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Last updated on July 16th, 2017 at 11:34 am
Damn. Why weren’t we told?
This past Friday was international Park(ing) Day. Thousands of people in Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Seattle and other cities spent the day occupying street parking spaces by setting up lawn chairs or pingpong tables to prevent cars from parking. The stated purpose was a protest of car culture and lack of urban greenspace, but the primary impact of Park(ing) Day seems to have been to make drivers even more stressed out.
One assumes those pingpong tables and lawn chairs were transported by bicycle. By the way, I’m no expert or anything, but don’t non-parked cars consume more precious earthly liquids than cars of the parked variety?
I can’t speak for cars, Tim, but as you know I certainly consume far more precious earthly liquids when I’m parked.
Posted by Mr. Bingley on 2007 09 26 at 09:44 AM • permalink
This is one of those “This-makes-me-feel-so-good” activities that really do little more than piss people off.
But, hey, keep up the good work. For every honk you got in support, at least one other person was forced to drive further to find parking, which not only got that person mad, but added to the Science-damned pollution. Congratulations, fools!
Mr. Bingley: When it comes to consumption of beverages, I thought it didn’t matter if you were driving or parked!
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2007 09 26 at 09:51 AM • permalink
I would hope there were plenty of winos about to park some other substances on these worthies.
Somehow I doubt this bit of urban
atavismactivism would prevent anyone with one of these from plonking it in a parellel bay.They’d have to visit a carwash afterwards though, especially in summer.
Steve Posselt has finally parked his kayak-on-wheels thingy
#5 Habib, thanks for the pic!! In another life I used to drive one of those!!
Notice all of the nice green grass some people put out so that the winos would have somewhere to piss….. Ain’t activism grand!
Posted by Old Tanker on 2007 09 26 at 09:57 AM • permalink
Even I have to pay auto insurance, Jeff, so it does matter…
Posted by Mr. Bingley on 2007 09 26 at 10:03 AM • permalink
BTW- any ideas on how many swinging voters have become welded on Libs after being stuck in Melbourne CBD traffic by the inane, predictable histrionics of a rabble of troglydites?
And 15,000 in Melbourne? Fucking Collingwood get more than that turning up to watch them train in sleet. I’d like to know how many of them were other than public employees as well- there’d be more than 15,000 bloody bureaucrats in Moscow on the Yarra.
I don’t think there was much participation in New York. I haven’t seen any reports of emergency rooms inundated by hippies with ping pong paddles in their rectums or lawn chairs in their mouths.
Posted by tim maguire on 2007 09 26 at 10:25 AM • permalink
Notice they didn’t say ” in Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Seattle and Houston”, because here you’d be about ten seconds away from being squashed, and/or shot.
Same thing with the 9/11 “celebrations” they had, forcing other people to praise Osama: Steyn had it right, had you done this here, someone would reach inside their glove compartment and blow you away.
Posted by mencken_cynic on 2007 09 26 at 10:27 AM • permalink
Steyn had it right, had you done this here, someone would reach inside their glove compartment and blow you away.
Surely that’d be littering.
Posted by flying pigs over mecca on 2007 09 26 at 10:33 AM • permalink
Excellent, something soft to park my car on.
Posted by Aging Gamer on 2007 09 26 at 11:26 AM • permalink
Hmmmmm. My Jeep Cherokee vs. one hippie in an aluminum lawn chair. Wonder which would win a parking space?
I’m willing to try. Call me Galileo.
Posted by wronwright on 2007 09 26 at 11:53 AM • permalink
occupying street parking spaces by setting up lawn chairs or pingpong tables to prevent cars from parking
I thought they were describing people in Chicago, in the winter, getting their “dibs” in on a parking space they had cleared the snow from…
Posted by Major John on 2007 09 26 at 12:19 PM • permalink
Speaking of the Seattle part of this, I’d like to (mis)quote the Church Lady, “My, isn’t that special”. Three parking spaces, each occupied for two hours, per the Seattle Times. It is Seattle, after all, and making an effort is rather frowned upon there.
Posted by David Crawford on 2007 09 26 at 01:38 PM • permalink
San Francisco and Seattle are naturals for this kind of silliness, but I’m surprised it would fly in New York. Wouldn’t want to tangle with a pissed off New Yorker trolling for parking space. People have been killed for less.
Posted by Kyda Sylvester on 2007 09 26 at 01:59 PM • permalink
Well, on the six miles I walk to and from work every Friday, through the People’s Republic of Studio City in Los Angeles, I didn’t see anybody pulling this dumbass street thittuh…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2007 09 26 at 03:15 PM • permalink
Out of idle curiosity, I did a quick and dirty Google search to see if anyone tried this in Boston. Sure enough, it was a participating city. Now, I know that my fair commonwealth (they commonly take our wealth) harbors far more than its fair share of greenies and leftist twits, but I’d think that abject fear of the rabid Masshole drivers that roam Boston streets would have precluded this sort of stunt. Then again, I’m a right-wing death beast, and so bother to, y’know, THINK.
Posted by Blue State Sil on 2007 09 26 at 04:27 PM • permalink
This caption on one of the photos says it all:
The Temporal Distributed Network descends on San Francisco’s City Hall
Sounds like a wank-fest on wheels to me.
Posted by mr creosote on 2007 09 26 at 05:04 PM • permalink
We had “walk to work day” here. And if walking was too far, then we were told to catch public transport.
Well just a few problems.
1. Walking would be a 1.5 hour task, in a suit, in the rain.
or
1. I would have to catch 3 buses, with LONG waits in between.
2. I would have to catch the first bus at 6am, and barely make it to work by 8.30am. The buses wouldn’t drive the straightest way, and it would be like a tourist drive through the coast – hardly gaia friendly belching out the diesel fumes.
3. It means getting up at 5am and missing my baby girl in the morning.
4. Driving takes me 20 minutes, and I spend 1.5 hours with my baby girl.
GAIA can go $@#%@% herself on this one.
Thousands of people in Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Seattle and other cities spent the day occupying street parking spaces
Forget about Parking Day, what those communists achieved was a Not-Working Day. Both for themselves and those folks who were trying to park their cars. That’s what it’s all about…
The Parkers Against Carbon Omission event went swimmingly, I guess.