WINGS OF DESIRE

When does a desire line become a walking path?

In order to avoid quoting wikipedia I’m going to quote yourdictionary.com  – they say that a desire line is “A path that pedestrians take informally rather than taking a sidewalk or set route; e.g. a well-worn ribbon of dirt that one sees cutting across a patch of grass, or paths in the snow.”

A perfectly good definition I’d say, and above is a very nice one in Vienna; and yes, if you look really closely you can see Harry Lime’s Ferris wheel in the middle distance.  I do wonder if there was always a gap in that hedge or whether pedestrian desire created it.

And above is another nice one seen on my travels, not as well-worn as many – it’s outside the library in Ely, Nevada, birthplace of Patricia Nixon (Ely – not the library).

The one above is clearly a walking path, actually part of the Essex Way, an 82 mile walking route from Epping to Harwich. Obviously there’s no sidewalk (pavement) and other routes across that patch of land would be possible but none so direct, and if you're walking 82 miles you don't want to do too much meandering.  You might think a desire line is the shortest route, and perhaps also the path of least resistance, though in this case that applies to the walking path.

So imagine how intrigued I was by the path above, seen just outside the boundary of Griffith Park.  It was leading off from a street I know pretty well but I’d never noticed it before. I thought it might be some indirect way into the park and it seemed pretty inviting so I started walking on it.

It was, you’d have to say, a disappointment.  It runs for maybe 30 feet then takes a sharp left and then you see a gate:

It’s the entrance to somebody’s back yard, and the owner understandably wants to keep out wandering riff raff.  If the path had been perfectly straight and I’d been able to see the gate from the street I wouldn’t have even set foot on the path. I wouldn’t have had any desire. 

Some contradictions to be worked out there.

CARRY ON RAMBLING

From Carry On Cabbie, 1963, written by Talbot Rothwell.  Pintpot, played by Charles Hawtrey is applying for a job as a Taxi driver with Speedee Cabs. The boss of the firm,  Hawkins (played by Sid James) has been telling him and a group of would-be drivers what hard work it is, with very long hours.

PINTPOT:  We will get one night off a week won’t we?

HAWKINS:  Course.  Are you married?

PINTPOT:  Oh no, only I belong to this rambling club you see, and so does a very nice girl too and, well, once a week we do like to go as far as we can.

Hawtrey was one of those actors whose performances were so gay you could almost believe he was straight, but he wasn’t, as many a sailor could testify.  He came to a nasty, if ultimately very dignified, end. Told by doctors that his legs would have to be amputated he refused the operation, saying he preferred to die with his boots on.

A WALK IN THE (DISPUTED) WAR ZONE

I come late to this, over forty years too late probably, long after the fact, and some time after it’s appeared in various places on the interwebs:

It’s a pamphlet about the horrors of life in New York, published in 1975, warning of the dangers of muggings, break-ins, fires in hotels, the risks of travelling by subway, and what not. There’s a dire warning not to go out after dark, and the passage on walking is especially hair-raising:

 In fact the pamphlet is not exactly what it appears to be.  It’s a scaremongering and alarmist, though not exactly ironic, text published by something called the Council for Public Safety, an umbrella group of 28 unions of police, prison guards and firefighters reacting to the city’s threats to lay off thousands of their members. You might say these conditions would be the consequences of reduced services, although word on the street had it that those conditions applied already.

Now it so happens 1975 was when I first set foot in New York, and although I never saw the pamphlet, its message had somehow soaked into the general consciousness.  New York was by many accounts a terrifying place where no sane person would dare to set foot.  A stroll in Central Park was to be considered a suicide mission.  We were led to believe the place looked like a war zone, and obviously parts of it did, like this:

Now, I’m as much of a coward as the next man, and as I set foot on the streets of Manhattan, leaving the apartment I was staying in on 101st Street and West End, I certainly did see plenty of hookers and pimps and drug dealers on many a street, though I can’t say they were very scary.

photo by Leland Bobbe

More than that, as I made my first forays into New York I couldn’t help noticing that there were lots of little old men and women, lots of young girls, lots of people who looked a great deal more feeble and vulnerable than me.  If they were brave enough to walk the mean streets of New York, then I surely had to be too.

And I was.  Yes there was the occasional hassle as I walked, but the experience was not at all as advertised.  It was only as scary as you allowed it to be.  Famous last words, I know.  However, I realize now that I didn’t take any photographs on that trip.  I’m not sure why.  I think I was probably afraid that it would have made me look too much like a tourist, like an easy mark.  And I don’t remember ever seeing a cop on the streets.  

Here are the other pages from "Welcome to Fear City."