When I moved here in August of 2003, I couldn't help but notice people walk in the street all year round. In August, it's not to avoid the snow and ice piled up on the sidewalks; it almost seems to say, "Hit me with your SUV, it won't put me in any worse shape than I am now."
I talked to people. The guy at the oil change place who said he'd been here all 23 years of his life and couldn't wait to be able to leave; the 45-year-old who used to work for Nestle in Fulton who was working two full-time jobs at Carousel Center to almost make up for that lost salary.
When I moved to Syracuse in August of 2003, what first struck me is that people here walk in the streets all year round. I would come to find out that this is an extension of winter – a season which, coming from New England, I thought I understood.
Walkability is becoming a hot issue – people are paying more to live in places where they can walk to book shops and grocery stores and their kids can walk to school.
But walking shouldn't only be the luxury of those wealthy enough to pay extra to live where they don't have to drive their cars. There are a lot of people who walk because they must. They don't drive for a variety of reasons – disabilities prevent them from obtaining a driver's license, or they are students from out of the country who have not learned to drive internationally, or a car isn't in the budget.
Some landlords in the university area are helping with the winter walking in the street. For an extra $70 a year (which likely kicks up rent about $5 a month in multi-unit houses), they are clearing sidewalks en masse so that people can walk on the sidewalk, decreasing the likelihood of vehicle-pedestrian accidents.
This would be a great start in many other neighborhoods. Children wouldn't have to walk in the street to avoid snow-piled sidewalks on their way to school or the bus stop; anybody walking with a cane or crutches or a walker could be on the sidewalk and out of the streets.
And when the snow melts this spring, maybe we can think about repaving many of the city's sidewalks so that people in wheelchairs can use sidewalks as well.
I drink a lot of coffee. In fact, I drink so much coffee that when I cut back, I still drink more coffee than a lot of people. And I like to write from cafes, rather than my living room. Don't get me wrong, I love my living room, but it has a piano and a couple of guitars and a bunch of books and lots of stuff to do, so when I sit down to write, I rarely get much writing done.
For the past week and a half, I've been exploring the coworking side of the Alchemical Nursery, right here in the belly of the beast Alchemical Spaces in the Gear Factory, a five-story warehouse on Syracuse's Near West Side.
Central New York has a bunch of people in it who work out of home offices or coffee shops or bars or other places with free wifi. So, essentially, you have a bunch of creative people working in isolation, except for people they happen to run into. And those with home offices have to remember to vacuum the living room and clean the bathroom if they want to invite a client to that home office.
Meanwhile, there's an office in the building with a bunch of desks and just the li'l ol' Alchemical Nursery in it. Why not get a bunch of those creative people together to feed off each others' energy, put their heads together for new projects, and share expertise, like they do in a "normal" corporate office? I've loved this idea since I first heard about it, and I know there's a call for it here. Here's my space – I love being around all these old books!
If you're like a lot of people first checking out the Alchemical Nursery website, you take one look at the logo of the serpent swallowing its tail wrapped around a lightning bolt and say, "huh?" And even as you read more about the Nursery, you still don't understand.
The serpent swallowing its own tail is an ancient symbol called the Ouroboros. It is usually drawn in a circle, and is at times a dragon, a snake, or another serpent. It dates back to around 1600 BCEcycles, self-reflection, and regeneration.
While it may seem that swallowing one's tail is the ultimate in self-destruction, some versions show the tail living inside the serpent, as in a loop.
I've been, in general, into walking the past few years. For a while, I was living close enough to walk to the ballpark, and was seeing 20-30 games a season. I was also close enough to walk to a grocery store, though not much else. I'd occasionally walk downtown from the North Side, but people kept telling me I was crazy, between the traffic and the high-crime areas I was walking through. But whatever.
I moved to the village of East Syracuse in January 2009. It's very close to work, and has a lot going for it in terms of quaintness. I even bragged about it back in February, noting all the places I could walk to within a few blocks.
And that's still important to me, although after a year I've realized some limitations.
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