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The following is a guest post submitted by Daniel Speciale.
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I don’t know of anyone in the world who loves parking—except maybe Lorraine Baines—but that’s not exactly the kind of parking I’m talking about here…

I’m talking about the hassle of cruising up and down the rows of a Wegmans parking lot, trying to squeeze in next to the hummer who decided he needed an extra couple of spaces, fighting the nine other drivers who won’t even entertain the thought of walking an extra twenty feet to pay $5 for a bottle of water.

I’m talking about cruising the same three blocks around your apartment for ten minutes when you get home from work, trying desperately to find an on-street spot, because all the homeowners with their lovely multi-car driveways and garages have decided that they prefer to leave their car on the street.

I’m talking about the inevitable line of cars extending from the parking lot of every major festival, concert, or event that we cram into the nice-weather months here in Upstate, where you get to wait half an hour or more for the privilege of paying to walk across a hot, dangerous, gravel lot. Woo! Come get your summer!

These experiences are as ubiquitous as they are universally detested. We’ve all been there, and we’d all like not to be there again.

But tomorrow, like every day, someone is going to complain to their co-workers about the exorbitant rates that the downtown garages charge. Someone is going to spend more time fighting for a curbside spot than it would have taken to walk to lunch. And someone is going to write in a comment to City Weekly along the lines of “there’s NEVER any parking downtown! People would come downtown more if only there was FREE PARKING!”

Some of us feel differently, and we’ve put together a little event on Friday the 16^th at the corner of Franklin and Pleasant. Stop by for Fuego Coffee in the morning, Neno’s Food Truck in the afternoon, and a whole lot more throughout the day.

We think that games, music, food, and fun are better uses of space than devoting over 60% of our downtown surface area to the storage of cars.

If you’re still not convinced, here are some of my favorite parking-related signs from around Rochester:

This sign means business.

Don’t even think about bringing your horse on 490.

And of course, everyone’s favorite typo.

(BONUS: if you can identify the location of each of these photos, a mystery prize awaits you at Park(ing) Day .) See you there!

Tags: Daniel Speciale, Park(ing) Day, parking, parking lots, public art, Rochester, Rochester NY

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 15th, 2016 at 2:28 pm and is filed under Art + Culture, Events, Reader Submitted Stories, Rochester News, Transit + Infrastructure, Urban Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.