Scaffolding City

Smartphones and tablets are consuming.  Just walk down any street in any city and there will be dozens of people looking at the inanimate thing in their hand.  For good reason, of course: directions, historical landmark information, restaurant recommendations, immediate background detail to a conversation point.  Not to mention the smartphone can make calls, text loved ones/acquaintances/enemies, take pictures, record six-second videos, name the song you are whistling. We shouldn’t let the smartphone waste our attention, though, particularly in Madrid.  And the reason is more than that, with our nose to the screen, we might miss the Madrid blue sky, architecture, and people.

On any given day, Madrid buildings undergo a revamp of one kind or another – whether it’s exterior cleaning, a walkway being re-laid, or simply a store’s signage or entrance being repainted.  Heed is even paid to door hinges.

In fact, Madrid has me believing that to erect scaffolding is the easiest thing to do in the world. The structures grow around a building overnight, feeding for a few weeks before moving on to the next.  They are not unlike the algae sucking pleco in my childhood fish tank that simply. refused. to die.

So, here’s the real reason smartphones in the street are dangerous: the scaffoldings.  There never seems to be any signage that suggests pedestrians step around the scaffolding, no cones to alert of the dangers ahead.  If you are not watching where you are going, you could walk right into an iron pole or up a worker’s ramp, step on a tipped wheelbarrow, or slip on some sand that has spilled out onto the sidewalk.

For an American, this is an absolute horror.  The responsibility of pedestrian safety in the United States does not actually rest on the shoulders of the pedestrian.  A homeowner in Somerville, Massachusetts, for example, can be sued by someone who has slipped on the sidewalk outside their house after a fresh snowfall.  In fact, here in Europe, Americans are (fondly) stereotyped as ready to sue over everything.  (Things like the “Hot Coffee Lawsuit” do not help.)

So, when I first moved to Madrid, I fell down a lot.  It’s true.  The sidewalks are uneven; potholes may go unattended for days or possibly weeks; and scaffolding grows like weeds.  Pedestrians are simply expected to pay attention.

Naturally, a girl can only fall down so many times before learning a thing or two.  I now watch where I am going, and accept responsibility for where my own feet take me.  As for the smartphone, I do my best (to try) to check it only when standing still.  I’m not always successful, but I do have less skinned knees.