Instead of screaming into the void of Twitter, I bring you a weekly highlight reel of what it’s like going places in Greater Hartford when one is gloriously car-free. These posts are on a slight time delay because nobody needs to know exactly where I am when I am there.

1. Everything seems louder and faster when it’s raining. The people with the most protection are less inclined to stop and wait. It’s unnerving to be using the unsignalized, marked crosswalk and hear the screech skid of school bus tires. The cherry on this sundae of an icky, cold, rainy morning commute is finding yet another Patriot Front sticker on a Farmington Avenue pole. Am I the only person who bothers to peel these off as I find them? Unfortunately, I just clipped my nails and will have to come back later or hope someone else knows to take down the White Supremacist propaganda littering Asylum Hill.

2. A person pulls her enormous land yacht halfway into the intersection of Woodland and Farmington to make a right turn on red, even though this move should be banned everywhere. She’s looking left. Only left. The car traffic lights turn red. The pedestrian light turns white (not green, which is weirdly inconsistent) and I have the indisputable right-of-way, but this is not my first rodeo and I know this driver ain’t gonna look to her right. I’m tired, and decide to strike the Fearless Girl pose in the intersection because damn I am tired of nonsense. She finally glances while making the turn and jacks in her brakes. I stand there for a few more seconds, cussing her out and basically doing an interpretive dance of her stupidity. I want her to remember this. I want her to worry that I might scratch the paint of her precious SUV. Look both ways, FFS.

A few days later, I return to this intersection. I’m standing on the other side, waiting for the signal. This time, I watch someone begin to make the same maneuver — turning right on red without looking both ways — and nearly hit an ambulance head-on. The ambulance sirens were on, and I think it’s time to make vehicles less sound proof and/or have limits on stereo volume and/or install technology that freezes vehicles from moving until sensors pick up that the driver has in fact looked in both directions. 

3. It’s early evening. I watch someone drive out of an elderly housing parking lot. The motorist has not turned on any of the headlights. They are driving on the wrong side of the road for most of the block. There is oncoming traffic. Before you say it, yes, this street does have a striped double yellow line. 

If I called the police every time I saw someone driving dangerously, I would be on the phone all day long.

4. The rule is to not leave the house in shambles because the city is the extension of one’s living room and you will encounter people you know whether you are ready to or not. For awhile, I had a note taped to my mirror reminding me of this. After a week, I began ignoring my own instructions. 

I had gotten my Covid booster and was desperate for fresh air and distraction (because sitting still indoors would mean worrying if every odd ache, pain, and itch was a side effect) so I left my house with muddy boots, messy hair, and my favorite hoodie which is safety-pinned together…and that’s of course when I ran into the mayor walking Chip in the park. Say what you will about his politics or leadership, even if you look like you just crawled out of a roadside ditch, the mayor’s not a snob and will graciously acknowledge you.

But I probably should clean my boots off, at the least, if I’m wearing my grungy sweatshirt.

5. Walking downtown I pass a neighbor who is out with his dog in the park. I feel bad for forgetting this one’s name, but I know who his other dog is, I swear. This friend works in healthcare and explains to me how the vaccine is like putting a condom over a protein, but that the new variant has 30 proteins. We talk from across a fence at a distance, unmasked, but full of Covid condoms. I might’ve gotten that metaphor wrong. It was a lot to think about that early in the day, but preferable to, let’s say, walking into a tiny coffeeshop and finding myself awkwardly standing near a dozen unmasked younguns having their superspreader brunch. 

Later, I cross paths with one of my favorite people, a former neighbor who defected to East Hartford. We talk at a distance before he decides it’s too cold, too windy to be standing around like this. Neither meeting was planned, and this is how it goes when you’re outside of a car.

6. Paint does not protection make, and the Farmington Avenue “bike lane” proves this. Tonight, it’s a pickup truck. Another day, it’s a Rent-A-Center truck. People act like we don’t have an abundance of parking lots they could be using. I’m on foot, but I cringe thinking about someone riding a bicycle who has to either swerve or jack on their brakes. Not every cyclist used to be a bike messenger, and that lane exists for a reason! What entitlement, to put others’ lives in danger for one’s convenience.

Trouble often comes in threes. Walking on Capitol Avenue below the Sigourney Street bridge, I look up at the construction project. I do not recommend this. There is a large barrel balancing in a way that seems perhaps not entirely stable, like it could come barreling through the gap and onto the sidewalk below. There’s mud or sludge or something that’s dripped all over the mural (the one demanding we show the city love).

Up ahead, a jay driver. You’ve heard of jay walkers, the pejorative term used for people who refuse to submit to a car-centric system? Well, the jay driver is someone who puts their vehicle where it does not belong. It’s not rare for people driving down Park Terrace to roll into the crosswalk, I suppose thinking that this will speed up the light cycle. It doesn’t. And if I catch someone doing this shit and notice they are planning to turn left, I go on ahead and push that pedestrian beg button to make them wait even longer. . . even though this is one of the few signalized intersections where I can safely cross without aid of a pedestrian cycle. Inconvenienced? Oh well. I’m not agile enough to parkour over someone’s hood or that would be my signature move.