ordinance No. 445. (This is so obvious that it feels silly to write.)
"2. Until the city has begun valuing this ordinance enough to follow it themselves, there ought to be a moratorium on ticketing homeowners for violating it."
Whoa! Step back, bro! Tamp it down; that's practically seditious talk there. I asked Abe if he'd heard back:
"No, not personally," said Piper, a blogger and social-media editor. "I just saw on the news that they contacted [director of winter operations] Mike Kennedy and he said they were looking into it. I believe him."
Wha? Don't you want a personal apology? Vengeance shall be yours! "Not really," Piper said. "The open letter was to make a point, and if it makes a difference, that's great."
In other words: Minnesotan speaks up, calmly, with wit; public official says they'll get on it. And they will, probably. In some cities they'd send around an inspector to ticket Piper for having an insufficiently oiled mailbox lid, or have the cops pull him over for having a burned-out glove-box light. In Minnesota, you can just imagine a city employee thinking, Aw, jeez, that looks bad. Guys, c'mon.
A few related notes:
1. Bare clean concrete is nice, but you know what I don't see on city streets? Bare clean concrete. Entire lanes of high-traffic streets have Junior Alps that reduce three lanes to two. I'm not saying snow emergencies should be followed by troops of airborne city workers with jetpacks hovering over main arteries, punishing snowbanks with Bond-style flamethrowers and small missiles, but if I saw such crews opening up a lane on Portland, I'd feel ever so much better about my property tax bill.
2. Earlier this season we had an enormous snow dump, followed by freezing drizzle; snowblowers spat teeth trying to eat those drifts. But we cleaned the driveway, because we had to get to work to earn money to pay taxes to fund the plows ... which came by and pushed everything back into the driveway. I came home one night to find a wall of snow boulders visible from space. Several chunks the size of Paul Bunyan's tonsils had been knocked into the sidewalk. Since most of the people in this neighborhood do not walk the dog accompanied by a sherpa with a backpack of pitons, ropes and oxygen tanks suitable for scaling large natural formations, I had to roll them out of the way. Otherwise you hear people muttering outside your window at night: We'll make base camp here and try to make Nicollet after dawn.
I'm sure I would have been liable for a ticket if I hadn't dismantled the boulder. And I'm sure I would have gotten a ticket if I'd stuck dynamite under it, shouted "Fire in the hole!" and blown the thing up, too. You cannot win. I ended up rolling it onto the boulevard and sticking a sign that said FREE into its crown; it was gone the next day. The only other alternative was rolling it into the street, but we live on a hill, and I could just imagine it rolling down the road until it took a lucky bounce and went through someone's window. We accept almost every manifestation of snow in these parts, but "feral" just crosses the line.
Sometimes snow is good enough. Ice: bad. Bare sidewalk: best. But a crunchy layer of snow that gives purchase to a traveler's foot isn't the worst option, is it? I think I speak for many when I say I don't want to slip and concuss my brainpan on the ground, and beyond that it's all gravy. But hey: You want a clean sidewalk, head to Kenwood. They salt their ice to dissolve it, and they use sea salt. I know what you're saying: Oh, so gourmet, but most commercial sea salt doesn't have iodine, a necessary nutrient. True. Life is a trade-off. But somehow we manage.
jlileks@startribune.com • 612-673-7858 More daily at www.startribune.com/buzz
