They pull up the cobblestones every year I suppose.
It's an ongoing process - like rebuilding freeways in Houston after every flood. I'm sure it's great for civil employment statistics. Cobblestone fitters will never be out of work. However to be a cobblestone fitter means to have a very specific niche in which one fits, not unlike the stones themselves(ok, that was an obvious linkage and therefore rendered dull moot and boring among other things). The process is not merely to dig up the stones, and replace them - a whole industry revolves around the quaintness the Progian
tourist complex aims to present.

First there is planning: committees are no doubt employed on the state tax dollar to determine when and which cobbles ought to be torn up and replaced - I'm sure there is a great deal of artistry to this portion of the process as seen recently with the replacement of major thoroughfare cobbles at Namesti Miru and shortly thereafter along Korunni as well as the current and ongoing reconstruction of Namesti Republiky. The selection and timing of reconstruction projects must flow so as to not completely immobilize the city's natives as well as not to detract from the ease of transport for visitors.

Secondly there is the issue of supplies: cobbles of certain (undoubtedly classified and well-recorded in some secret vault in the Ministry of Interior Affairs) sizes, shapes and colors must be culled from the mountains. Most cobbles are some type of rock although my knowledge of geology prevents me from telling you which type - though I'm sure the Ministry of the Interior could tell you before they had to kill you. Some, as I've been told, come from demolished buildings, some from the mines of Ostrava, others still are the leftovers of Jewish cemeteries demolished years ago. In addition to the actual stones, tons of sand and tar are used for various purposes - typically seen in the form a gigantic mess - but in actuality this is how the stones themselves stay in place.

Thirdly there are the stone fitters themselves - well-trained in discerning which rock will fit where with enough room for the requisite sand and tar. Working with pickax and jackhammer they haphazardly destroy and otherwise create a general pain in the neck for a few blocks by literally ripping up the street down to the dirt below. The new stones are then placed in the newly created hole in the same pattern as the old. This feat is accomplished with the aid of iron frames for the more intricate designs seen along the Vltava, in Mala Strana and other neighborhoods in the immediate vicinity of the city's center. These, however, are painfully simplistic in comparison to the delightfully monochrome fans that span the sidewalks of Vinohrady , Žižkov and Vršovice. Prime examples of this type of reconstruction can be viewed along Francouzská and Slezská. Here the designs are completely in the control of the stone-fitter; no designs are used - not even a chalk-bearing string! They simply kneel there with a pile of assorted stones and place them carefully into the premade hole visualizing the finished product in their mind's eyes the whole time. True artists they are.

And so it is with this thickened interplay of ekonomiks that the cobbles remain. Not merely their handiness as weapons of insurgency (a la the IMF/WTO protests of 2000), their , their ability to withstand the extremes of climate we experience annually(asphalt cracks in winter and melts in summer), but their ability to invigorate a tourist industry we natives and quasi-natives artfully dodge so motherloving well, their recompense to the mining and masonry unions and who can forget their boon for the film industry?

Alas, with the threat of floods, rising temperatures and the increase of foot traffic cobbles are becoming increasingly hard to keep up. Already baneful asphalt has invaded the most trafficked areas of Narodni Trida and bits of Nove Mesto as well as the uphill/downhill stretch joining Prague 2 to the river. Holesovice, for all its charming pubs and clubs and parks has fallen victim to the cheap industrial standard of cement known throughout the modern world.

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