Look down, look down.

March 21, 2022 4:05 PM

Fans of rust and public infrastructure might enjoy the twitter tag #ManHoleCoverMonday, as well as the images curated by @IronCovers [all twitter links]
posted by eotvos (9 comments total)

On a ride to work last week I was thinking about how plain and boring our manhole covers are here in Toronto, and how they should have designs on them like they do in Japan, or Calgary apparently.

Civic infrastructure is something to be proud of. We pay a lot for it but if we just build generic stuff to reduce the cost by a couple of percent then it'll do the job but won't convey to people that it actually has worth.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 4:16 PM on March 21, 2022 [2 favorites]

Civic infrastructure is something to be proud of. We pay a lot for it but if we just build generic stuff to reduce the cost by a couple of percent then it'll do the job but won't convey to people that it actually has worth.

The difference between "no concession to aesthetic sensibility" and "pleasant public spaces" doesn't even have to be that huge. Perhaps it increases the cost of a manhole cover significantly to have a nice design on it, but what fraction of the cost of sewer infrastructure installation and maintenance does that actually represent?

In the state of Alaska (which is where I live) we have a highly successful (in my opinion) "1% for Art" program. Whenever a public building such as a municipal building or a school is planned, 1% of the budget is set aside for public art to enhance the project. You'd be amazed at what that can produce - we have some really nice art in public spaces and it gives a stable and somewhat predictable funding stream to support a population of independent artists.
posted by Nerd of the North at 4:39 PM on March 21, 2022 [5 favorites]

Shout-out to the Stanton Warriors, breakbeat pioneers of the early 2000s, who took their name from this.
posted by Hogshead at 5:38 PM on March 21, 2022 [2 favorites]

On a ride to work last week I was thinking about how plain and boring our manhole covers are here in Toronto, and how they should have designs on them like they do in Japan, or Calgary apparently.

Maybe fifteen years ago when I was living in Ottawa there was a news story about manhole covers being stolen and dropped off at scrapyards. I spotted this story on the front page of the free Metro paper in a newspaper box and noted that the story mentioned the number recovered from a scrapyard (as I recall it was somewhere around ten or twelve). I wondered how the city would not notice a dozen open manholes around the city -- surely there must be cars wrecking their suspension or people tripping and falling. How many manholes can there be in a city this size? A few hundred, maybe?

I looked up from the paper at the intersection where I was standing. It turns out that in the intersection proper and within, say, one car length, Metcalfe and Somerset has twenty-four (if you count sewer grates as well). Almost every block in the core seems to be the same Swiss-cheese-like density.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 6:58 PM on March 21, 2022 [2 favorites]

So, don’t just blithely scroll through that particular hashtag expecting what it says on the tin. Yikes!
posted by BlunderingArtist at 3:05 AM on March 22, 2022 [1 favorite]

I wish I could include something like this in my designs. If I did it would immediately get removed to save a fraction of a percent in the value engineering process. Hell, the last thing I designed lost its walls to save a few thousand dollars. Let the maintenance guys stand out in the cold. Fuck 'em.

Ricochet Biscuit, if you're interested, Ottawa has open GIS maps and you can take a look at that intersection. I was interested in why there are so many junctions or bends (you shouldn't bend a sewer pipe so every time you change heading you need a manhole).

It looks like a combination of 8" sanitary and combined sewer and a 30" storm sewer in the area if I'm looking at the right spot, but I don't see 24 manholes. It makes me wonder if several of them aren't telecom or natural gas, which often aren't on public maps.

I usually run into the opposite problem where the map shows a manhole that I can't find in the real world because somebody paved over it.
posted by The Monster at the End of this Thread at 4:54 AM on March 22, 2022 [3 favorites]

> "So, don’t just blithely scroll through that particular hashtag expecting what it says on the tin. Yikes!"

Take the advice from BlunderingArtist there. DON'T click that link if you are at work. Bit of a Goatsie thing going on.
posted by Webbster at 6:38 AM on March 22, 2022 [1 favorite]

So, don’t just blithely scroll through that particular hashtag expecting what it says on the tin. Yikes!

What? Really? I'm confused, but can guess. Perhaps I need to turn off my twitter polite-only-preferences yet again. I'm only seeing bug chunks of literal iron. Sorry!
posted by eotvos at 7:01 AM on March 22, 2022 [1 favorite]

I see Bob Dylan's manhole. LOL. In Duluth Minnesota.

And a cute otter mom and otter baby whose faces were definitely hard to machine to not make look like a 5 year old did them. So they do look like a 5 year old did them.

There is also one that says 'dairy block' where I assume a big mass of dairy is blocking the storm sewer.

The spiderman spider and dragon are amazing!
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:39 AM on March 22, 2022 [1 favorite]