It's Curious City, where we take your questions about Chicago and the region, and investigate, report, explore, from WBEZ.

I'm reporter Laura Paven, and I'm one of those people you'll see jogging along Division Street in the dead of winter because I'd rather freeze to death than join a gym.

You may also see me veer out into the street to dodge the sidewalk grates.

You know the ones.

They're those metal surfaces that look like the top of a grill covering big, dark, ominous-looking spaces below.

Ugh, makes me shudder just thinking about it.

That leads us to our questioner, Sue Head.

Well, I walk around the city all the time, and I always have this fear of the grades.

Obviously, I wear heels because I'm short, but when I look down, it's pretty deep.

I'm like, I can't walk

on them. And I was curious if anyone ever fell through and if anyone else had that fear.

We're going to hear from some other Chicagoans about whether they fear the grates and chat up

an anxiety expert who has a convincing explanation for that fear. But first, let's figure out,

has anyone ever fallen through a sidewalk

grate? A man had to be rescued overnight after falling through a grate on a sidewalk in the

River North neighborhood. That's right. In June of 2016, a man fell 15 feet through the grate

while trying to retrieve his keys. The fire department had to rescue him.

Not so great, huh?

Sorry, guys.

The puns are unavoidable here.

Fortunately, though, that accident was an anomaly, at least from what we could tell.

Now, there's no sidewalk grade accident database, but unless you count the 1800s, we could find only one other example of people falling through grates.

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