Red Flags
UPDATE November 2007
The city of Spokane is not satisfied with block after block of empty store fronts in its downtown area. The City Council has voted to RAISE the price of parking meters time and extend the hours of operation. Instead of ending at 5 PM, allowing dinner and evening visitors to park, the City has decided also to work toward closing its downtown restaurants, bars, and evening businesses by sending all of us customers out to the suburbs. Why, oh why, are they so STUPID! Why, oh why, do the business men of the city put up with that crap?
ORIGINAL POST
A year ago Bob went to visit the small town where he grew up. As a teen he had spent many afternoons walking through the old downtown area. Colorful shops then lined the streets with show windows displaying attractive good of all kinds, hardware, clothing, jewelry, toys, books. Cafes and doughnut shops, soda fountains and nice restaurants were always busy. I remember doing pre-christmas shopping in the snow, with colored lights and decorations hanging across main street. It was a winter wonderland. Last year half the storefronts were empty, closed and boarded up. Few goods were displayed. Few customers walked the street.
RED FLAG!
This morning I visited downtown Spokane. I stopped along one street and looked for coins for the ubiquitous parking meter. I had no coins. While sitting there deciding what to do I noticed that all the store fronts I was stopped in front of were boarded up. The stores and businesses had gone out of business. I looked across the street. Half the businesses there had closed up. A block away a RiteAid was open. Someone asked for change for the meters. "Sorry, we don't give change," the clerk said. A blue gun thug drove by in a 3 wheel vehicle, robbing people whose cars had red flags.
I remember a year ago it had taken two hours and ten minutes at the County offices to get my building permit approved. After paying over two thousand dollars in taxes for permission to build a home and thus increase the county tax base, the blue gun thugs had stuck a robbery ticket on my car. The parking meter had only lasted for 2 hours, not quite long enough to finish my business with the county offices. Some of the new meters transmit electronic signals to summon blue gun thugs, informing them that further robbery can proceed.
NOT HERE!
Somehow our elected city officials just don't get it. You can't go on abusing people year after year, decade after decade and expect them to come back with a smile. The buildings are still there, fronted by lines of empty parking spaces and rows of parking meters, but the stores are boarded up, vacant, unused. In small towns and big cities all across America, business after business has lost customers as shoppers stopped fighting the parking meters, refused to risk the parking tickets, just don't want the hassle. Just across the city limit there are many other businesses who will provide free parking, no charge, no meters, no tickets. Just up the road there are other businesses who welcome customers, who make it easy to shop, who don't fine, punish, and rob those of us who would be their customers.
UNWELCOME!
Fifty years ago you could park for about a nickel an hour. Now it takes a stack of quarters to park for an hour. Few motorists have that much change, and most of the remaining stores don't make change easily available for parking. Lined up on the street, in front of the closed storefronts there stands rows of evenly spaced metallic signals, each holding up a red flag. On the flag in fine print it says something like "expired," but what it really says is:
GO AWAY!
In a few towns the city fathers have figured it out and ripped up the legions of unwelcome signs that once lined their streets, but in Spokane, and most other towns and cities, they still abound. Even as stores close, whole blocks become derelict, and the few remaining business struggle to survive, the few dollars the city collects is cash in hand. Meter coins are far less than the huge losses in sales and property taxes, but the city fathers never could find their assholes with both hands. You don't have to have a frontal lobotomy to be an elected official, but it helps.
I didn't park. I didn't shop. I didn't pay a stack of quarters. I didn't risk a $20 fine to the blue gun thug robbers. I wondered about the stupid down town merchants who one after the other quietly go out of business while their pathetic city fathers drive away their customers. I drove a few miles down the street to where customers are welcomed. Here's what I have to say for the stupid city government, stupid down town merchants and blue gun thug robbers.
SCREW YOU!
The city of Spokane is not satisfied with block after block of empty store fronts in its downtown area. The City Council has voted to RAISE the price of parking meters time and extend the hours of operation. Instead of ending at 5 PM, allowing dinner and evening visitors to park, the City has decided also to work toward closing its downtown restaurants, bars, and evening businesses by sending all of us customers out to the suburbs. Why, oh why, are they so STUPID! Why, oh why, do the business men of the city put up with that crap?
ORIGINAL POST
A year ago Bob went to visit the small town where he grew up. As a teen he had spent many afternoons walking through the old downtown area. Colorful shops then lined the streets with show windows displaying attractive good of all kinds, hardware, clothing, jewelry, toys, books. Cafes and doughnut shops, soda fountains and nice restaurants were always busy. I remember doing pre-christmas shopping in the snow, with colored lights and decorations hanging across main street. It was a winter wonderland. Last year half the storefronts were empty, closed and boarded up. Few goods were displayed. Few customers walked the street.
RED FLAG!
This morning I visited downtown Spokane. I stopped along one street and looked for coins for the ubiquitous parking meter. I had no coins. While sitting there deciding what to do I noticed that all the store fronts I was stopped in front of were boarded up. The stores and businesses had gone out of business. I looked across the street. Half the businesses there had closed up. A block away a RiteAid was open. Someone asked for change for the meters. "Sorry, we don't give change," the clerk said. A blue gun thug drove by in a 3 wheel vehicle, robbing people whose cars had red flags.
I remember a year ago it had taken two hours and ten minutes at the County offices to get my building permit approved. After paying over two thousand dollars in taxes for permission to build a home and thus increase the county tax base, the blue gun thugs had stuck a robbery ticket on my car. The parking meter had only lasted for 2 hours, not quite long enough to finish my business with the county offices. Some of the new meters transmit electronic signals to summon blue gun thugs, informing them that further robbery can proceed.
NOT HERE!
Somehow our elected city officials just don't get it. You can't go on abusing people year after year, decade after decade and expect them to come back with a smile. The buildings are still there, fronted by lines of empty parking spaces and rows of parking meters, but the stores are boarded up, vacant, unused. In small towns and big cities all across America, business after business has lost customers as shoppers stopped fighting the parking meters, refused to risk the parking tickets, just don't want the hassle. Just across the city limit there are many other businesses who will provide free parking, no charge, no meters, no tickets. Just up the road there are other businesses who welcome customers, who make it easy to shop, who don't fine, punish, and rob those of us who would be their customers.
UNWELCOME!
Fifty years ago you could park for about a nickel an hour. Now it takes a stack of quarters to park for an hour. Few motorists have that much change, and most of the remaining stores don't make change easily available for parking. Lined up on the street, in front of the closed storefronts there stands rows of evenly spaced metallic signals, each holding up a red flag. On the flag in fine print it says something like "expired," but what it really says is:
GO AWAY!
In a few towns the city fathers have figured it out and ripped up the legions of unwelcome signs that once lined their streets, but in Spokane, and most other towns and cities, they still abound. Even as stores close, whole blocks become derelict, and the few remaining business struggle to survive, the few dollars the city collects is cash in hand. Meter coins are far less than the huge losses in sales and property taxes, but the city fathers never could find their assholes with both hands. You don't have to have a frontal lobotomy to be an elected official, but it helps.
I didn't park. I didn't shop. I didn't pay a stack of quarters. I didn't risk a $20 fine to the blue gun thug robbers. I wondered about the stupid down town merchants who one after the other quietly go out of business while their pathetic city fathers drive away their customers. I drove a few miles down the street to where customers are welcomed. Here's what I have to say for the stupid city government, stupid down town merchants and blue gun thug robbers.
SCREW YOU!
posted by Bob | Saturday, October 28, 2006
1 Comments:
Bob sound nostalgic.
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