4AM, Two Hours Before Deadline

Over time I want to document the Franklin Blvd. corridor, to describe for posterity the surroundings I ride through. Here's my long time rig:
















I've been on this same bike since 1999, 9,000+ miles. Aside from the aluminum frame, everything else was manufauctured elsewhere: The panniers, Canada. The leather seat, England. The entire drivetrain, Japan. The Continental tyres, Germany. The tyre tubes, Taiwan. And I'm going to guess that the handlebar tape and waterbottle were made in China. But because it's a Cannondale, it's Merikan!

Nonetheless, I ride it only on Merikan streets, the most noteworthy of which is my very own Franklin Blvd. Armed with a camera yesterday morning I snapped a few photos of our decrepit landscapes:
(Note: Bike included to show scale)

1.5 miles north of my house, this new development of 115 houses units probably built out only 35 of them due to the stalled economic engine of suburban sprawl.

You can't enter/exit from Franklin Blvd. because of this wall, stretching from the canal to the next street. Technically, you can enter it through an always locked gate, put there presumably by fire department codes...a point of egress. What's the probability that the engine would have the keys in the event of a fire?

To soften the blow of the hard wall, the developer installed vegetative units over mulch, because we are masters at using nature to obfuscate shitty design. If I understand things right, they hired an architect to design the wall and a landscape architect to design the shrubbery. Their last words, at 4AM, huddled over their cardboard models, the day before design deadline, must have been "fuck it."

Note the theoretical pedestrians using the sidewalk, an area clearly bustling with vibrant activity, people walking to and fro with shopping bags of groceries from the neighborhood store, walking to visit with the next door neighbors, walking to the park or other civic realm.

Well, the neighborhood store is was here:

(Note: Bike included to show scale)

This is the Franklin side of the nearest, shuttered market, .9 miles further north.