Parking has gotten all kinds of strange lately. It was kind of strange to begin with. Why we’ve let people tell us that temporarily resting our cars on asphalt needs to cost money is beyond me. Why we all comply with the idea that a resting car must be nestled between two similarly-colored paint lines is equally weird when you think about it, but those are both accepted parking principles we embraced long ago, and we’ve all gotten so used to them that we don’t question their logic. But a few years ago someone, somewhere, some resting car god decided that parking just wasn’t nearly complicated enough and vomited out a bunch of new ways to divide ourselves into categories.
If some inquisitive student of Parkology were to ask me why we now have parking discrimination I’d say that the answer is two-fold (Honestly, I’d tell them to major in something less stupid than the Philosophy of Parking.):
- The world is over-populated (Hey polio, where are you when we need you?), and America has oversold us on cars.
- Far too many people think like bureaucrats. Bureaucrats think life can be explained be boxing us into these little “descriptive” bullshit categories. In reality, life’s a hell of a lot more interesting than meter maids think.
Recently, parking your car has become a discriminatory affair. Just in the last decade we’ve let the parking people, the greedy conglomerate that is Big Parking, tell us that it’s fine to have different kinds of parking spots for different kinds of cars…and we seem to be fine with it.
It all began with the handicapped spot. Fine. Whatever. I guess it’s nice for people in wheelchairs to get wider spots. It makes sense. It’s discrimination, but it’s discrimination that makes some semblance of sense. Those wheelchair lifts need space. The handicapped spot has been around since the 1970’s. We’ve been cool with the concept for a while. But it used to be the ONLY specialty spot.
Then came the pregnant women spots. You see these in mall parking lots. Usually the sign says, “For pregnant and expectant mothers” or something along those lines. What if it’s a sixteen-year-old girl who expects to have kids at some point in her life? Isn’t she expectant, too? Is it just better parking for those of us with uteruses?
Then came the greenies. In the more “progressive” parking lots we now discriminate against SUV drivers and the operators of other suburban tanks. There are good, up front, spots for hybrids and electric vehicles. Putting aside the fact that electric cars are still polluters, since most of our energy is still fossil fuel-based and thus the electric car may be less directly-polluting but still pollutes, this is just straight up discrimination against muscle car drivers, against pick-up truck drivers, against everyone who can’t afford a damn Prius. Having electric car spots next to the chargers does make sense, but a lot of these spots aren’t next to the chargers. They’re just good parking spots.
I saw a new one in the hospital parking garage the other day. It was a Veteran’s Only parking spot. While I don’t disagree with the notion that we should probably reward the people who are willing to fight and maybe die for our country, is this really the proper way to go about it? Wouldn’t they prefer it if we just paid them more?
Once again I’m left with the discomforting question of how they go about enforcing this one. Unless the parker is wearing dog tags, dressed in head-to-toe camouflage (and isn’t just a random redneck or didn’t just pop in after his latest hunting accident), shouting random anti-Sunni Iraq War epithets, complaining about oil field fire fumes, dragging the deceased corpse of a former member of the Taliban or being dropped off from an air-lifted military helicopter, I don’t see how the parking gurus check for veteran status before issuing a ticket.
However, I’ve been visiting my friend at the hospital regularly now for a few weeks and I haven’t seen anyone park in that VETERAN PARKING spot. Not once. We do like our military in this country…not enough to pay them a living wage, but enough for good parking. We don’t respect much in America, but we do like to give our soldiers lip service, parades and decent pain pills. It’s just what we do.
Parking spot spacing has been constant for a long time, but now that our cars range in size from elementary-school-desk-size to roughly the size of a small airplane, shouldn’t we adjust our parking spot size? As far as I can tell, this only happens at truck stops. Compact cars have been a specialty spot niche for a little while, but their lines are only a tiny bit smaller than “normal” ones, if that.
Restaurants have added “To-Go” parking spots, for the customers who order their food and then come and pick it up from the restaurant. Again, I’m not sure how they enforce this one, but a lot of chain restaurants do this now. I guess there’s some capitalistic logic to it, but it’s still parking discrimination. We like to think that we don’t discriminate anymore, but that’s not even close to true. We’ve just shifted the idea to discriminate against different groups. There’s still an Inquisition, but it’s as if instead of burning heretics the Church hokey-pokeyed themselves into making cobblers feel bad about themselves. Maybe the Church is secretly being funded by Adidas.
Admittedly, that’s not the cleanest analogy ever, but it makes total sense…in my head.
Stores have added parking space time requirements. This one happens often in mini-malls. “15 minutes only.” Who decides how long to time these things?
Parking lots for mini-malls have assigned parking spots for certain stores. Why? There’s no punishment structure (other than mini-van driver shaming), but still people largely seem to adhere to these “rules.” And that’s bizarre in a country as uniformly proud of our supposed sense of defiance as ours. Who decides how many spots individual stores are allotted? Is there some sort of strict square footage metric or is it a guerrilla-style first-painted-first-claimed system?
Park wherever you like. Park in the handicapped spot. We’re all crippled in some way. Park in the To-Go spot and then “dine in.” Even if you have an Adam’s apple, park in the Expectant Mothers spot. With the proliferation of gender-changing medical procedures, it now makes more sense than ever before. Stand up to the parking Nazis. Don’t let yourself be categorized by the size of your automobile.
The Revolution will take place on asphalt.