John Gushue . . . Dot Dot Dot

Adventures in bad parking

We went to see a movie at the Avalon Mall last night, and parked at the lot off Thorburn Road - the one with the pedestrian overpass across O'Leary. Here's what we saw when we approached the lot: 

 Yep, someone had conveniently parked their Honda Civic right in the main entrance to the north end of the lot. 

And they didn't just park illegally ... they did so with style. This shot show how perpendicular parking leaves not a whole lot of room for everyone else to get by:

You can see from both shots that there were plenty of other vacant spaces on the lot, at least when we got there around 6. Perhaps it was possible that the driver of this car had come for the massively popular retro car show over at Hickman's on Kenmount Road, earlier in the day (the crowds were so heavy that a chunk of Kenmount had to be closed), and wound up parking here. Still, this takes the cake for not thinking about others. 

Alternatively, perhaps the person parked the car in the space behind it ... and left it in neutral, and it just slid there. 

In any event, I'm inclined to take more shots like this whenever I see bad parking, along the lines of this one last month. 

Dingbats in our time: parking lot edition

So, today we zipped into the Dominion store on Stavanger, and here's what I saw: a father playing catch with his son.

Now, on the face of it, that sounds like a nice activity for Father's Day.

But some context is necessary.

They were playing catch near the top of the lot. You know, perpendicular and right next to the lane that runs along the whole frontage of the store.

Even better: the small kid's position was right next to traffic in two directions. 

A kid playing a game in which balls are not to bounce in unexpected directions? With dozens of cars on the move, not necessarily paying attention to surprising elements (like, sports, and inattentive children)?

Honestly. What could go wrong?

Meanwhile, speaking of the very same parking lot, Michael Walter added this to his Posterous page - a bugbear of his that I certainly share: the parking job that is certainly convenient for the driver, and which happens to involve that missing ingredient: an actual parking space.