Charlottesville Tomorrow reports that the Board of Architectural Review decided to go with the larger 4×12 bricks, matching the original design from Lawrence Halprin. But, the problem is this; this bricks are set in sand, instead of morter, meaning potential for heel hell.
No word on who gets to keep the old bricks, but I’m sure the brick replacement will be a nightmare and end a year later than expected. First problem? It’s hard to find who makes these special sized bricks.
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Tagged as: bricks, Charlottesville, Downtown, mall
Actually, I was under the impression that since they were going to be laid in sand, they would be laid flush, and it was actually the mortar that causes the shifting bricks/heel problems.
Welcome back from your day off- and I’m sure you are just trying to bust the dust and rust off your game but this post has all the hallmarks of someone who has never had a callus on the hands from a day of hard work ever.
Setting the bricks tightly in sand will be better not worse for heels. Mortar contracts and cracks making the best mortar set bricks a problem for heels. Just look at the picture in the link and ask yourself would you rather walk on that mall with the sagging mortar or one where every brick is place tightly together. Properly done setting bricks on sand is superior in nearly every way- as long as maintenance is kept up. As to specially made bricks almost any brick maker would like to bid on such a large contract. I have a feeling their business is a little off these days.
What will happen to the old bricks is an interesting question and if you want to take off the mortar they might be free to anyone who will pick them up. That is just a guess and I hope they just don’t end up in the landfill.
i hope they end up in the landfill.
whoops, no i don’t.
i understand sand is good because it doesn’t compress. at a certain level of pressure, the grains become completely interlocked and won’t shift at all, providing a solid base for construction… or entombment! anybody who’s ever been buried alive and left for dead on the beaches of sao paolo knows this.
hell, you were there.
@3: For some odd reason, reading your post made me think of amontillado. Strange whispers.
@4 would you like to come to my country home for a taste of Amontillado and to view my etchings?
It’s failed mortar that’s causing the cracks, not new mortar. But sand.. better than mortar? I don’t know; I’m not a bricklayer, but seems to me that sand is easier to upkeep, but probably not harder than mortar. I’ve stepped in sand before, even hard sand would give to heels.
But then again, you are the hardworking, callused know it all, so let’s just trust your opinion and not argue?
/mmm ok.
The pavers are placed side by side with no mortar and minimal space between them. The sand is the base and is shoved between the pavers to lock them in place. Tomorrow night at FAF, look at the pavers near the pavilion/transit center/free speech wall. The pavers are placed that way in that location. This is a much better method for creating a stable surface.
\not a construction worker, but married to one
@6 i’m a lazy, obnoxious, yuppie douchebag, and even i know that they’re not turning the mall into a sandbox, thor. they’re using the sand to fill in the cracks between bricks. the small grains will sift down into places where mortar may not reach. It’s kind of like a chinese finger trap; the more you try to push the bricks down and together, the less likely they are to move. once pressure is applied, it holds very well because the geometry of the grains causes them to lock up.
kind of like you need to lock it up.
@7, so there is like 1 mm of seperation for sand fillage?
@8, ok, you speak chinese, I understand
thor you are truly an idiot, or a troll, or neither.
As for “amontillado”, thanks, I’ve just been on a Google adventure about that and “want to come up and see my etchings”. The funniest was this description of a Thurber cartoon:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Etching&oldid=230422352#.22Etchings.22_clich.C3.A9
The E.A. Poe story is “The Cask of Amontillado”.
I knew it had something to do with the geometry of the grains…
/so hung over.
no, i’m not done arguing about bricks. oh my god yes i am.
imagine being on the brick arguing committee, where your whole job was to argue back and forth about bricks all the time? or if you were a brick salesman? how many different ways can you pitch a brick? these are just a few of the many reasons i know that the brick industry in america is headed for boredom.
Something about bricking at work? Sorry, T-man, I shouldn’t have pressed “submit”. Do not submit!
If only gals would start wearing flats or, for example, espadrilles (as sportily modelled by shenanigans and sold in esoteric wallet-thinning retro-fitting at CASPARI) this problem would never arise.
Heels are an affect and vice perhaps inappropriate to a po-dunk cow-pattie rural-pastoral place like this. In any case, the average space between bricking on the Mall now is less than 3/4 of an inch. is it really necessary that heels when worn have a point-of-pavement-contact/appui (the phish song: tires are the things on the road that take you back to your abode, la-la-la—heels are the things on their flippers that lead to playing with their nippers; heels are the cover to their paws that invoke the date-rape laws…) smaller than 3/4 of an inch?
The other thing is nearly ever bloody Euro-city has cobble-streets (i guess the Champs d’E doesn’t, but every other street is set stone), far more ‘gappy’ and cobbled than ours. If European women can learn to walk in stilettos on uneven pavement, wouldn’t it seem that our own glamorattti-skirts could emulate them in aptitude and not merely appearance? Perhaps through practice and diligent self-application to the task?
Maybe we should offer free heel walking education classes, instead of spending money on the rebricking?
Liza Doolittle? Perfect.
We have a couple young super-models in town now—there’s one on the staff of The Hook, and i read in that same paper that the Police Chief’s daughter (or commissioner or something) is to become one.
I imagine those gals could dash off a short, instructive, illustrated manual that we could print and thoughtfully distribute to every miniskirted stiletto-iste we see taking a tumble on the bricks.
Sigh. Although there are plenty of ladies in town who walk in heels they’re clearly unable to manage, plenty of the rest of us do indeed expertly walk in heels, and find the trouble is not in aptitude but indeed in that perfect heel-grabbing space. And why do we have heels the same size, or smaller than that? The same reason many of us do not always wear flats or espadrilles (which are too casual for me): our tastes.
There’s a supermodel on the Hook staff?
@ 14 This is the second time around that I read Europe is all set in cobble-stone. I never knew that. Wouldn’t smart cars get stuck in the cracks? Perhaps it’s because the people wear wooden shoes all the time that they can handle the medival building materials better.
Oh yeah and which one is that supermodel? Hawes Spencer?
@19
the tall, skinny one who looks like a super-model was a super-model.
gentlemen don’t bandy a woman’s name, etc etc etc.
@18
think of poor effeminate Jean-Paul Sartre with his little prissy feet in his opera slip-ons. no wonder the guy hated life so much, tumbling down between cobbles, and hated people so much (who must have laughed incessantly at that pretentious prick taking his tumbles). Same no doubt of his irascible scribbling concubine.
Camus had man-sized feet and wore rugby boots. Nobody laughed at Camus, and Camus didn’t mis-step.
I love heels and I am gonna wear them on the mall, gawddammit. But right in front of Rapture the bricks are just far enough apart to chomp at my talon and then I do this awesome lurch forward, look of surprise, look down-and-frown dance.
it is an amazing dance; it rivals “the elaine” in its sexually explosive herky-jerkiness. oh man.
What’s the Elaine?
@23: You lose 1 internets.
@21
hell. you can give the espadrilles to your kid-sister, then. i hadn’t realized you were short.
@General
i just walked the Mall to research. all the attractive girls i passed were staring at their feet, or at least doing so when i uttered a cheerful hullo. I assume they were doing this to prevent tumbles and dance as described by parlie, but i suspect it’s just insularity.
If they’re gonna be THAT WAY, and stare at feet as a rule or while cell-phoning, i don’t see the problem with bricks in statu quo. One of those silly New Age clinics offers a course in MINDFULNESS and awareness of surroundings—perhaps they could alternate between that class and their pilates/ yoga/ bikram/ treadmill workouts?
@24: Ohhhh. Yeah, guess I’m not cool since I don’t watch a bunch of syndicated sitcoms
@25: Not sohrt dude. Heels are sexy. I have espadrille wedges though.
@26
sorry my ignorance on both counts.
knew you had espadrilles, but missed the wedge bit.
@26: It’s not that you don’t watch a bunch of syndicated sitcoms, it’s that you were not aware of a widespread popular culture reference. It’s been parodied/referenced about a million times around the internet and real life. Even if you never watched it, you should at least have been aware of what it was.
Feel free to make your mandatory payment of 1 internets at the Spicy Bear HQ on your way out.
I didn’t even like the show but know what the Elaine was. Come on Shen- jump up and do it!
i’ve never had a heel problem on the mall. if you have a problem with your kitten heels, get wedges. duh.
/@11 were you drunk? couldn’t tell.
Not everyone finds wedges or espadrilles becoming. Shrug.
Dieter… how could you not like Seinfeld? That show is pure genius.
@31 then learn to walk.
@33– please see no. 17.
@34
@17
too casual? grace kelly wore then all the time. James Bond (sean connery) wore a pair in You Only Live Twice AND Thunderball (then again, in one of those he wore a short-n-shortsleeve YELLOW terrycloth jumpsuit with a zipper up the front)….
but of course in high-tone business settings and black-tie soirees as abound in charlottesville, one might shy away from them.
what does this website have against espadrilles all of a sudden.
@32 i didn’t hate it but it’s whine level was too high sometimes and it was about New Yorkers. The last straw was in the famous episode where Jerry attempts the roommate switch by proposing the ménage à trois - then turns it down …well he jumped more than the shark in that episode.
@35 Why can I now tell that you must wear a bowtie?
Utter Dung…He wore a white terry shortie jumpsuit in Goldfinger.
@33, ok, learn to walk on top of the bricks rather than between them.
@37
ha! have my skater-shoes propped on my desk this instant, and my billabong shirt untuckt.
Dieter… my wine level can be too high at times. Does that mean you wouldn’t like me?
@38—i misremembered–the SHOCK of it all.
@37—suffer from too much time talking to Madeira and Foxcroft girls at horse-events.
@35– Although I wish I could be attending more black-tie soirées than I do at the moment, I’m not particularly comfortable dressing ‘beachy’ or overly casually. I don’t hold it against anyone else, it’s just not my style, is all.
@39– working on it.
@41 a world where I would disdain such an english rose- impossible!
@28 :Oh noes I missed a pop culture reference. Maybe I should stop reading and going outdoors and just surf the web all day while watching the tube and reading all the tabloids. Then I’ll be cool like you!
an aside—anyone know of a better tool than this one (free) that works within IE? It has a browswer window that it refereshes every few seconds or whatver for you, so you don’t have to F5 a million times to bathe in this steady stream of scintillating wit (where is Belmont Yo today?):
http://www.sfu.ca/~vwchu/browserrefresher.html
@22 it’s like a dry heave set to music
@45: It’s not a matter of surfing the web, etc. all day, it’s a matter of being smart and paying attention. You’ll never be cool like me.
/never said I was cool
//will readily admit (factually) that I’m the lamest kid in the pool
The problem is that they’re set in sand? That isn’t a problem, that’s smart - it’s how they do it in Georgetown where I went to school for 4 years, you can run in heels on the brick sidewalks there. The “problem” was that they set them in mortar to begin with, which is why after not being maintained they now have to be replaced. With sand you can easily (and rather inexpensively) fix the bricks if they start to separate and cause heel hazard cracks.
I think you’re cool, Lulu. I award you one interweb for sticking to your pop culture guns. You may spend it on anything in the pool snack bar, which is open during adult swim.
I can testify that I’ve experienced more than one stuck heel in the downtown bricks and would love to think about more than my footwear when I venture downtown.
Most of the heels i know are stuck downtown. (cymbal crash, vaudeville echoes…)
Seriously, does anyone else know how much keeping to the original design of the 4 x 12 bricks will cost EXTRA? Why are people so hell bent of this 4 x 12 brick? Who cares?? I would rather have the fountains, the kids play area, the ANYTHING that we are losing by getting the Halprin design that no one cares about other than 5 vocal a-holes.
Somewhere I read that a 4×12 brick was chosen by the designer for reason of scale on several different levels. One has to do with looking across a section of mall; the larger bricks don’t chop up the visual impact as much and give a better sense of open space. Two has to do with most human feet fitting on a 12″ brick, which means that when you glance down to place your foot you see something invitingly footsized rather than several things you have to bridge with your foot. The guy’s a majorly renowned landscape architect. People tend to get that way because they know things most of us don’t care about.
I don’t care if they pour concrete on the entire mall, as long as they repair it, and stat. I petitioned the city planner responsible more than a year ago about this problem. Not because I like to bitch about the problems of wearing heals not to mention the cost. No I have been certain that this grossly neglected landmark is a true danger to pedestrians, and I have heard several stories of elderly and disabled persons who have been hurt trying to navigate the cracks and holes.
Yeah I have no aspirations of running the mall in my heals, although you may see me running across once in a while on my way to the courthouse. However, I would like to dare THOR to give me a heal walking class on the Mall. As long as he dons the heals and demonstrate. Shall we say…..Monday at 12PM in front of escafe? I’ll be there….Will you?
Heels!
heels of course
heals are what comes off your shoes when they get stuck in cracks on malls
heal thyself
and definitely heel someone else when they beg for it…
/erh Freud?
heel, bad doggies!
interlocking pavers have been in use thousands of years and are less bothered by the freeze thaw cycle than any masonary work. the size of the bricks does affect the ability of the bricks to lock efficiently, there is this parameter called the aspect ratio that controls the length of the longest side of the brick relative to the depth of the brick. Check out the ICPI site icpi.org for more information.
Oh yes, the word on the street is that HT Ferron will be re cycling the old bricks into mulch for the city.
Oh wow! Technology exists to convert fired clay into wood.
/btw it’s spelt MASONRY.
@ between the lines and posts above:
or the earth knew all by it’s self to make wood into rock. oh, that’s what the “petrified redwood tree
” chunk of “rock” on my table is…
/oops, you caught me on my dirt-hugging petulant sacastic moment.
//enjoy you bloddy mary’s… i’ll be over here hoping to make some art and enjoying not serving you said bloody mary’s
///cheers!