Where Your Favorite Oberlin Crosswalks Lead To

by Sebastian Cruz, Pavement Mystic

Illustration by Frances McDowell, Layout Assistant

There is so much to the humble crosswalk—the portal, the unchanging link between a class and a hobby, a lover and a mistake, your professor or your less attractive professor who you’d never deign to speak to. Indeed, these are the paths that are truly worth something to each and every Oberlin resident, abounding with associations, perhaps even… a deterministic method of predicting one’s present and future worth.

Hence, I, as someone who walks around, like, a lot or something, have the ultimate journalistic (printed!) authority to ascribe qualifications based on which crosswalk one frequents, fondly considers, or otherwise remembers vaguely. Ranked for obvious convenience. 

MAKE NO MISTAKE!: Intersections do not factor into this. Intersections are not crosswalks nor roads but something Frankensteinian beyond reasonable appreciation. I’d advise looking both ways when crossing them, and not even in the ways that were intended.

1. Science Center → Wilder

A good man is hard to come by, and brother, you are one of the ones. Your Herculean efforts are not wasted nor discounted. God will save you a piece of himself when you become King of Everything.

2. Tappan (West)/Memorial Arch → Peters

The first of the Tappan Tetralogy, you combine the robust Humanity-adjacent lust for life with the solemn remembrance of felled missionaries who were only trying to religiously subjugate on their own terms. 

3. Woodland St. Corner (West) → Wilder Dumpsters 

Hell hath no fury like a crosswalk scorned, and although the journey is awkward, fraught with vehicular peril, frequently muddy, stinky, rough-hewn and downright Wrong in the Law’s eyes, your service is indispensable. 

4. Tappan (North) → Asia House

Unknown. A slightly unholy mix of domicile, school, faculty and dining usage in one square block. A person going from Tappan to here or here to Tappan could be or could have done Anything. Trust them, and arm yourself with patience and a blunt-force object.

5. Stevenson → North Quad

A ‘walk the size of the Pacific, with the added bonus of a Side Street designation, meaning less traffic than the average road in the area, this one will make you everyone’s friend even though you’re really just fattening them up and disregarding food safety.

6. Tappan (South) → Con

Totally full of it. “Hey look at me I’m a world-class musician at an institution that has prided itself on the development of self-expression.” Well alright buddy, but don’t get it twisted, the only reason you can keep that wind instrument attached to your back is because anyone who will try to steal it gets lost in the Conservatory Compound Labyrinth. Lucky bastard.

7. Tappan (East) → Theater Building(s)

A very unfortunate bottleneck for the artisans among us. Naturally, a favorite for the CrOoKeD and KoOkY classmates in that class with the unattractive professor who you’d either definitely not deign to talk to or would never deign to talk to you.

8. Wilder → Harkness Bowl

Unknown aura. The true transition from hustle and bustle to quiet suburban co-operative living, free with the embarrassment of walking past an outdoor dinner that you Surely, Absolutely cannot join.

9. Woodland St. Corner (East) → Wilder 

Hardly interesting enough to be the eternal backbone like no. 1, scarcely any personality or titillating danger like no. 3, forever remembered in the eyes of Ohio passers-by as “That Motherfucking Other Crosswalk I Have to Stop At Just After/Before the Science Center One.” 

10. Woodland → North Quad

Awkward with no obvious way forward. Clearly a more recent staple that betrays Woodland’s strange positioning as Major Student Hub shoved aside to the barren West Campus dregs. The crosswalk is desire-lined and that is a thin, thin margin for consideration.

11. Science Center → Finney Chapel

Handily the most ludicrous out of any crosswalk option. Hardly utilitarian in any way that matters. If you choose this over the Official ‘Walk down the street then I hope that that deathwish gets you a lot of good stories in Hell.