4th October 2007

Cars; an inconvenient truth

posted in economy |

It is hard to be a small store owner in a mall-based society. In fact, here in “the city”, trying to avoid the big box store is harder than one might think. No, we don’t all live within walking distance of everything, and shopping by rapid transit is not an option; the rapid part is sent home for supper before I am. After rush hour, everything is two hours away, which allows just one store per day.

So, we took the van up the hill. I’m slowing convincing my designated driver that parking by slowly doing concentric circles (in the hope of getting closer) isn’t any more practical than taking the bus. If you see a parking spot within walking distance, the car must stop and wait for further directions. Ditto for the driver. Tonight, we pulled into one that said parking was restricted to “voituriers” between 17h30 and 03h00. The catch; not one of us had a clue what that term actually meant.

There are meter attendants, but meter time is over at 17h30, so now it comes down to your chances of attracting the attention of a police officer with a ticket fetish. On a Thursday, those odds are worth it. Park, lock, run, shop. All done in a matter of minutes, and no fancy “mail it back with a cheque” paperwork.

Now it’s time to eat. I convinced the driver to turn left right left right left(all this at the same red light; the driver behind us was starting to fret. We drove for fifteen minutes (remember, nothing is as close as it used to be) through roads that were under reconstruction (slalom course) to a tiny mall, where the only parking was on the uphill side, just past two attendants. As we headed down to the store we wanted to visit, we were asked to go elsewhere, as that spot was reserved for another merchant in this building. The continguous parking lot was Balkanized. No parking equals no shopping. Our commerce will be elsewhere.

Back towards home, because son #3 was getting the hungry vicious tone in his voice. Another evening spent in visiting one store, really, and learning that the bus would have been just as efficient. We could have gone to a big box store just down the road from home and had a better variety.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 4th, 2007 at 21:59 and is filed under economy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. | 389 words. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Comments are closed.

  • Archives

  • Categories

One Laptop Per Child wiki Local Weather

International Year of Plant Health

PHP Example Visiting from 18.218.245.179

Locations of visitors to this page