El Paso: Steps to Nowhere #3: Eve of Independence Day

View from the steps to nowhere, El Paso, Texas. July 3, 2017

On the eve of Independence Day, it was a big baseball game, hot dogs, and fireworks at the Chihuahuas' ballpark!

I walked smartly down from my apartment to the steps to nowhere so I could snag a good spot for watching sparklies burst over the stadium. 

View from the steps to nowhere, El Paso, Texas. July 3, 2017

I wasn't the only one with this sweet spot in mind. 

View from the steps to nowhere, El Paso, Texas. July 3, 2017

But I arrived in time to plant myself on a fine bit of real estate.

View from the steps to nowhere, El Paso, Texas. July 3, 2017

I felt for a woman who inadvertently chose land already settled by little bitey ants. Oooh. Ouch.

View from the steps to nowhere, El Paso, Texas. July 3, 2017

The steps to nowhere. A good place to watch El Paso.

The fireworks video below, featuring my bridge over I-10. Oh, how many times I've walked over that pretty bridge! 

El Paso: Steps to Nowhere #2: A News Shoot

Steps going nowhere, Sunset Heights, El Paso, Texas. December 2016.

December 2016


Those steps going nowhere - they are popular!

Back here, I saw a photo shoot in the same place.

Today it was a news crew.

Steps going nowhere, Sunset Heights, El Paso, Texas. December 2016.

I don't blame them - the top of the steps to nowhere have a killer view of I-10, downtown El Paso, and Juarez.

Steps going nowhere, Sunset Heights, El Paso, Texas. December 2016.

These steps to nowhere climb the cusp of Sunset Heights. In Hurting Game, a short story in Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club, Benjamin Alire Saenz' protagonist talks about Sunset Heights:

I lived in Sunset Heights, an old neighborhood that had old houses with a lot of class. It also had a lot of shabby houses that were falling apart. I like the shabby houses. I liked that I could walk downtown. It was February and the night was cool, but it didn’t feel like winter. It was as if spring was knocking at the door again. Not that I liked spring in El Paso. The winds came after us and left us beat up to hell, the taste of the desert sands being shoved down our throats by a God who didn’t love us much.

Steps going nowhere, Sunset Heights, El Paso, Texas. December 2016.

Steps going nowhere, Sunset Heights, El Paso, Texas. December 2016.

El Paso: Steps to Nowhere #1: A Photo Shoot

Steps going nowhere, Sunset Heights, El Paso, Texas. November 2016.

November 2016.

On one of several sets of steps going nowhere in Sunset Heights, I spy a photo shoot in process while I walk home from a visit downtown.

Steps going nowhere, Sunset Heights, El Paso, Texas. November 2016.

This empty lot overlooks I-10 and downtown El Paso.

Steps going nowhere, Sunset Heights, El Paso, Texas. November 2016.

At the corner of Prospect and Upson.

This particular set of steps to nowhere in Sunset Heights could be those referred to by El Paso writer, Benjamin Alire Saenz. In Carry Me Like Water (1995), one of the protagonists, Diego, lived in Sunset Heights: "...The part of Upson Street where he lived faced the freeway and the remodeled train station that was newly equipped with automatic chimes." One day, Diego "walked past the steps that went nowhere. He didn’t climb them. ….. At the top of the steps that went nowhere, Diego and Mundo sat among the powdered pile of bricks and drank their beer."

But there's another stairway to nowhere in Sunset Heights ...