Antique & Classic Cars Blog

With its beautiful architecture, professional hockey team, Fitzgerald Theater hosting Garrison Keillor, the Science Museum, the scenic riverfront, some great bars, nice restaurants, etc., etc., St. Paul is nearly a great city. But to be a great city you must act like a great city and St. Paul thinks like some kids with a tree fort when it comes to parking.

People are a city’s lifeblood. They’re its revenues, its ideas, its diversity, its energy, its wisdom. The tradeoff to gathering so many minds and abilities in one place is that you have to tolerate some chaos, disorder, inconvenience. That’s life in the city. You get some litter, you get some noise. You or your guests may have to walk a block–gasp!!–to get from the car to your door. Big vibrant-urban-melting-pot deal. A block’s walk could do us all some good. It’s normal. It’s good.

Start getting fascist with the parking and the businesses suffer because it’s a pain in the petooty for people from other areas to patronize them because they can’t just park where there’s an open stretch of curb. Or they can park only for an hour. Or two hours. Or they can’t park until after 4, or 6, without a permit. This side.

Come on, St. Paul. Stop discriminating against the automobile. Stop discriminating against students and visitors. Open your curbs and let us park. They’re city streets–paid for and built and repaired and plowed and swept with public money. Let thy people park.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 21st, 2007 at 4:58 pm and is filed under Car parts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.