Tempting is the virgin piece of freshly poured sidewalk. You wait, behind the maple, fingers trembling as they curl around your impromptu writing instrument — a twig — for the contractor's truck to lumber over the hill. Then, with wild abandon, you burst past the yellow caution tape, trip over a pylon and leave your mark: "John wuz here 2007." Brilliant.
Sure, you're out for immortality, but why not carve your initials in a tree, like grandpa did? Perhaps you're also suffering from an infrastructure fetish. Why else would leaving your John Hancock amongst the utility covers, sidewalk stamps and sewer grates be so appealing?
Take comfort — you are not alone.
Many others of your kind, plus fossilized footprints — from man, woman and beast — blackened chewing gum bombs and metal covers of all shapes and sizes with cryptic acronyms (THES, WTW) or scary words like "Gas Drip" or "Danger," were just some of the things Spacing magazine co-founder Matthew Blackett and I catalogued during a recent stroll through his Parkdale neighbourhood.
We began, our heads hung low but our spirits high, hoping to accurately date the neighbourhood using urban infrastructure, since it's possible in my 1959 neighbourhood at Midland Avenue and Ellesmere Road, where many of the sidewalk contractor stamps and utility covers (before politically correct times we called these manhole covers) are stamped with that year. In Parkdale, however, it's well nigh impossible, since there are so many assorted vintages of infrastructure, so we talked instead about our mutual love for these inconspicuous city bits, which Spacing magazine has featured in the past.
"I like the idea of an object being in one place for so long," begins Mr. Blackett, 33. "To think of my grandfather, who grew in Humberside — and I know the house he grew up in on Keele Street — and to see sidewalk stamps from the 1930s around there means that he was walking on the same spot that I was when he was the same age as me."
It's a game anyone can play. There are 7,100 kilometres of sidewalk in Toronto. For fun, I once walked exactly one kilometre along both sides of Heath Street, from Yonge west to Tweedsmuir Avenue and counted the stamps: 331. You do the math. One day, maybe I'll count the Bell telephone covers with the interlocking gear and bolt motif, since I've always admired their art deco design.
San Francisco-based artist Daisy Eneix exhibits "sidewalk rubbings" of utility covers, asphalt cracks and other assorted trampled-upon things, describing her work as a "fingerprint of a specific location." Toronto's Claire Cameron, author of The Line Painter, blogged about her fascination with sidewalk stamps last month, as did Gary Campbell on Torontoist.com in August, 2006.
Yes, it's a cheap hobby, but I think the real fascination lies in the fact that, despite all the rebuilding we do in this city, it reminds us of our collective past. "I was obsessed with sidewalk stamps for a while," admitted Mr. Blackett as we stopped to admire a plugged-up sewer grate that has "1889" embossed on it. "It was on my mind when I was walking with people — I'd be having a conversation but I'd be looking at the sidewalk stamps while we were going along.
"There's a driveway on Palmerston Avenue that has a 1918 stamp on it," he said eagerly, which caused my heart to skip a beat. Begrudgingly, I told him that oldest stamp I'd ever found was from 1930 in The Kingsway.
Rob Burlie, city of Toronto manager of road operations, admits he doesn't know where the oldest piece of sidewalk might be, but explains that stamping is done for two reasons. First, since there might be multiple contractors working in the same area, it identifies the work for guaranteed maintenance, which is usually two years. Second, it provides a quick and easy "historical record." Some of the oldest sidewalks, he adds, are still "very sound" because "traprock" was used.
"It's a very hard and durable aggregate," he explains, adding that it's easy to spot because of the greenish-blue colour of the pebbles. Unfortunately, it's too expensive to use today.
While his department doesn't approve stamp designs any longer, the 22-year city veteran thinks there may have been standards at one time, which might explain why the familiar "football shape" is a common motif. According to an article by Lincoln Cushing on www.docspopuli.org, that shape may derive from union printing "bugs" of the early 20th century.
Besides the many frozen autographs, Mr. Blackett and I found a few subversive drawings and literally dozens of the neon spray-bomb way-finding scrawls left behind by gas and water workers.
A public space advocate since even before the magazine's debut in 2003, Mr. Blackett once asked city hall if they might give stencils to these crews for a neater look: "The city, on one hand, says, 'Oh, we hate graffiti tags, it looks messy,' and you look at those things and they could stay like that for months and months." It's a fine idea, especially considering the dizzying mix of uses already going on at our feet.
As for the desire for personal immortality on our public walkways, all that's required is a twig … and a good escape route if that contractor truck decides to make a U-turn.
