I have never lived in a town that wears as much of its skeleton on the outside as this place. There are the literal skeletons in their above-ground tombs scattered all over the city, but there is also the skeleton of infrastructure–outfrastructure?–that’s always poking through the surface. Riding a bike means seeing all the layers of road beneath the one that drivers see. If I weren’t so busy trying not to get my wheel caught I would probably find more beauty in the exposed remnants of streetcar tracks on many, many streets. If I weren’t so busy trying to avoid pinch flats on the elevated manholes dotting St. Charles right now, I might find some beauty in them. I was riding back down St. Charles from work today and noticed this pipe sticking out of the median at Octavia. I haven’t noticed it before, probably because I don’t have to avoid it with my bicycle. I stopped, examined the thing, wondered if perhaps it isn’t a pipe but actually a pole or something, snapped a picture, and got back on the bike, thinking about how much must be right under the surface, everywhere we go.