press-releases
It had to happen someday.
When I started working at The Daily Item in February, one of my first questions was a critically important one: Where can I park? I was given both an official answer and a practical one. The official answer was that we could park in the lot designated for the Edison Building directly across the street. The practical answer was that everybody just parked in the lot connected to the former Santander Bank directly behind our building. The owners were going to do something with it eventually, but it was fair game in the meantime.
Parking behind the building had some strong advantages over the Edison lot. The big one is that it is closer. We don’t have to wait for the traffic light to let us cross the street, and we spend about 30 seconds less walking outside — a crucial time-save during the bleak, cruel Lynn winters. Parking out back also allowed us to enter the building from the back door rather than the main entrance, which makes us seem slightly cooler, as if we have some kind of special privilege because we work here. It was a match made in heaven: extremely lazy commuters and a piece of unused private property.
But it wasn’t just us Item employees who found solace there. Despite not technically being in operation, that lot was packed every single day. I saw others constantly parking there while they went to restaurants with their families, shopped for groceries, or just took nice little walks in the area. I felt a peculiar solidarity with them, parking in a way we technically weren’t supposed to out of convenience, knowing nobody cared enough to stop us.
Recently, however, some disturbing portents started to appear. One day, half of the entrance to the lot out back had been blocked off with a tall grated fence. As I saw it crudely cut through that beautiful parking lot with an industrial cruelty for the first time, I understood that all good things have to come to an end eventually. A lone tear rolled down my cheek.
A few days later, my worst suspicions were confirmed. One of my coworkers warned me about a crackdown on unauthorized parking in the back lot as the owners of the property prepared to tear down the old building. My other coworkers were unfazed, saying they had heard this kind of talk before, but I sprang into action immediately.
I grabbed the sticker approving me for the Edison lot, which I had been given in February but never bothered to put on my vehicle, and ran to my car as fast as I could. I put my pedal to the floor, peeling out of the lot and screeching into the Edison lot. I unpeeled the sticker and put it on one of my car’s backdoor windows, and went back inside relieved. About two minutes later I realized that by mistakenly putting the sticker on the outside of the car I had put it on backwards, and ran back to the lot to tear it off and put it on the inside.
I again went back inside relieved, but about five minutes later I realized I was actually supposed to put the sticker on my car’s rear windshield, not the backdoor. I ran back to the lot, tore the sticker off again, and finally put it in its correct place.
By this point, most of the sticker’s adhesive had been stripped and it was hanging off the windshield. Instantly, the possible consequences of the sticker completely falling off became clear to me. There is very little in this world I am more worried about than my car getting towed, mostly because I have no idea what I am supposed to do if that happens. I ran back to the office, borrowed my coworker’s tape, and reinforced the sticker. When I returned the tape, she told me “that almost took too long.”
I understand that I wasn’t going to be able to park in the more convenient lot forever. The owner of the property is going to demolish that area, and they can do pretty much anything they want to it. Some of my coworkers are still in denial, continuing to park out back. The community as a whole is doing the same, and I think they believe there is a strength in numbers. If the lot is full, they can’t tow everybody, right? That’s a risk I’m just not willing to take.
There is something I am going to miss about that old lot, however. I will miss the 20-second commute from my car to the building while I am making my new, 50-second commute. I will miss the faces of strangers walking to their also-improperly parked cars. I think most of all, though, I am going to miss the special feeling of using an abandoned space. Throughout the time I have worked here, the lot has been in a state of limbo, unable to be used for its proper purpose by the employees of its vacant building. I believe there is a kind of beauty in utilizing these deserted areas. Rather than just taking up space, they are able to serve their intended purpose in a fun new way. It prevents these pieces of infrastructure from sitting idly and going to waste. I don’t know who will use that lot behind our building in the future, but I hope they appreciate how we kept those parking spaces warm for so long.
Stuart Foster is The Item’s opinion editor.
The post Foster: The day of reckoning appeared first on Itemlive.
24World Media does not take any responsibility of the information you see on this page. The content this page contains is from independent third-party content provider. If you have any concerns regarding the content, please free to write us here: contact@24worldmedia.com
