Nora Grace-Flood Photo
Pedestrians of the world unite! Stalls and Weber make synchronous TikToks on Ella T. Grasso Boulevard.
Two TikTok phenoms concerned with pedestrian safety set out from the outskirts of Ella T. Grasso Boulevard Sunday morning — with the intention of spotlighting one of New Haven’s, and the state of Connecticut’s, most dangerous stretches while on a viral walk.
“In 2020 there were unfortunately nine pedestrian fatalities in the city of New Haven, four on Ella Grasso alone,” one of the walkers, Adam Weber, a project manager for New Haven’s engineering department, told his smartphone. Jonathon Stalls, a Denver-based artist and writer, listened and nodded along in the background.
“You can see what this road is designed for,” Weber continued, pointing to the four lanes in front of him. “It’s designed for speed.”
Weber, 26, and Stalls, 39, create TikTok videos like the one described above (watch it here) as a means of working towards transportation systems that center people over cars.
Over the weekend, the pair’s paths intersected in person for the first time. They joined forces to model the strengths and limitations of one particular mode of travel: Walking.
Stalls was passing through New Haven Saturday and Sunday as part of a longer walk he began on Aug. 26 in Providence, R.I., and plans to complete by Sept. 8 in New York City. He is doing so to promote his book, Walk, which he began writing in 2010 after a 242-day foot journey across the United States.
As he moves, he has been meeting with TikTok peers and local experts, from climate advocates to urban planners and civil engineers like Weber. Weber walked with Stalls from Branford on Saturday afternoon through to West Haven on Sunday morning.
“You got off the bus and I was like, ‘Yeah, it’s you!’” Stalls said to Weber, whom he had previously known only as a mutual, virtual follower. He could easily recognize Weber’s voice when hellos were exchanged — “The word ‘sneckdown’ is in my brain all the time.”
Other than engineers, followers of Weber are probably the only people likely to know what a term like ‘sneckdown’ means; it refers to the temporary curb imposed by cars during snowfall. Weber has used the term to explain how we can determine the amount of space vehicles really need to turn a corner. (Check out his explainer video here.) Often, less roadway is needed than the amount towns choose to carve out for cars.
@everydayengineering sneckdowns: nature’s form of traffic calming and tactical urbanism #engineering #civilengineering #road #snow #city #traffic #pedestrian #sidewalk ♬ Winter Wonderland - Instrumental Christmas Music
Stalls, who runs the account PedestrianDignity, said Weber’s page, EverydayEngineering, “gives me hope because I’ve encountered so many engineers who degrade the work.”
The work he’s talking about is that of taking down auto-centric planning, which Stalls uses his book to relate to systemic ableism, racism, classism and sexism.
Often, he said, engineers who have the luxury of driving to work will patronize the idea of pedestrian-forward design: “Isn’t that cute, and playful — it’s not gonna happen,” he mimicked.
It can be too easy, he said, for professionals to use jargon as a barrier between themselves and the realities of those walking the streets that people like engineers are tasked with designing.
Weber, on the other hand, lays out the meaning of words — like “sneckdown” — to help the public contextualize their own experiences from a different perspective.
“It helps me make sense of what I’m feeling and experiencing,” Stalls said of Weber’s work.
Stalls has experienced as a pedestrian everywhere from West Virginia to California what Weber has been documenting here in New Haven: Crumbling sidewalks immediately adjacent to racing traffic, treacherous or non-existent crosswalks, and, as seen on Ella Grasso, overly generous road lanes that encourage speeding while ignoring environmentally sound design.
“Too often people are only moving through our communities in cars,” Weber said. He typically drives a car only once per week to visit his parents out in Milford. He bikes, walks or catches the bus when getting to work or the grocery store to avoid a “windshield bias.”
Stalls shared what he has learned from Weber: “If you’re an engineer, a developer or a council member, anyone who has an impact on the actual pouring of pavement, we need you to take the bus, we need you to experience what it’s like on a wheelchair.”
Stalls often uses port-a-potties along his route in lieu of public restrooms.
Stalls' book shares the stories of pedestrians trying to get where they're going — and features the author's own pen and ink illustrations.
Weber takes in a West Haven view.
On Sunday, the pair launched from Ella T. Grasso Boulevard and walked towards West Haven via Kimberly, First, and Ocean Avenues. They observed gaps in walkability — while celebrating public restrooms and well placed benches — along the way.
At 6:30 a.m., few cars, or people, were seen on the streets. On the western border of New Haven, a man approached the two and said: “I’m trying to get a few bucks for dinner — I start early.” Stalls handed over what cash he had.
As the sun rose, Stalls got a break from the “piles and piles of roadkill” he typically sees and took a moment to observe an undisturbed West River.
“Look at these swans y’all!” he shouted as several of the birds paddled out from under the bridge holding him up.
Some steps later, the sidewalk disappeared and an alternative walking route emerged on the opposite side of the street.
Stalls crossed the traffic to get to the other side, noting: “The assumption is that people will come over here, but the reality is that people walk on both sides of the road.”
The split sidewalk, he said, reflects the constant pressure put on pedestrians to “negotiate and compromise.”
“It’s all about meeting people where they are,” he said.
That’s how the creator views the positive purposes of TikTok, as well.
Stalls and Weber both found their ways onto the TikTok app during June of last year.
“It was way too fast for me. It was over my head,” Stalls recalled thinking. “I thought, ‘I’m too old; nobody wants me on TikTok.’”
But one day, while Stalls was organizing an event to talk about safety and accessibility around Denver alongside a crew of local families and urban planners, a 14-year-old girl approached him with a message: “You gotta get on TikTok!”
Soon Stalls was admiring the different tools TikTok provided him to connect with a diverse audience regarding accessibility concerns in their shared communities.
After taping a short video of infrastructure issues in a given neighborhood, he would include it as evidence and argumentative sway in letters to local and state government representatives. Even though a TikTok video does not substitute for lived experience, he said, it is a step closer to providing different people with an idea of what other realities look like.
Stalls posts links to council meetings and organizing events to followers through his account to make pathways for civic engagement more straightforward for followers.
The pair stop at the Prospect Beach House for a yogurt parfait and breakfast sandwich.
Weber, meanwhile, got on TikTok after leaving his job with a private consulting company, a move that came with a pledge to spend more time outdoors.
He left the job, he said, after a client requested a parking lot design concept in a local wetlands.
“They were our client, so we had to do it for him,” he said. Since he secured a job in New Haven’s engineering department, he said “my clients are the people of New Haven,”
Weber currently lives in Hamden, but said he makes sure to get outside and traverse New Haven neighborhoods during his lunch hour and takes longer bike rides on the weekends.
His TikTok videos emerge organically through that travel. If he spots an example of either poor or strong urban design, he will shoot some footage… and then make his way into his bedroom closet to record a voiceover. (His clothes dampen any external noises, such as roaring traffic on the streets, to ensure clear audio.)
After giving Stalls a tour of New Haven, Weber got a chance to explore new scenery as miles of beachfront came into view at an Ocean Avenue West Haven entrance.
“Do you ever hang out here?” Stalls asked Weber. “I would be here all the time.”
“Not really,” Weber said. “It’s just hard to get here.”
Weber: Likes the new Cove River bridge ...
... but is less enthused about the bridge's rules. "It's one of those weird signs. No this, no that, no fun!"
As Weber strolled along a boardwalk, he noticed a new bridge offering a pathway between the dead-end route he and Stalls were following along Sea Bluff Beach towards a pink playground marking Bradley Point Park.
“I don’t know what the connection looked like before, but it definitely wasn’t this nice,” he said, admiring the white aluminum prefab.
That bridge was just installed this summer, replacing a concrete connector built in 1938 that for the past 20 years was unusable. (Read more about that here.)
Even as the TikTokkers pinpointed plenty of problematic design features that stood out on their walk, they had many celebratory moments while discovering smart infrastructure.
Permeable pavement.
“This is what we call permeable pavement,” Weber observed as he crossed the bridge to Bradley Point, taking out his phone to make another TikTok. Rather than building a “big asphalt parking lot,” developers had created a porous surface that Weber assessed would help filter road runoff before it washed into the waves.
“Wealth is often a marker of separation,” Stalls said as he noticed the number of pedestrian friendly features grow as he and Weber strolled away from the mixed-use homes at the edge of New Haven and alongside private, West Haven beach houses.
“It’s about separation from the real world — from what other people are actually going through.”
That’s why, Stalls said, though his day of walking would end in Stratford, his pedestrian-based lifestyle will continue for as long as is physically possible.
Weber, as well, highlighted several next steps the town’s engineering department is taking in efforts to develop the kind of city his followers dream of.
In his latest TikTok, Weber tells his audience: “There’s hope.”
Nora Grace-Flood’s reporting is supported in part by a grant from Report for America.
