global_jd

Street Cane 2.0

I don't use a cane in the office... mostly while walking a few miles each day during commute. On the street I try to stay very plain, subtle, and predictable. It's only when I get home that I start to juggle and twirl. ;-)

On the street, I've significantly changed my style in the last few months. Here are some of the things which affected it:

• Lighter canes: Most of the early literature I found was in the martial-arts/self-defense field. These often involved bone-breaking strikes, in which I'm not particularly interested. A few good Malacca canes in varying weights showed me the advantage of lighter, faster handlings, trading mass for velocity. The types of movement which can be accomplished with a light cane are significantly different than those for a heavy cane, with the advantage of holding something which cannot be later characterized as a bludgeon.
• Reverse grip: Usually we hold in "forward grip", with the shaft coming out of the thumb side of the hand. These days I more often hold the cane with the shaft coming out of the hand towards the pinky finger. Two big advantages: it allows in-hand twirls ("Charlie Chaplin style" twirls) with the palm held down... more angles available. A reverse-grip also allows you to slide up to "ready position" (hand sliding to top of the shaft below the hook) without raising the tip... much less of a threatening position. Matter of fact, it works well  with the open hands held palm-outwards at chest level, in the basic "hey cool down, back off" position, yet with excellent ability to block high or low strikes. Subtle change, from forward-grip to reverse-grip, but it opens up many more possibilities, with less risk of escalation.
• Walking in three: My leg is stronger, and I no longer need to support each and every step of the weak-side leg. On straight, clear, easy sections of sidewalk I now often place the cane on the ground at every third step, alternating between support for weak-side and strong-side steps. I'll still "walk in two" through complex paths, but will walk-in-three when loping along. Has the extra advantage in that either hand can hold the cane and the rhythmic pattern will remain the same. (I got this move from Fred Astaire in "Easter Parade", when he's on the street just before the "Drum Crazy" sequence. ;-) I've seen variants... often times with a full-height staff someone will "walk in four" with four footsteps for every cane placement... but switching fluidly between walking-in-two and walking-in-three has really opened up how I use a cane on the street.

For self-defense... most resources don't describe my needs. They often come out of a martial-arts background and focus on wrecking an attacker. I'd just as well get along well with everyone, and avoid a confrontation rather than "win" it. Using a cane is effective at defining a personal space... deterring someone from trying to walk through me. People often (regretfully) show more concern at avoiding an object than avoiding another person... a little bit of unpredicted extra motion with the cane can easily prompt a poor walker to share enough extra space, without costing anyone "face".

At home I often like to use a cane while doing chores... changing grips, tucking it, using it as a three-foot arm-extension... using the cane as part of my body instead of just as an extra thing to hold. In-between I can juggle it, twirl it, balance it in different ways.

(For juggling, I'm doing a lot of contact-work now, balancing it on the back of the hand or upper arm, doing slow wrist rolls and changing direction, trying to make it seem as though the cane is mysteriously moving around the body counter to gravity. A toy. ;-)

That's where I'm at with cane on the street these days. It's a fun tool, useful in many ways, and I'm glad I have the chance to learn about it.

On Huangshan canes, and of shaping a hook

On my last trip to China I knew I wanted to go to Beijing, to Xi'an, to Chongqing and Nanjing. The last connection took awhile to figure out... many of the planes transfer through internal hubs, and railways have to follow the mountains. The Yangtze River connects both, but most tour boats stop just past the Three Gorges Dam, and there's just one weekly downstream boat to Shanghai.

Took awhile to juggle things so they fit together. One side-effect was an unexpected daytrip to China's Yellow Mountain, Huangshan, a two-hour bus ride from the Yangtze, the day before Nanjing.

I didn't know much about it, just that many pilgrims came here to see the dawn rise through the mountains, and that it inspired classic Chinese painting. But Huangshan turned out to be one of the bigger emotional charges I got from the trip. I was only in the touristed areas, and so couldn't pay undivided attention, but I'd like to go back some day, spend more time walking among the mountains.

Souvenir shops there sell walking sticks, made from local wood. These are half-height canes, rather than 3/4 or full-height staffs. Many have Derby screw-on handles, but some also have steam-bent hooks. These canes are tree-branches, full of character, not a smooth milled cylinder of wood. I haven't been able to find any photos in California websearch, so I'm suffering Flickr guilt in not setting up a camera to try to give an idea. I examined many and brought back two, at less than US$1.50 apiece, as raw stock to customize at home.

I liked the feel of the wood, used as a walking stick... firm and unbending, yet not very heavy and responsive in the hand. The knots and bends in some of the sticks may imply that it would shatter if struck, but it's a very nice piece of wood.

After filing and sanding and oiling these sticks, I'm pretty sure it's the same type of wood used in the "Golden Wood" or "Cocus Wood" canes from Canemasters. Both these and the Huangshan canes are dense and take a good effort to file down, resulting in a soft golden dust. They respond to mineral oil in the same way, darkening and changing colors. Both have that combination of strength and lightness.

I can't confirm it, due to lack of source information, but I'm willing to bet that the funky gnarly canes sold on Huangshan Mountain are the same type of stock. The wood from Canemasters is of higher quality, straight (although prone to warping) and with even grain... definitely worth the price differential. But after examining dozens of funky branches I found two whose character spoke to me, and that counts for something too.

The new canes I like end up using the same wood as the old canes I like. I don't know precisely where my smooth canes were grown, but I know my gnarly tree-branches saw the sun rise through the fog on Huangshan Mountain many, many mornings. Holding it in my hand, I can feel that.


What type of work am I doing on these canes? After sawing down the end so it's just about half my height, and after applying a 1-inch or 1.5-inch rubber tip for walking, I've mostly been concentrating on the handle -- rasping, filing, sanding it down.

The key idea is to notice, during daily use, where the hand bone presses against a convexity, and to turn that into a concavity -- to maximize the surface area connecting the hand and the stick. It's an iterative process... use the cane, notice where it presses, flatten that area out, try it again.

There are four main pressure points. The most important is the top of the crook, on the outside as you're holding it, where the palm bears the weight on a down-step. The more of the palm which is bearing weight, the less pressure on any particular point of bone. Besides the palm, the forefinger and thumb are constantly directing the shaft, and they want to wear away smooth spots nearly opposite each other. There's also a spot near the shaft under the crook, where the middle finger bears the cane's weight as it's repositioned for a step. As more convexities are turned into concavities in these areas, the cane becomes more comfortable to use.

The top-of-the-hook area requires the most wood removal. A raw cane is usually just a cylinder of wood, steam-bent into a hook. The cylinder is not very ergonomic to the palm -- a cylinder tries to offer only a single point as a tangent. The top of the cane should slant down to the outside, giving the palm the maximum surface area to press against. Rasp it away, run a file to smooth it, then sandpaper to make it touchable, and give it a coat of mineral oil... let it dry, use it a few times, then start with the rasp again, refining it.

The forefinger and thumb areas are trickier. The surface here bulges out, following the natural shape of a cylinder. But we don't want just a single point of contact with the thumb bone... we want to use the whole thumb pad to securely press against the wood. A little bit of cross-filing, a little bit of chisel, I'm not yet sure of the best way to shape this area of the shaft.

These four areas need to be sculpted on both sides of the hook -- in the normal shaft-out-the-thumbside forward grip, and in the reverse grip, where the shaft comes out the pinkie side of the hand. Doesn't have to be precise... you just want to be able to securely guide the cane with the forefinger, be able to put weight atop the cane without pressure points.

I don't see many of the cane shops talking about this area of hook-shaping. People do make grips, but these are commonly on the shaft itself, used when swinging it around and hitting things... almost superfluous, and a little odd. If you're going to use the cane, it needs to fit well in the hand during daily use. Modifying the wood so that it more naturally melds with the hand seems an obvious priority.

A tip for finger twirls of a hook-top cane

Took me a long time to figure this out, even though it seems simple in retrospect.

In many finger twirls you're rolling along the back of a finger. This is easiest with a simple stick or baton, because both ends are weighted the same. It's harder if one end has more mass than the other. And it's harder yet with a "tourist" type of cane, with that J-shaped handle, because the mass is concentrated one one side of one end.

The secret is to watch the hook end at the safest part of the twirl, where the cane is within the fingers rather than atop the fingers. If the crook of the cane points up at this part of the cycle, then it will naturally point straight down 180 degrees later, balanced -- it won't roll around on the back of your hand trying to rebalance itself.

For a smooth roll over the back of the fingers, try making sure the hook is pointing straight up when it's within the fingers, because you'll want the weight pulling straight downwards at the tricky time.

The Sticks of Chongqing

One of the reasons I was interested in Chongqing was of the large number of porters, the "Bang Bang Men", who carry goods up and down the staircases on sticks across their backs. They're still omnipresent, even with the increase in automobiles, but I'm not yet sure how they use the stick in daily life.

The sticks are different than what I expected. These are thick bamboo or reinforced bamboo, maybe shoulder-height in length, and 2.5 inches in thickness. Some use half-tubes though, sculpted out with shallows on which to hang a rope. There's usually a short rope harness at each end, maybe eight inches long after doubling and quadrupling. Through this is threaded the ropes which are attached to the load -- sometimes a four-point attachment to a woven basked, sometimes a burlap bag, sometimes ropes tied around applicance boxes.

I've seen lots of guys with sticks lounging around, but I haven't seen any of them handle the stick gracefully... it seems too thick, too heavy to manipulate effectively. I still suspect that these are used in streetfights, which I've had the good fortune not to have to witness... if gangs use tire-irons in melees than I'm sure the non-owners of automobiles use any portage rods they have handy. But so far I haven't found anyone simply having fun with having a stick in their hand.

Walking canes are common, split about 50/50 between knob-head or derby handles and crook-topped canes. Many of the latter are those "knobbed bamboo" type of canes you can see occasionally in SF's Chinatown. I'm not sure what type of wood it is. Most lack a rubber tip, which makes me wonder how useful it is on a wet hillside. Haven't seen anyone rip off even a simple twirl yet though.

The most common stick in Chongqing? Seems to be meat skewers. These are about twenty inches long, maybe 3/16th inch thick. Big satay here, folks! They accumulate everywhere on the food streets.

I've been hoping to find a unique perspective on daily life with a stick here. So far I haven't stumbled across one. Still got more miles to walk.... ;-)

Update: One more type of stick I've been seeing around Chongqing is a six-foot length of (what appears to be) hardwood, maybe an inch, inch-and-a-quarter diameter. It has a dual metal prong on the end of it. I've seen some people use it for moving portable electric wiring into position, and others for pulling trash paper off rock hillsides. At first I thought it might be for removing oranges and other fruit from trees (Sichuan's got significant agriculture). Don't know what it is mainly designed for, but they're often sold at streetside hardware stores. 

A strange street interaction

Had a strange experience yesterday; still don't fully understand it.

Was walking downtown, waiting to cross north at the SE corner of Howard & Third, near the Chevy's. I was standing at the rightmost side of the pedway on the curb, cane in my left hand in "carrying position", grasped at the neck, to expand my personal space a foot around my exposed left side.

A guy came east across Third, late in the light cycle. I kept him in peripheral vision because he was moving across the crosswalk's width, and it was ambiguous whether he would be turning left to cross north like me, or whether he'd continue east behind me. He was underdressed for the weather and looked a little rough.

He didn't take the three unoccupied lanes of crosswalk to my left, but instead walked behind me, as if continuing along Howard. By this time the light had changed and I stepped off. Then from the corner of my eye I saw that he doubled around behind me, and was trying to pass on my right, where there was no space.

I was off-balance, but did not want to step in front of traffic with a strange unpredictable walker six inches behind my back. I stopped, pulled the cane out of his way so he wouldn't walk into it, and waited until he got ahead of me in the crosswalk before proceeding.

Very strange -- a double-back, an unsafe invasion of personal space, behind me, and entering traffic. I took no chances, but made no verbal comment, made no direct eye contact, just let him get ahead and regained my feeling of personal safety.

In the crosswalk he turned around twice, weaving across the lanes, seeming to try to provoke a confrontation. He kept north once we were back on the sidewalk, so I turned east, along the north side of Howard. Easiest way to avoid any problem.

Halfway down the block I noticed he had doubled back again, following me, talking on his mobile "and then he swung his cane like a tennis racket, he's wearing a ballcap." I was on the right of the sidewalk, streetside, and he was center-walking, gaining. I used the mirror on my sunglasses to monitor him and gauge pace, without the confrontation of a headturn.

I timed things so I could cross back southward at the light on Hawthorne, in front of the Gold Club, and he never got closer than three feet. Fortunately, he kept going down Howard, turning north again at New Montgomery.  I continued on the south side of Howard, finally crossing back to Market at Second, scanning for him all the while.

I did the right stuff -- set up the intersection so others had easy choices, stopped when I noticed an unsafe situation, did not return a confrontational interaction, made no verbal comment or direct eye contact, and then chose a path that would take me off the same street as the weird guy. Once I noticed he was following me I stayed cool, planned things so I could turn while his momentum took him past, and ignored the verbal comments made on the phone about me.

But I still can't guess what the guy's trip was. It's a full moon, and he seemed to be looking for a fight. I successfully avoided it, and kept things cool, but it was still uncomfortable. The only thing I think of that I could have improved was to have made damn sure he kept on his initial path and didn't double back to pop six inches behind me. But that preventative measure would not have been sustainable in normal traffic.

Best guess is he was someone already experienced in the legal system, amped and looking for a score (he was underdressed for the weather), with a partner on the stroll on his mobile. I'm still wondering how I could have handled it better, and not have been taken by surprise by the initial double-back and near-collision.

I hope he doesn't take out someone less observant and with fewer de-escalation skills than me.

Some cane and rope moves

A bunch of little topics here....

Different lengths of rope: Even a single rope can be folded in two, and a long rope can be doubled yet again. It can be used as a single-ended rope dart at long range, two poi at medium range, a short flexible stick at close range. Doubling adds weight and affects speed. Doubled ropes also require a little more care to keep extended, so that the ends flop apart only when you want them to.

I got into a session today with a twice-doubled ten foot rope, in underhand grip as well as overhand. Underhand Figure8s, in either direction, were particularly instructive. Hand-to-hand transfers require more care than with a stick, because the twelve-o'clock position is inherently unstable. Even a four-foot rope has a useful new personality when doubled. Poi folk work with a constant length, sometimes wrapped and shortened, but an actual rope offers constantly changing length. It's very, uh, flexible.

Cane twirls: Lots more two-handed, transfers in front or behind, the far end of the cane always looping, following its weight. Fewer specific patterns, more groups of patterns now. The rope has really had a beneficial effect on twirling the stick: I have a lot more sense of rotational planes now, am driving the cane less, letting it do the work. Too much to really describe, but I feel it growing each week.

One nice little example: Elbows at hips, forearms extended with thumbs pointed up, cane held at each end in each hand, thumb on top and side of forefinger beneath. One hand pushes down and releases, and its end rotates around the stationary other hand in a large circle. It's a combination of a finger twirl between first and second fingers and turning that hand thumb-down which accomplishes the full rotation. Then that hand pushes down and releases, doing the same rotation about the other hand. Looks like two large alternating circles, around the stationary hip-high hands. Can be varied with different hand grips and rotations, or pushing up and releasing instead of down, or different paths with each hand, or adding a second spin in a different plane, and so on.

Cane for defense: The more I think about it, the less I'm into these "powerful strike" systems. It's true that it's more mechanically efficient to use a whole body turn in a strike, but this adds a windup, and people watching could perceive it as threatening. Baseball swings are a natural reaction, but I want to learn to do better. I've been watching videos from Ted Tabura and Mikhail Ryabko, and they have a very relaxed look to them, seems like they're hardly moving. A lot of their work is in targeting, timing, complementing and amplifying the attacker's momentum. They work on wrist development, for snapping strikes against bony areas, so there's no telegraphing, no body tension. Once the attacker's attention is captured, leverage and locking techniques can continue to affect the direction of their motion. Some of the big stick-bashing techniques may be good to teach to a newbie in a class, to give them at least one technique quickly, but I'd like to move more naturally, less threateningly, with a finer degree of responsiveness and control.

Rotational planes: I've been trying to hit certain angles more cleanly... the right and left planes, the front plane, forty-five degree angles. Sometimes I'll move the hand up and down, left and right, while maintaining the front plane... it's like I'm washing a wall. Crossing the hands so that right and left planes are switched, keeping them stable. Doing 45d in front, then cross the body at 45d to define an outward-facing V, then a third rotational plane behind, defining a triangle around the body... a double Figure8, with three distinct circles.

Switching between perpendicular planes is a little trickier than a regular Figure8, particularly with a rope. It needs to slow down at the top of its arc, so the arm can pull it into a new rotational plane. The goal is to have the rope always straight, never slacking and curving.

Jumping rope: I don't have a good practice environment... my apartment is the top floor of a hardwood Victorian... the parking lot at work has a concrete base... I'm too self-conscious to start learning in the park. But I have been timing leg flexes with loops, as if I was actually jumping. I've finally found a way to start making progress here.

Weave patterns: I've got one pattern down, but am still working on the tools to generate different patterns. The basic weave has two different planes for each hand, usually two circles cross-body to one circle same-side, with the two hands off-cycle to each other. I've been trying to move in and out of this to dual-circles, dual-Figure8s, one hand Figure8 one hand circles, cross-body circles... just ringing the changes.

There's variation possible in the circular planes for each hand. I've been working a lot with overhand rotations at forty-five degrees, out-of-phase with each other so the tips constantly come down a foot or two in front of my body. Either hand can alternate into a circle behind the back, with the arm pointing down and the fingers pointing back. Ends up being Figure8s with the apex out to each side of the body, one circle in front, the other behind. I want to do 2-1 weave-like patterns with this too.

Have done a little work towards doing these weaves underhand too, so the ropes rise towards someone watching from the front, but I'm not yet sure which parts to reverse when, and which turns to take. It's coming.

Wrist strengthening: When standing waiting for something, I'm often invisibly flexing my wrists against the cane, wringing, bending, pulling, pushing. Lately I've been trying to isolate and relax the shoulder muscles while doing so.

Cane as rope, rope as cane: I've mentioned this before, but it's a squishy subject... I'm definitely applying things I learn with each instrument to the other. I haven't seen any other traditions which do stick-style hand exchanges with rope, but it sure does work, sure does make sense. I think jo-style sliding-hands techniques have affected my desire to work with different effective lengths of rope. Rope practice is definitely improving my ability to let the weight of the stick do the work. Lots of fun.

Cane and sidewalkology

I don't know why so many cane-defense resources are about striking someone else. You can protect yourself a lot more in daily life by using it as a visual tool. It's like a giant, moving turn signal, expressive, gracious.

People don't usually walk into objects. They'll veer into other pedestrians on a whim, but generally won't walk into a lightpole. The cane is a moving object, and so they work extra hard to avoid it. A slow Chaplin-style cane twirl ten to twenty feet away catches their attention, and triggers natural reptilian instincts of avoidance.

It's really true that some people on the sidewalk will not look around, or even look at/through you, then change their path to intersect yours, and not give any clue to how they think they will resolve the ambiguity. Some don't even notice it, then are mystified when they see the intersectee suddenly appear three feet away, hands upraised in "what are you doing? how do you expect me to respond?" Functional IQ of about 50 at that moment.

Some choose an obstructing course deliberately though. No idea why. I'd be streetside and half-a-block away and he'd be centerwalking, then at quarter-block looks at me and chooses my same outside line. Maybe he'll weave into other lanes a few times in between. I'll willingly switch lines, if I can guess that he won't be weaving again. But sometimes (such as at sidewalk constrictions or with overtaking traffic) switching lanes might not be an option.

Lots of times the most deliberate are aggressive males (young, or dysfunctional ones) who then mouth off and try to get an engagement when the cane is used to catch their attention or intermediate a collision. I see it maybe once a month. It's a foolish provocation, and some other short-trigger will call them on it someday. I just keep walking, let them keep their dignity.

Bicyclists on sidewalks shouldn't be coming up centerline behind peds in a side lane. I scan 360d and don't weave, but few other pedestrians do... those bikers are going to scramble up some poor walker sometime. A good biker on a sidewalk is rarely a problem, regardless of what the laws say. But most bikers on the sidewalks are not good bikers to begin with. They should particularly be taught to leave a mobility-challenged pedestrian some extra room, or at least a gentle warning.

And if I had $10 for every driver who doesn't signal turns correctly, I could buy the mayor's office. Still seeing lots with a phone to their ear, too. Even police cars frequently make unsignaled turns, creating ambiguous situations at intersections. Lots of times I think of carrying a camera and just taking pictures mid-infraction, with license plate and timestamp.

Anyway, back from the mentally handicapped to the physical, the cane is very handy at getting out of a crowded streetcar at a Metro station. People try to push in while others are trying to exit. They don't remember their physics, about two bodies in same place, same time. If I'm at the door while pulling in, and they're hunching up on the platform around the door as we stop, then I just bring my cane up horizontally to make a wide swath for us to exit. Stupid people will shove against others, but they try to avoid touching the cane. They think I'm weird, but that's better than stupid. Egress before ingress, bubba.

Waiting for light-changes at crowded intersections, I'll wait back away from the intersection, in a traffic shadow, then choose one of the slower, wider groups to follow. At each end of the crosswalk they'll spread out parallel to the curb, then march through the intersection and try to interpenetrate the two lines in the middle. Stupid, but predictable. I just follow the biggest stupidest winners.

Also at intersections, I've been using the cane more and more for spatial definition... there's great choice where the tip of the cane can rest on the ground, and when combined with the environment, it's a natural deterrent to someone walking up and standing right at my elbow. Sometimes at a slower intersection I'll just stand at the curb, far side of the crossing zone... if a second person then comes up the center, then a slow mid-grip Figure8 of the cane can persuade them to split the crossing zone equally. Generally I try to minimize motion while at an intersection, though. (Sometimes people will walk right up to a cane twirl and say "Hey watch it". I have zero idea why they don't choose a less aggressive sidewalk position in the first place... no need to walk up unnecessarily close to someone.)

These folks who increase ambiguity in traffic, and those who are aggressive... they are the ones most likely to get into confrontations. Accidents waiting to happen. Fights waiting to occur. Not with me, though. Let them lose to percentages with someone else.

Eleanor Rigby

Over the last year of using a cane, I've paid a lot more attention to other people on the street with walking sticks.

Most of the people I see in San Francisco use stock aluminum canes, that someone in a government agency or insurance program gave them. They don't look too happy holding it.

Others use aluminum derby canes (like the folding travel canes, or the designer canes), and a few use wooden derby canes. (Pronounced "darby", it's an English style from 1900s, with a shallow hook and thumb rest -- possible to hook on your arm, but not as reliable out of the walking position, I think.)

I see a few folks using wooden canes with J-shaped hook handles. Lots more when I'm near the Tenderloin or South-of-the-Slot. ;-)  There's a few folks with handmade, one-of-a-kind sticks too.

But... I don't recall seeing any of these people having fun with their canes... spinning, stretching, twirling... zip. Very strange.

Sometimes the people holding wooden derbys will look fairly comfortable with them, as if it's an old companion. The folks with aluminum canes almost seem ashamed, holding them stolidly at their sides.

I want to watch these people more attentively, and see how they handle foot traffic... what they do with oblivioids spreading across the sidewalk or trying to walk through them. How do they cope?

I'm pretty confident that a lot of the gents in skidrow areas are aware of how the cane can be used, but I rarely see them having fun manipulating it, or using it adroitly... maybe more a mental comfort, as potential threat, than a tool.

But it's strange to me that it's hard to recall seeing other people having fun with a stick. The ability to define space, and to attract attention of cellphone talkers with an object, and just the sheer juggling fun, the ability to work out unobtrusively while waiting for a traffic light, to reach things high, low and far... to hold an object you can toss around and use as a skill toy... why aren't more people taking advantage of this?

Sidewalkology

One of the difficult parts of walking down a sidewalk is figuring out what other people will do, handling the different things they end up doing. Last year I reinjured a quadricep muscle, and I've relearned a lot about trying to get along smoothly with other pedestrians.

Some of the problem types:

• "Centerwalkers", people who walk precisely along the centerline between any obstructions on the sidewalk, and who do not acknowledge the presence of other carbon-based lifeforms
  
• Crowds who are more conscious of the inter-group bodyspace boundaries than of people who are not in their group
  
• Weavers, those hypnotized by electronic devices, and those who aren't sure where they're going and change course as they think of it
  
• Those entering the sidewalk from a car or building, and who don't quite look ahead to see what's already going on, and who take awhile to process the scene when they finally tune the sidewalk in
  
• Groups standing on the sidewalk talking... this isn't as bad, because they're not moving as much, but drawing their attention to their surroundings can be tricky

I don't really need to use the cane indoors much, but I'll use it outside, for both support and for crowd control. Others will not try to walk through a stick as readily as the will try to walk through a person. The physical object helps in clearly defining personal space.

Most of what I do for crowd control is verbal:

• Top thing I say, hands-down, is "Thank you". Any small courtesy, I want to reinforce; even the appearance of someone offering a courtesy is worth reinforcing.
  
• Second most frequent verbal comment is "Awright, thank yew!" and variants. This is used more when I need to verbally acknowledge that I understand their body language and intention. (I'll use "thanks" more when someone has offered a courtesy, and "alright thanks" when they offer but might renege.)
  
• "Please, after you", "Go ahead, you're faster than me" and so on... I defer on the sidewalk more than anyone else I've seen. My main incentive is that I don't want to be in a situation where they can change their mind and cause a problem, so I won't rely on someone overtaking me to slow down within a constriction of the sidewalk... I'll give it to 'em before it could risk a problem.
  
• The above are most frequent, but when someone is not attending and risking a collision, I'll usually start singing. Anything, doesn't matter. I use earbuds for language study while walking, but they don't know that I'm not singing along with recorded music. What I'm doing is not sending a particular message, so much as drawing attention to myself (sometimes as a potentially strange individual), so that they can't space out that there's someone with limited mobility on the sidewalk with them. I force their awareness by singing.
  
• An escalation tactic is to sing with conscious wordchoice... again, I'm not talking to them and challenging them, but am instead apparently lost in my own world, yet still I'm able to say things germane to the situation. Examples: "Uh oh, what's she going to do next?" "I can't guess where he's gonna go, I should stand on the side until I know" "I'm big I'm wide I'm half a mile across I am" "You cannot walk right through me; it breaks the laws of physics" and so on. One of my favorites, when a young woman with a fast nervous stride and loud heels is slowly overtaking me from behind, is "I hear sleighballs jingling, ting-ting-tingleling too, come on it's lovely weather for a sleigh ride together with you." (I can never tell whether they get it, though. ;-)
  
• Sometimes I'll talk real with the person -- "*That* was dangerous!" or whatever -- but that's rare. Someone that strange is already on the edge, and a lot of San Francisco's strangest are likely carrying knives or guns (SF has outlawed guns, so those committing crimes anyway are incented to carry).

Some of the cane-specific tactics I use:

• I'm almost always along an edge of the sidewalk, ceding the center. If the cane is towards the center I can give a slow Chaplin-style twirl to catch their eye... people rarely walk into objects, particularly clearly moving ones. If my weak leg is towards the center I'll bring the cane across my chest, diagonally from shoulder down to the injured knee and about 3" from my body... doesn't expand my bodyspace, but just clearly defines it with oak.
  
• The Blind Man's Tap is a way to slowly sweep the space I'll walk into with my next step. I won't touch the ground (a white cane for visual assistance is about five feet long, while a hook cane for body support is three), but people visually understand the sweeping motion. It's effective at persuading a centerwalker or a weaver to share the sidewalk.
  
• The Waggle is a strange little move to get through a crowd. I won't use it unless I'm sure that they're choosing to pay less atention than they're capable of paying. It's like the Japanese way of using an a thumb-up open palm to move through a crowd, except the cane extends this by three feet and (for pacing) is usually angled down to knee or thigh level. "Ah, excuse me please, may I pass through, all right, thank you thank you" are necessary verbal cues, because some people are startled to see an object near them while they're standing around in the middle of the sidewalk.
  
• If my weak leg is on the outside of the sidewalk, sometimes I exaggerate the sweep of the cane when it moves forward... instead of the tip being twelve inches from the side of my strong foot, it may sweep twenty-four or so inches out. It just subtly changes my width, and the exposed part is wood.
  
• The Cagney Walk is useful, particularly at a distance... I've been doing lots of patterns of a poke every four strides, then alternate pokes and twirls... but I'm not always doing it, and it's hard to start up when someone gets inappropriately close, so the tactic is only occasionally useful.
  
• An emergency move, which I unfortunately have to use a couple of times a month, is to just stop, spread feet outwards a bit and bend knees to brace, and hold the cane horizontally with both hands between me and the oncoming pedestrian. Sometimes people react to that, but if they had given the good cues by not walking unnecessarily near to people, then they wouldn't have caused us cautious types to respond as if they might be even more unnecessarily dangerous. A brace is a full stop, and relies on them moving off their line through the caneholder. I will avoid verbal contact with such a strong physical statement.
  
• One dangerous situation is in a sidewalk constriction (a construction walkway, cars parked on sidewalks, etc). If there's only space for one, I will wait for them to pass through first. If I'm nearly through and they try to enter, I will be assertive with the stick: "You do not need to keep your previous pace regardless; you need to look at the situation around you. Just wait a second and the pathway will be clear." (That isn't what I'd say, but what the stick would be used to say. Verbally, if anything, it would be "Just one second please, ah there, it's all yours.")
  
• One move I'd really want to nail is for bicyclists coming up the centerline, at speed, behind someone walking with a cane. This happens to me maybe once a month. Get the feet at 45 degrees with knees bent, change the grip, and put the hook of the cane where my shoulder was. It's not as aggressive as stepping outside my previous path and extending my arms, but if he thought my shoulder was a target, then it's actually his neck that he's endangering. But if I see him in time I'll usually just stop and stand aside (ceding the sidewalk to a biker!), and when I need the move he's usually too fast for me to react.
  
• While waiting for a traffic light I used to choose one edge of the curb, with one side protected by a lightpole or whatever and the other protected by the horizontally-held cane. But I've seen a bunch of people just walk into the damn cane... unbelievable. Now I'll usually choose a position away from the curb, and wait and follow the one who will plow through opposing traffic most obliviously. I don't use curb-protection techniques much anymore... I'd have to be doing full-arm figure-8s at speed to catch the attention of some of these folks.

I'd like to attend to the trees, the weather, the birds, the people. Instead I end up paying a lot more attention to those who are paying far less atention themselves. I try to travel off-hours. The cane can be used to make things easier, in many subtle ways.

Double canes

Something simple I've been learning recently... I've been surprised it hadn't come up before.

I use the cane to exercise a lot... mostly stretching, a lot of pushing or pulling along the length of the stick, or wringing it out to build up the wrists, or using resistance at various angles to simulate lifting weights, and so on.

But exercising with two canes makes a lot of sense. A simple pushup has a lot more possible angles when each hand holds a cane a three to four feet ahead of your feet. It stresses more muscles too, because you've got to keep the canes upright... feel it all through the abdomen and oblique muscles, biceps as well as triceps. No need to go down on the floor... can still watch TV, in fact. The weight can shift back and forth from feet to hands... the angles between legs, trunk, arms, canes and floor can vary too. No need to go up and down twenty or fifty times, because there's enough degrees of freedom that you can just hold a position and slightly adjust to change the muscles stretches.

That "two canes forward" position is also useful for rowing and breaskstroke motions, where the cane can go off the vertical to the ground, and wrists can pivot. The two sides can go out-of-cycle with each other too... wrists moving in circles roughly parallel to the floor, right hand forward, then left hand forward, alternating. Lots of possibilities.

The two canes can be positioned behind the feet too, for squats and sitdowns. If the hands are braced against the body then it's easier than if the free canes must be stabilized by the wrists and forearms. I've also done some twisting work, with both canes places on one side of the body, but I'm not sure of the muscle groups here yet.

Pushups take advantage of double canes, but so does twirling. Why twirl with one cane when you can do both sides simultaneously? Both sides can work in tandem, or in alternation, or (I suspect) in different patterns simultaneously.

Figure-8s get very interesting with two sticks. I had seen people do it, but it took me awhile to figure out what was going on. It's probably easiest to start with a grip on the middle of the cane, so that the radius from the wrist is only eighteen inches or so. I found it easiest to start with slow Figure-8s 180 degrees out of phase, one wrist up and one wrist down, thumb sides of the canes looping to the left, then both looping to the right, following each other.

You've got four cane ends and two forearms to watch, but it comes with practice. All the standard Figure-8 variations can then come into play... arm positions, elbow movement, the angle between the two circles, size of circles, speed during different parts of the cycle.

Having the canes follow each other is the most straightforward to visualize, and after that mirror-imaging of the two hands is possible... thumb sides looping to the outside, then both looping to the inside. This is a little trickier for me, because the ends move through the body's centerline twice each cycle.

After that, the two hands can move off-cycle to each other, "broken rhythm", 90 degrees out of phase or whatever. Mixing in an extra loop on one side can switch from one phase rhythm to its opposite.

Anyway, two canes are a lot of fun to exercise with. I've seen Joe Robaina use them for pushups on the CaneMaster "Power Foundations" DVD, but in the "count of 10" style of doing many repetitions of a few motions, at set angles. Double-stick patterns and Figure-8s are done in the Filipino Sinawali style... like weaving a defensive wall in front of you. Considering the symmetrical benefits it offers, I'm surprised I haven't seen more discussion of it.