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. 

ART TRAIL
After doing part of the West Hartford Art Trail, I’ve concluded that “open studio” events should always, always, always be held outdoors. I’ve never cared for how quickly the indoor sales invoke claustrophobia, and now in what seems like the age of endless plague, there are those other concerns. Plus, outside, the lighting is better.

So, I walked down streets in West Hartford where I rarely ever go, an area that’s all residential except for an elementary school. They set this up as five locations on one Saturday, with multiple artists at each– in front yards, back yards, driveways. It was walkable, but I should have taken my bike because getting there is a bit of a hike. Could I have taken the bus? I did on the way home.

What was stunning about this relatively small distance along Fern Street is how damn many free box things there are. I did not photograph all of them. The one above is actually a free art gallery, and a friend who lives nearby tells me it’s usually stocked with small pieces of art or art supplies. My timing was unlucky, but fine, I was over here to look at the art that was for sale and to spend time walking around, visiting with a friend.

West Hartford free library Connecticut

Any other time I’ve been over this way has been on a regular, non-art-trail day, passing through to visit one friend of another and always feeling so out of place while doing it. Sometimes you can feel yourself being watched, knowing you don’t belong.

But the whole vibe changes when you have a neighborhood escort who knows pretty much everyone who has bothered to come out of their houses. In retrospect, I should’ve told everyone I was introduced to that they should remember my face, so next time I ride or walk through, there’s maybe someone who can vouch for me, who’ll say “Oh, she wasn’t casing the joint, she was admiring the candytufts on your lawn.”

There really were free libraries everywhere, and I was told which ones were stocked well and which ones tended to have lesser quality books. I love this stuff, but I also am in the world enough to know that not all free pantries and libraries everywhere remain stocked, and nothing irritates me more than seeing perpetually empty or trashed ones. Those tend to be in my neighborhood. Some group will have decided to place one in front of a school or in a vacant lot, but then they don’t do the maintenance. It feels a lot like the “we put a mural under that bridge. sure, we don’t touch it up ever, but why can’t you be happy about it?”

Anyway, this area along Fern Street is where to find all the stocked little libraries.

There was a construction project that removed segments of sidewalk on at least one of the streets I was on (possibly more. . . I might’ve walked in a few circles and lost track as to where I was) but for the side streets anyway, people were mostly driving at reasonable speeds. Maybe it’s knowing that running over one of their neighbors will make everything hella awkward? Though that didn’t stop one of my neighbors from nearly mowing me down last week when I was in the — you know it — marked crosswalk during the exclusive pedestrian phase near a park in Hartford. I yelled “asshole” at whoever almost hit me, knowing they could hear through the dark, tinted window left open a crack. I heard “Sorry, Kerri.” This made it worse. Knowing that people who know me, by name, won’t change their reckless driving behavior. Distinctive voice coming from an undistinctive car. Apology not accepted. Do better.

But back in WeHa: sunny day, everything’s beautiful, la la la, and then I turned the corner to see a USPS vehicle parked in the bicycle lane across from an elementary school on Fern Street. So, infused with the power of suburbia*, I stood there and snapped pics of the illegally and dangerously parked vehicle while its driver watched. This was around the corner from a side street where there was ample on-street parking available and no bike lane with which to interfere.

(*Just kidding. I’m always like this.)

I don’t feel much sympathy when I walked myself a few miles to this location, but someone whose literal job is to walk around delivering mail can’t go an extra fifteen feet.

I suspected that if the USPS was parking in this unprotected bike lane, that others would be too, and as soon as I posted this on Twitter heard that landscapers leave their trucks and trailers here too. Because over-manicured lawns are more important than keeping people safe. It checks out. The Farmington Ave bike lane in Hartford is also interrupted by one driver or another who puts his convenience over the safety of others.

Back in West Hartford, across the street from where the USPS truck parked is a school, and there are no bike lanes there. I repeat, there are no bike lanes in front of the school. The next major street parallel to Fern — Asylum Avenue — has a bike lane headed west, but only sharrows going east. If you are riding up the hill, you only get sharrows. Do you know what it’s like to yell to the automobilists behind you to hate someone else because you didn’t design this garbage? I don’t, because I needed that breath to make it up the sharrow-only hill. Over on Boulevard, there is only a bike lane on one side of the road.

Dear West Hartford,
I like my bike lanes the way I like my men: to go both ways.
I’m here all week; I’d leave, but that would require another bike lane.

At some point in the last couple of years — two months ago? two years ago? it’s a blur — I was riding on Fern Street back to Hartford and encountered someone parked in the bike lane to unload groceries. This was at another residence with a driveway. The driveway was not full. Someone explain to me this practice of parking either in the bike lane or straddling the sidewalk. It’s like tossing socks on top of the hamper instead of lifting the lid, except that in this case, the drivers are endangering cyclists and obstructing pedestrian movement.

It’s disappointing, and yet I’m mostly disappointed in myself for entertaining any hope when West Hartford began striping bike lanes. The lanes — on Fern Street and throughout town — feel like they were designed by the type of “avid” cyclist who talks about “shared responsibility” and other such nonsense. It’s like they want to think of themselves as this super family-friendly community but it doesn’t function like that. Example: Walbridge Road. It should be easy to cross what looks like a quiet residential street next to the foot entrance to Elizabeth Park. Every time I’ve been on it, bike or feet, someone in a gigantic SUV has nearly run me over.

It’s like I said with the GAStro Park(ing lot) situation: West Hartford comes so close, and yet is so far with this stuff. The noncommittal attitude toward the safety of those walking and biking, my goodness, if these planners were dates I would’ve dumped their sorry asses. Shit or get off the pot. Either you would like people to safely ride to Bishop’s Corner to run errands, or you don’t give a rat’s ass about anyone moving around outside of motor vehicles. Either you want kids to safely bike to their elementary school or your prioritize an outmoded planet-killing trend by not installing barrier-protected bike lanes in front of said school.  Enough of this maybe we will, maybe we won’t. Finish your bike lanes. Install sidewalks on both sides of Asylum Avenue and Trout Brook. Or, on all of these roads where you’ve limited (and endangered) cyclists and pedestrians, remove one direction of vehicular travel. Make Trout Brook a one-way, one lane road. Inconvenience someone else for a change.

SAY WHAT YOU SEE
But back in Hartford. . . still walking around, looking around, seeing what there is to see.

In some ways the last week or so have felt like watching The Wizard of Oz, when everything shifts from black and white to color.

And that means allergies. Not the “I really have Covid but am gonna play it off as allergies” allergies, but the very immediate reaction that I have when I pass mulch that’s been freshly installed. I don’t mean little scoops of it here and there in a yard, but the landscaper quantities. The kind you smell before you see. I walked by some, got on a bus, and then spent the next ten minutes in the agony of suppressing a cough because this is not the time for coughing on public transit. The watery eyes and all else cleared up within an hour of being away from the mulch situation.

It’s also the season for sidewalk art. I thought this was a person jumping on a trampoline, but maybe it’s someone leaping out of a birthday cake. Throwing something into a cauldron? Maybe they’re laying next to a sinkhole. The possibilities are endless.

I’m pretty sure that Hartford 311 has given up. It seems very few resident concerns are being acknowledged. I mention this because I submitted a few problems. One was the broken sidewalk next to the Burns School. Another, the broken sidewalk (pictured below) on Niles Street, just down the block from West Middle School. The dandelions growing in the sidewalk crater are a nice touch, but this is an accessibility problem.

On Niles Street, another problem:

And then down by Front Street, there’s this — a view of Grove Street that really emphasizes what a dead space it is when designed for cars. Look at it! How could this be used better? I took the pic because of the people who could not manage to park between the lines, but then I looked at the whole scene. Yuck. So much pavement.

Over in my neighborhood, where everything is more human scale, life looks different.

Yes, you can get piña coladas and meat on sticks on random side streets in Hartford.

Coming to the corner of Girard and Farmington: another food truck bonanza. Unlike the other one I recently wrote about elsewhere, the one that is so close yet so far, this one will be accessible by bus, bike, and foot. That’s assuming nothing gets taken away during construction. To clarify, there is a painted bike lane on Farmington Avenue — it’s not barrier-protected — and there is not enough construction on this done yet to see if there will be any bicycle parking. More accessible than a side street off New Park Avenue, anyway.

I like the design of this, but I also wonder if this long vacant lot wouldn’t have been better used for housing. Food trucks can always be parked in any of the bajillion parking spaces in Hartford. Better this than a drive-thru or a car wash though.

It’s a cute design. I hope it endures.

Speaking of endurance. . . I was walking down Capitol Avenue, excited to see what the progress was with Red Rock Tavern’s permanent patio awning thing, and noticed a truck had backed its trailer on top of a flex post. I was so distracted by this that I never looked at the patio. (Don’t worry folks, I’ve returned to snoop since. I have dreams of sitting outside in the rain, drink in hand, on one of those quieter weekday nights. I’m emotionally invested in this.)

Flex posts are designed to. . . well, listen to the name. They’re supposed to be flexible. Does a flexible post work as well as a concrete-filled post when it comes to keeping vehicles out of an area? You tell me.

And on the walkway between Bushnell Park and the Legislative Office Building garage, I found a bunch of these essays(?) scattered on the ground, written in what I call “conspiracy theory font.” . I’ve seen religious pamphlets in the same font but cut quarter-sized and placed in plastic bags. Does anyone pick these up to read. Couldn’t say. I’m not going to injure myself reading single-spaced whatever this is. Maybe it’s pure genius and I’m missing out.

THE TWEETS THAT GIVE ME LIFE
from the adorable. . .

to the existential. . .

to the so accurate it’s painful. . .

WHAT NEXT

  • SB4 passed through . . . thank your reps if they didn’t suck. And if they voted no, perhaps send them a dissertation on how climate change is real and also they need to stop trying to block equity measures. See above tweet. 
  • CTtransit and CTrail are proposing service changes. Click here to get more information about the virtual public hearings scheduled for May 11 and 12