On our trip to buy a dishwasher yesterday, we stopped at the Triangle Towne Center Mall, conveniently located a dozen miles north of the town center. For the second time in two trips to the mall, I had to squeeze my way out of a door which wouldn’t open all the way.
Why on Earth do they paint the parking spaces so dadgum close together? This is SUV country, not Ford Focus country. How about a parking space that you don’t need a shoehorn to use?
Back when I helped Garner rewrite its land use ordinance, I learned about efforts of some municipalities to provide “compact” parking spaces. What a stupid idea! Inevitably someone in an F150 will park there, making it hell for his immediate neighbors.
At least most places using the old zoning had the foresight to label those spaces as compact. The Towne Center mall just paints ’em all that small and doesn’t tell you.
American cars are getting bigger. American butts are getting bigger,too. Its about time someone super-sized parking spaces. Only the Duke boys should have to crawl through windows to get into their cars.
Apparently, shockingly enough, there’s a law that dictates how wide commercial parking spaces have to be, but the law is pretty much ignored. I remember an investigative report a year or two back that checked big malls and shopping centers, and nearly all of them had spaces that were too narrow, in an attempt to get more parking out of the blacktop.
In theory, Triangle Towne Centererereere could be fined $x every day until their spaces were in compliance. In reality, you the driver will take it in the shorts and all new parking lots will have spaces 1/8″ wide.
That’s what everyone gets for buying big gas hogs! Too bad it also is a pain for those of us who drive sedans with good gas mileage! 🙂
Speaking of, I saw a huge SUV with the same “Got Oil” bumper sticker that you guys have. What sense does that make?!
Crystal
The worst of it was that the cars beside us weren’t overly large. They were just parked too close.
By the way, my sticker says “got root?” It’s A Geek Thing. 🙂
Wait, your sticker says “got root”? I thought it said “got oil”. Either I can’t read, or I passed someone else’s house thinking it was yours like 10 times in a row. Our normal Fletcher-walk route is around the block, so we go right by. I guess I’m usually not paying attention to houses anyway. I’m usually trying to keep Fletcher from pooping in someone’s yard (embarrassing even though we always carry poop bags) or jumping on someone (out of love and not violence, but that’s hardly a consolation to someone who’s afraid of dogs).
Hmm. Trying to submit this is giving me this message:
You exceeded the maximum submission rate. Please wait a few minutes and try again.
All I’ve done is vote in your poll (but it looks like it didn’t count) and submit one other comment?
it is an anti-spam measure. I’ll probably disable it soon.
The latest version of Drupal has some new anti-spam measures which make things a lot easier. One of these measure is an authimage-type thing, where you have to type in a code before posting.
I may install it to my blog this weekend.
(And my sticker says “got root,” so maybe our fearless new newsletter editor has some reading troubles. 🙂 )