The New Yorker:

The icy buildups blocking crosswalks around New York have been dubbed sneckdowns. Some urbanists think they offer a vision of a less car-dependent city.

By Naaman Zhou

This past week in New York City, fifteen inches of snow fell and more than twenty-two hundred snowplows pushed it away. Twelve thousand miles of sidewalk were shovelled. Two hundred and nine million pounds of salt were spread, and, after it got really bad, two hundred thousand gallons of calcium chloride, a chemical ice melt, were deployed. Sometimes the work you do leaves its mark; sometimes it doesn’t. With snow, the evidence has a tendency to melt. But, this year, as the temperature refused to rise above freezing, what remained hardened into ice, and settled. In the streets, these conditions have brought attention to something called a sneckdown.

“Sneckdown” is a portmanteau of “snow” and “neckdown,” a term for a part of the sidewalk, also known as a curb extension, that juts into the street, to protect pedestrians. The sneckdown is the snow that builds up on parts of the street that cars don’t use, acting as a natural curb extension. At intersections, it can be found mostly on corners, as the city pushes it one way and property owners push it the other. The sneckdown is also what people awkwardly have to step through as a result. Recently, I have encountered sneckdowns while going to work, going to the gym, popping to the store, hurrying for the bus, and on the way to a hard-to-get dinner reservation that a friend made, perhaps unwisely, weeks before the snowstorm. Almost any New Yorker who has to cross the street has become familiar with the sneckdown, often at a level just between the sock and the waterproof shoe.

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