Trampled in dust
I'll show you a place
High on a desert plain
Where the streets have no name

U2, Where The Streets Have No Name

You had better believe I was furious when I couldn't find any such trap streets in Halifax. Googling yielded nothing, using all of "trap streets" and "paper streets" and "trap streets paper streets" and "yield unto me your secrets Halifax". Nothing. Not even a token effort. Halifax had no paper streets that I could find.

I was livid. Incandescent. Vicious. I was so angry that I started making up new words for progressively higher levels of rage. Szalious. Niffical. Thruspicarious. I was pretty shined off. After everything I'd done for this city- learned its routes, its landmarks, in rare and beautiful cases, its secrets? After I sat under the worn away statue of Winston Churchill eating hot dogs, after I coursed through its veins on my Steed, after I cradled myself in its embrace each day?

All this and it didn't even have the decency to lie to me? How am I supposed to live properly in a city that won't even try to abuse my trust?

Positively fargaracious, I decided to hitch up the steed (leaving work with a snort and a derisive kick of the gravel walkway outside my office) and bike down to the Visitor Information Center on the waterfront. After all, if anyone knows lies, it's them.

All villisapauciousness aside, I was rather surprised that I couldn't easily find anything to this effect in Halifax. The city planning is so muddled, obtuse, and slapdash that I figured maps with false streets and landmarks would be practically a given. The designs concocted by those nominally in charge of the city change so rapidly from day to day, you would think that any map laid down at breakfast would, by dinner, contain so many errors as to make the whole business rather untenable. In fact, the city's recent, but failed, attempts at making itself more biker-friendly ought to have thrown the entire map industry into an uproar, what with streets suddenly becoming one-way (or two way), widening, narrowing, being sucked into the Unfathomable Void beneath the harbour, and disappearing altogether. Really, it's a wonder the city has maps at all.

I mean, it's easy enough to find streets, bike lanes, footpaths, and speeches from the mayor that go nowhere in particular, existing merely as overlong false starts that just wind up making everything awkward for everyone. The most well-known bike lane in the city, for example, starts apropos of nothing, with scarcely an acknowledgement save for a chipped and faded white bike on the ground...



... and ends almost as suddenly, luring the biker into a false sense of security and then spitting them out into the vicious caprice of two-way traffic as if to say "So long, shithead!"



So why, why, why could I not simply pop "fake trap street paper secrets Halifax" into Google and be rewarded with a wealth of options? I was on my way to the Visitor Information Center to find out.

First I had to find it, however.

See, when I looked up the Visitor Information Center, it gave an address on Lower Water Street- the street that runs parallel to the boardwalk on the edge of the harbour (lower, and near water, hence, Lower Water). So, biking along Lower Water, I expected to see it laid out in easy-to-find signage, brightly coloured for the convenience of tourists everywhere.

I biked all along Lower Water street to the very end where it turns into the Casino, with no luck whatsoever. Undaunted, I turned back, and biked along the length again, similarly with no luck.

At last it hit me- naturally the visitor information center wouldn't be on the street. It would be on the boardwalk. Where all the visitors were.



So I hopped onto the boardwalk and biked the length of that as well, with no luck. Frankly, this was getting ridiculous. The Visitor Information Center should not be this hard to find, especially for a local. Or maybe that was the problem. I was thinking too much like someone from around here, I needed to start thinking like a visitor.

I needed to tourist it up.

So I sat down in the middle of the boardwalk until the ebb and flow of citizenry became acclimated to my presence, and then I thought- if I were a tourist, what would I do? The answer, as it happened, sat right in front of me, in the form of a small Kiosk labelled "Cape Breton Tourist Information Center" (or something). A middle-aged lady staffed the counter. Perhaps she would be able to help.

"Hello", I hallooed.
She nodded a reply.
"I'm looking for the- well, hang on, I'll come inside and say it". I kicked the stand on the Steed and headed into the cramped room. "I'm looking for the Nova Scotia Visitor Information Center- or, the- uh- Halifax... one. Whichever one is more local than Cape Breton". I had no use for Cape Breton on this day. Fortunately, she did not try to sell me on Cape Breton, she merely smiled and said "Yes, you see those Canadian flags over there?"



I did.

"It's right there".
"Ah. Thank you". I hopped back on the steed and biked off.



In a rather embarrassing twist, it turned out that the Visitor Information Center was very near the spot where I'd done the final location of my Mihi. Barely a stone's throw from the playground- literally, if there were still stones there, I could pick one up, toss it at the Visitor Information Center, and be arrested for vandalism.

I went inside and grabbed a map, and began leafing through it as I waited for someone to stop talking to actual tourists. I wasn't hopeful, but I figured I should at least make a token effort before I went around making up my own paper streets and/or landmarks. It only took a minute before someone broke off their normal duties to restock some maps, and they seemed as good a person as any to sideline and bother with my inane babble.

"Uh, excuse me", I said. I watched as her tourist-friendly demeanour turned to confusion as I described the idea of paper streets to her, before finally asking "So I was wondering if you knew of any such a place, since I'm trying to record one for... personal... enjoyment", I trailed off. There was confused silence.

"Posterity", I said, hopefully. Still silence.

"Whatever", I finally settled on.

"I don't think I've ever heard about that", she said.
I grinned my trademark disarming grin, which is disarming in the same way as a taser and has about the same effect on people.
"Yeah, it was news to me a until a couple of hours ago".
She pulled out a different map and began leafing through it.
"I've been working here for a few years, and I don't think I've ever heard of anything like that", she said.

Well, that tears it, I thought. This city couldn't even up and do me a favour for once. It couldn't do me the kindness of having proper secrets, it had to be correct, and proper, and accurate. Well, I'd show Halifax. I'd take every map I could find, invent locations no one had ever heard of. I'd draw streets through buildings and across public parks. I'd put up signs to confuse and redirect the flow of pedestrian traffic. I'd make Halifax a paper city, and watch as the old ways burned. I would destroy Halifax to make it perfect.

"Oh, wait, here's one", she said.

What?, I thought.
"What?", I said.

"Yeah, right here", she said, gesturing to a spot on the map at the tail end of Harvey street (a small side-street off the much more popular Barrington). "The map says it ends here, but it actually goes through and connects up with Church street, right there".

I knew the spot, (my little brother's girlfriend used to live near there), and with a cry of "Oh my grod, you're right", I took the map in hand, tossing aside the one I'd previously taken. My durdrubbishness faded in an instant.
"You want that one? It's the same as the one you just had", she said.
I was far too excited to muster more of a response than "Mnaehh".

Halifax, I said to myself, you tease. You little minx. You knew all along. I thanked the Visitor Information employee for the map and the help, and stalked off.

On my way over, I realized a small problem- I had to leave a proper marking. Indeed, my options were limited, since I couldn't very well hang out there for a whole day. I knew the area was residential, so I figured leaving anything permanent would be bordering on illegal and, more importantly, rather insensitive. Still, I wanted some kind of marking that would last long enough to prove I'd been there, and offer some insight into the location's hidden properties. Fortunately, a bus ride last week had taken me by the perfect solution.



On the fence surrounding a construction side (documented from the other side in my Trespassing the Future task), someone had put up big chalkboards linked by the phrase "In my life, I have learned..." and then a series of blanks. They supplied big pieces of sidewalk chalk and let people just have their dang-old way with it. I figured I'd snag a piece of chalk, head off, write down a little marking for the location, and then bring it back before heading home. It seemed the perfect plan, and indeed, it went off without a hitch, I surreptitiously slid some chalk into my bag and went to head off.

But it didn't feel right leaving the board without putting something of my own there. I looked around at the other entries, and most were the kind of airy-fairy, artsy-fartsy tips I'd come to expect from the hipsters of the town- "... how to find true love", "love hurts", "the value of friendship". Someone wrote the miserable answer "about Jesus", and someone else wrote the awesome answer "being tall rocks" (in the top slot). I decided to leave some of my own wisdom- a little practical, down-to-earth advice that would benefit everyone.



"... that typically, sharks abhor mathematics".

That's the sort of tip you can use. Don't believe me? Well, we'll see who's laughing when I fend off sharks with the Pythagorean Theorem.



4x+3 = 7. Solve for x, shark. You can't do it. Get outta here.

Your ignorance of basic arithmetic reflects badly on all of us.

Anyway, chalk in hand and advice dispensed, I biked off to my location.



Morris marked the approach of my goal. Henry was just the next street over, and then, the moment of truth. Sure enough, as I rounded the corner onto Henry street, I saw that it did indeed keep going where the map said it stopped.



I ballparked where on the map it seemed to cut off, then popped out my chalk and left a small commemoration.



"The place that isn't on the map.

Some maps say that this street ends here (but it actually doesn't)".

My task accomplished, I brought back the chalk, tossed it in the chalk bin, and struck out for home.

And before any of you ask, yes, here's the map with the area in question circled. I took the picture later, at home, and saved it because I didn't want to break the narrative flow.