stopper
n.— «Unlike many other public and private parks, Washington Square’s new granite benches do not have skate deterrents, or “stoppers”—small metal ribs attached to the stone that prevent what are known as “grinds,” in which skateboarders scrape their metal axles along a smooth, hard surface. Since the stoppers were introduced in 1998, hundreds of millions of them have been added or retrofitted onto new benches and hand railings around the country.» —“For skateboarders, it’s not the same old grind in new park” by Will Glovinksy The Villager (New York City) Sept. 2, 2009. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Responding to our discussion about thin places, those spots where the boundary between this world and other realities seems narrow or permeable, a listener in Kirkland, Washington, sent us some eloquent thoughts about her own experiences of that...
We use the term Milky Way for that glowing arc across the sky. But how people picture it varies from culture to culture. In Sweden, that starry band goes by a name that means “Winter Street,” and in Hawaii, a term for the Milky Way...