Blog Log: Rules for the Sidewalk

ONE MORNING LAST WEEK, we ran into this guy. Literally.

He was walking into the busy morning pedestrian flow on a Connecticut Avenue sidewalk when he suddenly stopped to pick up a copy of Express from a distribution bin. We won't look any gift readers in the mouth, but we ended up stepping on the back of this one's foot since he paused so quickly. Apologies were exchanged, but if rules of the road applied to the sidewalk, he could have been ticketed for obstructing traffic flow.

As The New York Times' City Room blog noted last week, the New York State Court of Appeals is scheduled to hear a case about a tourist charged with disorderly conduct in 2004 for stopping in the middle of a busy Times Square sidewalk. Replace "Times Square" with "Woodley Park" and "tourist" with "zoo-bound tourist" and D.C. residents get the picture.

The Times' Nicholas Confessore, formerly editor of the Washington Monthly, lays out some other rules of the sidewalk that deserve enforcement:

1. Walking down the sidewalk four abreast, slowly and obliviously.
2. Walking in a diagonal line so that you bump into other people who are walking in a straight line.
3. Standing in the middle of the street, staring up at buildings, and blocking other people who are walking.
4. Walking down the street in one direction, stopping abruptly, and walking back in the other direction, knocking into those who were walking behind you.

But there are other, more mysterious, sidewalk collisions, including this story from a June post on D.C. Sidewalk Blog:

It sometimes happens that when I'm walking, slowly gaining ground on another pedestrian from behind in order to pass, said pedestrian, having maintained a straight and narrow path heretofore, will suddenly veer off course at the moment of the pass resulting in a collision or near-collision. The puzzle this brings to my mind is: why does this convergence occur after blocks where a clean pass could have been made?

That one might be difficult to prosecute in court. [City Room/NYT; D.C. Sidewalk Blog]

» FIRST CANADA, NEXT UP AUSTRALIA? Signs of the times for the American dollar: Australia's currency is growing stronger and is on the road to reach parity. If that happens, will the Australian Embassy be giving away free Foster's for currency-strapped Americans? Oh wait, it's never been "Australian for beer." [Daily Reckoning; Legless in Perpetuum]

» PARTY IN PETWORTH: Neighborhood blogger Prince of Petworth got a new URL for his Web site and is gathering readers at Temperance Hall on Georgia Avenue to celebrate on Thursday at 8 p.m. There'll apparently be drink specials and t-shirt giveaways. [Prince of Petworth]

» QUICKLY QUOTED: On the theft of some classic vehicles from a Shriners center in Fairfax County: "The Model T is one thing, but the other trailer had four Harleys in it. So if your neighbor has a Model T and four Harleys, you might want to drop a dime and let someone know. $1,000 reward — not too shabby, although you should do it out of your sense of civic responsibility, not just for the beer money." [D.C. Metblogs]

Photos by Rich Lipski/The Washington Post and Ian Waldie/Getty Images

Posted By Michael Grass at 3:59 PM on October 9, 2007 Tagged in Blog Log , Free Ride , Local Blogs , News , Out & About , Top Stories

Comments (13) | Archive