Puppy mills Johnny and Jimmy and Mr. Miyagis house

I just had to get out on a relatively warm day. I took off toward the south and found one of my interesting mid block hidden group of houses. 

Around the corner from Mr Miyagis place I was met with the sadness of the fact that a cool local business had shut down. Johnny Kolache is right next to the light rail station that I'm at every morning and I stopped in a couple of times a week  for some awesome kolaches which are essentially a doughnut filled with savory goodies like sausage or bratwurst or some apple or fruit. The place had a very east coast feel to it that I'm really going to miss. A sign greeted me in October saying Johnny was on vacation for the entire month and now a sign saying he's not coming back.

A half block away from Johnny's former place is a park strip that has land mines of hundreds of piles of dog crap. I know it is there because my morning bus stops me off at the nice smelling dog toilet every morning. I walked down the mid block alley and discovered three houses with at least 30 dogs piece running around and barking in their yards. The yards reeked even more than the park strip did. Seriously, how can people live like that? And treat their dogs like that?

Around the next corner I found a indoor jungle in the now deserted Toyota dealership. About 4 years ago Mark Miller Toyota moved across the street and the old  dealership has sat empty for 4 years. Inside the front window I see huge leaves pressing up against the south window..  It's a 20 ft tall ficus tree with an 8 inch trunk. The tree is going crazy with no care at all. The canopy of the tree at is easily as wide as it is tall. Again amazing what can be seen on foot.

Finally, sometimes I wish I had a nicer better camera with a telephoto lens so I could zoom on a little better. I mentioned how warm it was today and I looked up and saw the open windows of this old apartment building and imagined how similar it might look to how it looked a hundred years ago when it was first built. I wish I could zoom in on the open window. I know there's a story in that window just call me Jimmy Stewart.

Tree house and "brownstones"

I decided I needed to get out and walk off some of the holiday treats that have been showing up around the office. As I've mentioned before SLC has huge city blocks and in the southern part of Central city some of the blocks were split into smaller blocks ,  some with alleys and some with both. One of  the streets is Park  St.  Park St. has one the few old row homes common in east coast cities left in the SLC. Park is also home to one of the dozens of pocket parks hidden mid-block in the central city neighborhood that are almost a secret to all but the neighborhood kids that live nearby. Speaking of secrets I wandered across a hidden treehouse today... A big one too with Windows and a full size door hidden, as usual, mid block. As a kid I always wanted a treehouse in 4th grade a friend and I had ideas of taking over our elementary school and creating treehouse sentinel checkpoint that we could rule the smallest country in the world. I wonder what the kids in this treehouse rule over?
 

   As with most older cities the condition of buildings vary but SLC seems to have a higher concentration of absentee landlords who do nothing for their properties besides collect a rent check. I took a picture of one the houses that has looked been a dump for years now. Siding falling off, the roof losing shingles broken windows. Guaranteed that place was bought 20+ years ago with little to nothing done to improve the property. Sure not every place can be a palace but some people don't even try.

Around the corner took a look at a house that had been condemned a couple if years ago but apparently someone fixed it up along with the condos accross the street.

700 east is a 6 lane highway racetrack that allows drivers to connect to I-80  from the east side of downtown. It is NOT at all pedestrian friendly as it can only be traversed every 4 blocks. One of the little quirks and juxtapositions that gets me though is 700 east is one of the oldest stretches of sidewalks in the city with several hundred feet of the original sandstone sidewalks I've mentioned before. The juxtaposition is the slower pace of the past mere feet from the speeding single occupancy suburban assault vehicles whizzing by.

Finally at the corner of 800 south and 900 east is another one of SLCs giant Sequoia trees. This one has been chopped again and again because the power company added power lines decades after it was planted. Then once again a couple of years ago the tree was again threatened by the desire for the grocery store to add a gas station. The initial plan called for the tree to be removed (cut down) but activists stopped the tree death and the Sequoia remains misshapen and butchered as it is, but it is still a welcome sight.

Up the hill to home

Decided to walk home from work today which is something I feel really lucky to be able to do. I don't live particularly close to work but after commuting 100 miles a day for 5 years I relish bring able to walk to work or home in less time than I used to sit on my arse in a car.

Once again the weather today had a very nor cal, pnw feel to it. 50+ degrees in December? What's up with that?

I walked through the central city neighborhood which isn't nearly as scary as that sounds. SLC even central SLC is a pretty safe city. Random bad stuff happens occasionally but as older cities go its a  nice place.

In the middle of central city is the old trolley barns repurposed in the 70s as a shopping mall and updated again last year. Its odd that I just mentioned how relatively safe central city is when five years ago some nut from a eastern European country opened fire with a automatic weapon in the trolley square mall killing a pile if people. But I don't like to think about that. What I like to think about is imagining how things were 100 years ago when these central trolley barns sent out hundreds of trolleys to get people from my the streetcar suburbs a whole 4 miles from downtown into the central business district. There was a complete lack of cars so people walked like me, rode a horse or a trolley... That was it.

A block away is Gilgal a park that was created from the backyard of an eccentric long time Mormon bishop that was a stone mason. He worked on this project for decades making representations of book of Mormon stories and a sphinx with Joseph Smith's head. Any time I walk by I stop in to see the weirdness and I always see something new.

Further up the hill I see some of the original sandstone sidewalks and gutters that were constructed back in the 1890s that are still relatively common around the city. Sandstone slabs were cut from the local canyons and filleted and installed as the first sidewalks which was impressive considering many of the streets in SLC weren't paved for another 40 years.

I continued up the hill past East High known as being the filming location for the Disney high school musical trilogy and following the old trolley grade further up the hill toward home. Incredibly glad I didn't wuss out and take a bus.

Rainy day... How much is that doggy in the window?

The walk today gave me a chance to take care of an errand, see some history, some Sequoia trees, and a pedestrian staircase. What's better? It was a dark misty northwestern kind of day. Almost as if SLC was picked up and moved to Oregon

For a long time I went to the local chop shop bad haircut place called Great Clips. To be clear I'm not stylish and I only get cuts when the hair gets out of control. For years I concluded there just weren't any old school barbers around. All there was was the fru fru salons for a $50 hair cut and the strip mall chop shop. About a year ago a local barbershop opened a Main Street location which is a really good thing because, well, Main Street is pretty sad. Who knew there are still places that will give you a cut, a shave with a straight razor, a hot towel wrap, and a shoe shine if you want it? I actually like the slow methodical attention to detail of the cuts that I get. No more chop shop for me.

Next I took off on my walk and a door down was a art gallery with a Scotty fog just kicking it in the window. I have an affinity to Scotty dogs because I had one when I was 6. This dog was just watching the people walk by on Main Street. I just had to snap a pic.

One of the things about SLC is the city blocks are huge. Humongous. 4 city blocks would fit in the same area as one in SLC. So what you that amounts to is a lot of wasted, inaccessible space.

Sometimes (not often) though the extra space affords a place for a hidden park. One such place is the Kimball cemetery park. The park is hidden mid block, connected on the west through an alleyway between apartment buildings and a meandering brick path from the east. In this park there are 2 giant sequoias next to large grave marker from one of the early Mormon leaders...

From there I continued east a few hundred feet to the top of the 4th Ave. west staircase. I grew up in the Bay Area so I spent a lot of time in San Francisco. There are several staircases in SLC from a bygone time when people walked more. There are around a dozen sets of staircases in SLC far fewer than the City by the Bay, but it's enough to remind me of one if my favorite cities. (I've been known to walk many miles in SF too). Finally I followed City Creek for a while which has been emptied for winter.

Fishy in the city.

This is the kind of macro exploration I really enjoy while walking in the city. 20 feet from this little pond is a light rail station. I've been using this station for months and never noticed the fish pond. I'm curious how they will survive the winter.

Starting again...

A few years ago I walked over 350 miles in a year in and around downtown SLC. Back then I set a goal to explore the entire city but as with many things I lost interest, life occurred and now I want to make a try at it again.

There always seems to be an excuse to not get out and walk, especially now as winter is coming. I have made excuses "It's too cold", "I just don't feel like it today" or the one that kills me most is "The inversion is awful today". I always feel better after getting out and exploring the city on my lunch break and any other time I have a chance.

I likely have seen parts of the city that many haven't. I have a affinity to the hidden mid block alleys and just getting out and seeing things on the macro scale that a walk allows. My walks are often not slow walks but rather nearly 4 mph. At any rate, I did my walk earlier today and decided it was time to revisit my earlier goal.