95821

I spent an hour yesterday evening (Christmas day) walking around my mom's Sacramento neighborhood in a failed attempt to work off all those excessive holiday calories eaten.

Twenty six years ago I used to walk the same route I did last night, from my old house to my high school, Mira Loma. It took me about 23 minutes each way, something kids cannot do in Elk Grove these days. No, today they must be chauffeured by SUV, because of the six hundred and fifty thousand child molesters that now live among us, because of the incredible distances between home and school, and because of the horrible social stigmas put upon children who pedestrianate. Only poor kids walk to school. But I digress.

I wondered why the 95821 zip code hadn't turned into the suburban slum that I know 95758 will become. My premise is that all suburban areas eventually turn to liquid shit, but this one hasn't. Why?

One thing that was immediately evident, during the full hour of walking (about three miles) around 95821 is that I didn't pass one single speed bump. Not one. And this in a neighborhood that uniformly lacks sidewalks and whose streets are as seemingly wide as any Elk Grovian "neighborhood." I'm forced to walk in the street, yet I felt safe. I felt safe because the few cars that did pass me did so at a reasonable speed and with a sufficient margin that I did not feel threatened. I might have actually been threatened, but if pedestrians don't feel it, they are willing to walk.

Why was it safe? Why weren't there any speed bumps, traffic circles, neckdowns, raised crosswalks, textured pavements, chicanes, realigned intersections, reversing curves, jigglebumps, hammerheads, lateral shifts, split medians or angle points?

There were also six other groups or individuals who were doing the same thing! Walking! I overtook an old man walking at Greenwood and North, and passed him up again on my way back at Greenwood and Robertson. We exchanged greetings twice, and chuckled at the second passing. This neighborhood has a fair degree of vibrancy because it has pedestrians. They are eyes and ears on the neighborhood. They make casing difficult. They make it just a little bit harder for chowderheads to conduct crimes. In Elk Grove, pedestrians are criminals. No one should be out walking, and if they are they are most definitely up to no good.

But I ask again...why does 95821 not have traffic calming devices? There is some intrinsic quality that I haven't yet been able to define that makes it better than anything we've ever built in the past twenty five years.

Something for me to discover and to blog about in the future...