# The spacing nobody enforces on the embankment steps

> Eleven couples sit along a river embankment at almost exactly equal intervals — a spacing rule nobody wrote down and everybody keeps following anyway.

August 20, 2026 · https://justog.club/stories/the-river-embankment-where-people-sit

Eleven couples and small groups sit along a concrete embankment, spaced almost exactly evenly down
its whole length. Behind them, a city in flat silhouette; in front, broken light on the water.

Nobody arranged them. That evenness is a rule everybody on the steps is following without ever
being told what it is.

## Why do people space themselves out so evenly along an embankment?

Because everyone wants the same thing — a stretch of step to themselves — and adjusts to get it.

Sit down anywhere along a long open run of steps and you leave a gap on each side out of habit; the
next person to arrive reads the existing gaps and picks the widest one, splitting it roughly in
half. Repeat that a dozen times and the result looks planned, even though nobody involved was
thinking about anyone but themselves.

## What happens when somebody new sits down?

The whole line quietly re-spaces itself.

A newcomer takes the largest remaining gap, which shrinks it to roughly half its old size; nobody
moves seats to make room, but the next arrival reads the new layout and adjusts again. It's the
same correction
[a scramble crossing's painted geometry](/stories/the-crossing-when-nobody-is-crossing) makes
under a crowd, except here there's no paint doing the organising — just people, each solving the
same small problem alone.

## What's the actual choice in a design like this?

How many figures, and how tight the spacing reads.

Eleven is enough to make the rule visible without the embankment reading as crowded — fewer and it
looks like three couples on a quiet night rather than a pattern; more and the gaps compress until
the spacing stops being legible as a rule at all, closer to
[a field where individual shapes give way to texture](/stories/a-thousand-parked-bicycles).
The number is really a question about how much space the design wants to claim as empty.

## Whose likeness is this — is it based on real people?

No. Every figure here is a generic silhouette, not a portrait of anyone.

Nobody on the steps is drawn with a recognisable face, a specific outfit or any other detail that
would identify them; they're shapes doing what people on an embankment do, which is the whole point
of the design — it's about the spacing, not about any particular pair. A shirt meant to record one
specific couple's own evening rather than the pattern is a different, more personal design, worth
being deliberate about rather than folding into a crowd scene.

## Does the design still work with two figures instead of eleven?

Yes, though it becomes a different piece — about a couple, not about a rule.

Reduce the figures to one pair and the spacing argument disappears; what's left is a couple on a
step at dusk, which is its own subject and a fine one. The evenly-spaced version and the single-pair
version aren't better or worse than each other — they're answering different questions about what
the shirt is actually for.

## Doesn't drawing people this small remove the detail that makes them read as a couple?

That's deliberate — the job here is posture, not likeness.

At this scale a figure reads through its outline and stance: close together, turned toward each
other, one leaning. That's enough for "couple" to register instantly across eleven repeats without a
single face, which is also exactly what survives being printed at this size — faces this small
would just be smudges.

## Does it print well?

Yes — it holds up as a three-value silhouette: sky, water and figure.

Cream and warm gold carry the embankment and the low light without needing more than a couple of
tonal steps, and the figures print as flat dark shapes against that ground rather than as detailed
drawings, which is exactly how they read from a real distance anyway. The water reflections want
breaking into distinct streaks rather than a blended shimmer, the same rule the
[overhead cable tangle](/stories/the-power-lines-nobody-buried) follows for density: draw it
coarser than life or it fills in.

## How do I get one made?

Describe the embankment at [JustOG](/) — how many figures, what's across the water, and how the
light falls. Pick a direction, drag the crop frame, see it composited on the real garment, and it's
made to order and shipped.

Designs other people have published are in the [shop](/shop).

Nobody counted the gaps. They're even anyway.