And STILL I am not up to Unemployment. I don’t mean I’m not up to it emotionally…although I AM unemployed and I am NOT up to it emotionally. I mean that I am not that far along my To Do List of essays, er, posts. Not since the age of cognizance has a day ever seemed long enough for me. I NEVER feel as though I am caught up with Life.
I have even wondered whether, if a person really DID scratch everything off The List, would they just drop dead? They are, after all, done. The theory is too convenient to be true, of course, for it would reward procrastination with long life. On the other hand, Americans are about NOTHING if not convenience.
I want it, and I want it NOW.
The concept of Convenience segues handily to Parking. More like, the concept of Inconvenience segues clumsily to Insufficient Parking. And speaking of clumsy, I feel confident that compared to the many many other Official Changes that have been made to our Rules of the Game, officially changing the spelling of ‘segue’ to ‘segway’ will not exacerbate but rather alleviate confusion.
“The automobile industry is the backbone of American manufacturing.” So spouts President-elect Barack Obama, in the manner of a man whose thinking is not the least bit Changed.
The automobile industry wrongly remains the backbone of American manufacturing because America and apparently Barack Obama cling to the yesteryear notion that hundreds of millions of people should all be buzzing around, insulated in their own private motorized coaches. Me, I think we oughtta get on board a whole new transportation paradigm.
It’ll take awhile, though…we DO love our cars. Certainly it pisses me off when someone swings his car door open carelessly enough to leave a telltale nick or even a dent to my car. I don’t often give people the benefit of the doubt anymore…thank you, U.S. Government…but I expect that most of those bits of property damage are the result of there being inadequate room between cars for an average or…how shall I put it?… an Oversized person to get out of their car WITHOUT at least resting their car door against the adjacent car. Then, the simple weight exchange, as the body shifts from pressing upon the car to pressing upon the pavement, the door so resting against the adjacent car will rise, upward against the adjacent metal.
Imagine never bumping, jostling, elbowing or otherwise aggravating an adjacent passenger when flying Coach. Good luck, am I right? Crammed in like sardines, we are. Same deal with parking spaces.
Check out the innovative parking structure built in Santa Monica, California.
Green-Plus Parking
“…The six-story, 882-space structure at the Civic Center features photovoltaic roof panels, a storm drain water treatment system, recycled construction materials and energy efficient mechanical systems….
…The structure’s photovoltaic panels — which cost $1.5 million — will pay for themselves in 17 years by generating $90,000 a year in electricity,” said Craig Perkins, director of Environmental and Public Works Management for the City…”
PARTICULARLY if we will cling to the yesteryear notion of everyone careening around in separate moving vehicles, we will either provide a place to park the millions and millions of cars or we will continue with our outdated paradigm on the outrageous premise that a larger percent of the drivers than are inclined to stay in motion at any given time must, nevertheless, keep on truckin’.
Like Hank the Bank making even banks that didn’t need or want bailout funds TAKE bailout funds, so we wouldn’t know which banks DID/DO need bailout funds. Let us begin with the goofiness of sterilizing the needles used in lethal injections and go forward, bravely identifying the anomalies. Some of our stuff is so effing ridiculous that we prefer to keep funding it rather than admit what idiots we are.
There is an expression on the Recovery Circuit, “You can’t save your face and your ass at the same time.”
Remember the controversial eminent domain case that came down effectively legitimizing exercise of eminent domain in cases where development, though private, was deemed to better serve the nebulous Greater Good than continued private ownership of record?
Kelo v. City of New London, July 2005…phew, just in time to capitalize on prime New Orleans real estate after Katrina displaced French Quarter residents the following month.
How ’bout let’s put that into play for parking structures? I live in the Miracle Mile District of Wilshire Boulevard, in the up-close-and-personal traffic radius of Farmer’s Market/The Grove/CBS Studios. If memory serves, there are more than 14,000 residents in Park La Brea alone.
Why on God’s asphalt earth would a city as congested as Los Angeles sacrifice an entire lane, all day long, to STOPPED cars? Because there’s no other place to stop the cars, without pulling onto lawns. The apartment districts don’t even have those. Consider the lost productivity, consider the wasted fuel, consider the deteriorating moods as distracted drivers circle round and round in search of a place to rest their weary chassis.
A parking structure per whatever capita or area of garage-less residents, a parking structure per whatever capita or area of garage-less workers, no on-street parking…except for BRIEFLY in periodic loading-unloading-only bays that contain a handicapped space and a bustling curbside pick-up from the corresponding stretch of merchants. Each will need a runner…there ya go, a brand new job classification.
A parking structure is liable to require the displacement of more than one contiguous home or business.
Put it to each area. Are there any among you who welcome the idea of selling your property at fair market value-plus-whatever-for-relocation? Retire maybe, or start over somewhere else? You gotta figure that areas that need more parking have demonstrated, for longtime residents, material increases in cost of living alongside material decreases in quality of life. It is not inconceivable that there would be a surplus of owners who’d like to bail.
Parking SEGWAYS neatly to Unemployment…Unemployment being a condition, Labor being the entity.
I don’t do politically correct. I do not know the difference between Hispanic and Latino, and I do not care. But I DO care about this: Statistics on the prevalence of Hispanics in accidents involving uninsured motorists hardly support a presumption that Latinos in general are better drivers than Gringos. So how is it that Hispanic-slash-Latinos not only man the majority of parking structure kiosks but also dominate the lucrative Valet Parking racket?