Oh, joy. The barf is back.
Living where I live and walking where I walk I will often see the aftermath of what happens each evening at downtown Marquette bars & clubs. You can go up any of the hills leading out of Washington Street, and by the time you get to Ridge Street—two blocks up the hill—you will see where someone tried to walk up the hill but lost the contents of their stomach before they made it.
It's one of the great things that makes Marquette Marquette, I guess.
During the pandemic, when bars & clubs were shut down, the absence of barf on the sidewalk was quite striking. And even in the year or so since they've reopened, it does seem like I've come across not quite as much vomit as I normally did. I don't know if that's because fewer people were at the bars or if the city was cleaning it up better, but I didn't see as many piles of puke as usual.
And then I walked to work yesterday.
At the northwest corner of Front & Ridge—the corner right in front of the Federated Women's Clubhouse—was perhaps the biggest spew I have seen in all the decades of coming across vomit spews. It was at least four feet on every side, and looked as it someone had eaten at least a gallon of honey mustard colored oatmeal, and then lost it. In fact, it was so impressive I almost took a picture of it to include in here, but decided that it was bad enough I had to see it, so why make you go through the same agony?
That's okay. You can thank me later..
The bad thing about it all is that there may be a sign of the barf on the corner for months to come. Even if the bugs (or a random dog) manage to eat it all, or even if the freezing rain we're being subjected to this morning or snow we're supposed to get tomorrow doesn't wash it away, the stomach acid from spews that big will often etch itself into the sidewalk and remain there for months or years. In fact, you can walk along the sidewalks I tread on a daily basis and see black spots bigger than a Frisbee everywhere, signs that someone else tried to make the walk up the hill in years past and had to eject the contents of their stomach in order to do it.
So, if you're in that area, make sure you avoid that particular corner for a day or two. Or, if you need to be at the corner, just don't look down. While the barf may be gone by the time you get there (although it was still there when I went running this morning, 24 hours after first seeing it) I can almost guarantee there will still be signs of it around for a long time no matter where you look.
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