Milwaukee: The City of Stairs

What better conditions for a dérive than a snowfall in Milwaukee? It was cold. It was wet. It was getting dark. But it was also fun, exciting, and a great way to go down all sorts of paths and discover new crevices of Milwaukee that we'd never seen before.

The tale is told in the pictures, and the map is here.

All in all, we walked for about an hour and a half and covered a distance of 6.29 miles.

Conclusions

I was surprised at how arrows guide our transportation everywhere, everyday, and we don't notice them unless we're looking for them. Almost every curve had a big yellow arrow telling people to watch out. All the one-way streets had arrows pointing drivers in the right direction. Even turning lanes gave us a direction vector. Once we noticed the arrows, it was easier to neutralize their suggestions and find our own way around the city.

Second, we discovered that stairs are irresistible. Stairs saved the dérive not once, not twice, but three times. I'd never known Milwaukee had so many public staircases lying around, but they appeared and helped guide us in a direction more than I would have expected. Hooray for stairs!

Third, it's really hard to get courage to step off the sidewalk and to wander freely. We left the sidewalk maybe three or four times over the course of the entire dérive. Maybe the snowfall had something to do with it, or maybe sidewalks are a subconscious method of control the city uses on its citizens to keep them in check. There's something oddly empowering about walking in the road, on a median, through a lawn, or through a parking garage. Once I left the sidewalk, I felt like I could do anything.

Finally, taking pictures with my mittens is nearly impossible. And my hands get pretty cold fast when my mittens aren't on. I suppose that's not really a conclusion about the city, but it might come in handy in your life.