Parking the lot

There are many things we take for granted as being part of a city landscape. Gas stations, banks, parks, stores…however the largest occupying force of a city landscape is something we just don’t think about. It’s the ground below us when we’re at this particular, gas station, bank, store, or any other place. It’s a parking lot. Parking lots can almost be viewed as a growing plague covering the earth one mini mall or super Wal-Mart at a time. Typically a parking lot vastly occupies large quantities of space, which in a lot of cases goes unoccupied by cars. I seriously question if businesses adequately think about how big of a parking lot they need. It seems to me that they multiply the maximum customer base at a busiest period and multiply by two. There is such a waste of space being covered by asphalt and concrete. Within the past fifty years our country has seen ground occupied by parking lots skyrocket. In many cases buildings are tore down…luscious grass land is plowed and paved all so the parking lot can span its callous presence over more of the landscape. How sad is it when a local landmark is demolished only to become reincarnated by a flat piece of paved ground to help better serve patrons of a nearby store or business. This has been the case in Hollywood for a long time now. If you’re in Hollywood at 2719 Hyperion you’ll see a parking lot…what you would have seen years ago…Walt Disney’s first every studio. The garden of Allah, a renowned apartment villa housing celebrities like John Barrymore and even F. Scott Fitzgerald was a lavish lush getaway to many of Hollywood’s golden stars. Pictures are all that remain however, now you will find a parking lot. Up until 1956 on 6811 Hollywood Blvd you would have seen the Hollywood Hotel, yet another renowned gathering place for stars of the stage and screen…yet again a parking lot is now the current resident of this address.

            Space for customers to leave their car is the only real benefit of parking lots. There are many cons however. A parking lot being in nature a large flat plane is definitely in danger of producing massive water runoffs if drainage isn’t properly executed. Flooding of sewers and stream ways can occur in torrential downpours. Perhaps a parking lots’ design has taken into consideration the run off issue, there’s still another issue that presents itself; water pollution. Parking lots are a cause of contamination with all the oil, brake lining dust, rust particles, and other car fluids which accumulate on any given parking lot. Thus, the draining of contaminated water is more then capable of working its way into our water supply chain and the ground itself. In college and I imagine in your own college experiences, there was Q lot. Q lot was a vast concrete and asphalt desert that spans the length of several football fields and the width of about the same. Under the hot Midwest sun walking through this desert was exhausting, the heat produced was almost unbearable, leading to a “Lawrence of Arabia” type atmosphere, countless students rummaging in their book bags for that last drop of Evian or Aquafina, hoping that the buzzards would not be their demise. I started thinking…and even tried to research to no avail, the average amount of oil that is found dried on the surface of parking lots. Now I don’t know for sure exactly how much that is, but I imagine the liquid form of all America’s oil from parking lots could easily fill a large lake.

            Recently parking lots have become a concept creation to architectural and design firms. Cleverly placed islands of pebbles and saplings becoming patters and mazes of concrete and greenery. In my mind, “landscaping” a parking lot once occupying untouched earth is kind of like fully shaving a Sasquatch to test Rogaine on its head. The ends don’t really justify the means. Society has also taken the simple act of parking and made it complicated. There are four…count them…four means of different means of parking. The first being perpendicular parking, this of course where cars are parked next to each other forming a very organized grid like pattern. The next form of parking is angled parking. Angled parking is similar to perpendicular parking accept that you come into the parking spot at a flattering angle instead of a full 90 degree turn. Angled parking is a bit less efficient in nature; however with parking lots that encompass the spaces of several football fields, I guess efficient parking really isn’t much of an issue. Parallel parking is easily the most feared mode of parking; where the driver must miraculously wedge himself front to back with other cars beside a curb. Nearly impossible to pull off with a large car, parallel parking demonstrates the need for cars to have a zero turn radius to go sideways into the space, or maybe some kind of rocket thrusting device…I don’t know plans are still in the works. The fourth and final means of parking is of course valet. This is easily the laziest form of parking where essentially the driver doesn’t feel like messing with any other form of parking and instead pays for a teenager….probably incapable of the parallel park…to have his way with an expensive car. The logic in this escapes me…then again I doubt many valet parkers find themselves in Dodges very often.

            I did some serious thinking and I think that parking spaces themselves are just going to have to get wider. As vehicles get wider there is less space to open the door without banging your door into the car next to you. I was curious so I found some numbers for you to toss around in your head. According to my findings the average parking space width is 6.5 feet.  This means that with cars next to you…being parked properly…you have only 6.5 feet to pull in open your door and exit your vehicle...all without leaving a little souvenir of paint on the car next to you. This scenario would be perfect if you drive a small car. In case you haven’t noticed small cars aren’t the “in” thing right now. The average full-size car is 5.5 feet wide. Let’s do the math eh? Full-size car width 5.5ft. Parking spot width 6.5ft. That means you have 1 ft. to open your door and exit the vehicle. And this 1 ft. is of course if the other cars are within their spaces correctly. Can you get out of your car with 1 inch of space….not without a struggle is my guess. Now if that weren’t enough I decided to see about a big SUV’s width. I found that the average width of the Chevy Suburban is 6.5ft and in case you have forgotten the average parking spot width is….6.5ft. That means you have exactly no room to get out, you’re literally next to the car next to you, you’re going to have to use the damned sunroof or back door. That’s not convenient. That’s not cool.

            Since many businesses don’t want to spend the money to repaint their parking spaces and make them wider, I think the only viable option if for larger car…truck and SUV dealers to start making cars with those sweet assed Lamborghini doors that open vertically, you know the ones that go up instead of out. How many times have kids swung open a SUV door without thinking and banged up the car next to them. This wouldn’t happen with vertical doors. I can’t see a HUGE cost in substituting normal doors with the cool Lamborghini doors, but man that would really cut down on small insurance claims dealing with chips in paint and dings. Parking lots can truly be dangerous and destitute places. I think we should concentrate on developing a super strong form of grass that will allow cars to drive over it without damaging it. We’d also need more economical cars of course, but if everyone works together we can one day lick the parking lots of the future without having to get a tetanus shot or risk contracting gonorrhea.

 

Animated Goodness

Tiptoeing into the living room and turning on the TV, another Saturday morning with several hours worth of cartoons was about to begin. When I was much younger I loved sitting in front of the TV on a Saturday morning and watching these cartoons that I enjoyed so much. Big deal, what was so great about watching cartoons. Cartoons are on everyday, and all day in some cases with the creation of the cartoon network. Well, I didn’t have all of this. Television as I knew it consisted of four channels. Among my massive selection of channels were NBC, CBS, PBS, and a religious channel. At the time of course I only knew the channels as 10, 7, 27, and 16. Cartoons were ONLY showed on Saturday mornings. It was a treat. PBS however was a favorite of mine with all its great programs like Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers; 321 contact, and other various children’s daily afternoon shows.

5a.m. on Saturdays would find me sitting in my pajamas turning the channel selector waiting for the start of the broadcast day. Many people never saw the beginning of a broadcast day. One channel always began with a patriotic type video featuring the Star Spangled Banner. The religious channel would get things rolling with a photo slideshow of stained glass windows featuring a powerful song version of the Lord’s Prayer. Ah yes my Saturday cartoon fun was about to begin. I would always start things off on the religious channel with some vintage David and Goliath. This Claymation cartoon with strong Christian moral values wasn’t my favorite cartoon, but you could always rely on it on killing a half hour until the “good stations” would start the cartoons…and I didn’t quite appreciate the value of this time slots competition, The morning farm report. Soon the sun would peek through the white curtains and the scent of coffee brewing in the kitchen would drag everyone else out of bed. Before long  I’d have a bowl of cereal in my hands…eating slowly never taking my eyes off the TV, savoring all the concentrated animated goodness my senses could imbibe. Garfield would be on soon along with its lesser counterpart U.S. Acers…which for the longest time I read acres as A SERS…which confuse the hell out of me I must admit. Much like the word GEE found in the comics of bazooka Joe bubble gum. What does GEE? Mean, is it somebody’s name, am I missing an exceptionally funny joke here. Upon realization that GU-HEE was the transitional word GEE things made more sense. I could always count on the teenage mutant ninja turtles as well to provide high quality entertainment. There were countless other shows that fulfilled my morning schedule, and I found myself feeling appeased come noon on Saturday mornings, knowing that my weekly need for cartoons had been reached.

When my family moved into town from the country my mom chose the basic cable platform. While many children would scoff at the idea of basic cable, for me it was a whole new world where cartoons were on EVERY DAY! Wow information overload. You could get up early before school and guess what….yup. watch cartoons, ah the adventures of sonic the hedgehog and his friends was a particular last minute favorite before bolting out the door to make it to the bus stop on time. Afternoons would hold other great cartoons as well. I was in cartoon heaven, never far from animated entertainment. I believe at the time I would have completely become an insomniac if the basic cable package included the cartoon network…24hrs of cartoons a day. Wow. I’m glad we didn’t have that. My palette of cartoon appreciation skyrocketed. I felt like an arrogant resident of California wine country waving my nose up at Garfield….such an absence of sophistication. Ah not a good year for bugs bunny I see. I knew my cartoons. Strangely however, the Saturday morning ritual of rising early to watch David and goliath slowly stopped all together. I would rise when I felt appropriate and watch the cartoons from the eight or so channels that offered them now on Saturday mornings. If video killed the radio star, then cable TV killed the Saturday morning cartoon experience.

Eventually I would grow to turn my back on cartoons all together, electing to sleep in later and do other things with my Saturday mornings. Several years ago I found myself alert and moving early on a Saturday morning and found that cartoons have changed a lot….in fact cartoons have seemingly vanished all together from some stations. Take for example NBC, there were always great cartoons on NBC back in “the day”, now you won’t find any animation on Saturday mornings. You’ll find discovery kids…where trading spaces is scaled down into a children’s program. Saved by the bell type mini drama’s also take up this time slot not. What happened to Wyllie E. coyote and Garfield….well they just went away, fading silently into the shadows of children’s entertainment with countless other failed cartoons which had run their course. CBS isn’t much better. I don’t know for certain the current state of it’s cartoon programming, but a while back they featured the Nick JR. type of programming which as far as I could tell was geared towards infants or brain dead individuals who particularly enjoyed bright colors.

 Even though I knew lack of good cartoons wouldn’t impact my life, it just feels like today’s kids are getting robbed of that feeling I got when I was a kid. Waking up early to catch the rarely seen cartoons on a dark Saturday morning, switching the TV knob between four channels has been replaced with a kid flipping through channels on the remote sitting on the comfy chair or couch trying to decide which one of the two hundred channels will have the best cartoons…that is if they’re not to busy on the computer or playing the latest video game system. Saturday morning cartoons are dead. I can deal with that…but the whole concept of the Saturday morning cartoon experience is something I always love to back upon now. Watching that brown talking clay dog question Davey’s actions all while feeling the sun on my back as it crept up over the horizon that’s what being a kid is all about.