Worst. Parking Lot. EVER.

How many engineers does it take to design a parking lot? No, seriously-- how many? Whatever the number, the end result leads me to believe that whoever designs and/or constructs these lots must be short an engineer more often than not. I'm sure everyone can think of at least one lot where the lines were drawn so close together that, even though they can get the car into an empty space, they can't open the door if there's a vehicle in either one of the adjacent spaces. Or those big, complex lots with lots of blind spots and no signs helping to direct traffic. It's a parking free-for-all; enter at your own risk!

Honestly, people-- how hard can it be? I'm no engineer, but I think I could tell from the get-go whether or not a parking setup is going to work. And yet, I continually find myself trying to navigate through a lot with a severely bottle-necked entrance/exit or with a one-way arrow painted on the asphalt pointing drivers in the wrong direction.

For me, though, the lot that takes the cake would have to be the one outside a popular grocery store on Lincoln Avenue. Those who live in the city know that Lincoln is one of those rare diagonal streets amidst the grid of north-south and east-west thoroughfares. The store is part of a miniature strip mall, and design mistake #1 was that the building's foundation was poured to align with the aforementioned grid, and not the diagonal street out front.

So the parking lot engineers came in and turned the lot along Lincoln Avenue into an isosceles triangle. This placed the smallest angle of the triangle directly in front of the entrance to this immensely popular grocery store. This is a prime example of a parking lot fail. The pathway to the spots on either side of this parking nook gets narrower and narrower until it finally ends in a point. When it's busy, people are forever gunning their vehicles in reverse (into oncoming traffic, mind you) because somebody's gotten stuck in the parking equivalent of the Bermuda Triangle. Yet, incredibly, people still try to park there; it makes for some great people watching, and would be an amazing observational experiment for some psychologist's research.

Then, to make matters even worse, they stuck a huge island in the larger part of the lot. Perhaps this was meant to maximize parking, but really it just leads to countless traffic tie-ups. The only normal spaces in this lot are at the far corner; even so, I tend to park on the street just to avoid all the chaos! I've long said that, if this whole music thing doesn't pan out, I should go into business designing parking lots. Well, I guess my common sense is needed in this field more urgently than I previously realized!

Do you have a parking lot that you avoid because of some blatant design flaw? Where is it? I think motorists everywhere should band together and call them out; now's the time!

Park It

Mayor Daley has single-handedly taken away one of the little joys in the lives of us Chicagoans-- finding a meter with time left on it. Thanks to his poorly planned lease of the parking meter system, which has quadrupled the cost of street parking in my neighborhood, the meters are gradually being replaced with parking pay boxes. These new pay boxes take coins and credit cards (because parking in this city is now that expensive) and spit out a little paper receipt, which motorists must display on their dash. No more pulling into a space and finding that there's just enough time left on the meter to run into the bank or to pick up carry-out, and our random acts of kindness can no longer include popping a quarter into an expired meter to spare another driver a ticket from the cop making his way up the block.

I know it sounds pretty trivial, but I was really bummed about this, at least until I saw a transaction today that warmed my heart. A baffled motorist was standing on the sidewalk, trying to decipher the directions on a pay box when another motorist walked up and handed them a little slip of paper. It was a paid receipt, one that wasn't set to expire for another 40 minutes. An act of kindness, no longer random, no longer anonymous, but a brilliant idea nonetheless... I only wish I had thought of it first!

So kudos to my fellow windy-city dwellers for adapting to this new type of adversity. In true Chicago style, we've yet again found a way to cheat the system (at least a little). Take that, Mayor Daley! So if you pay to park, and finish your errands/lunch/whatever sooner than planned, take that slip of paper off your dashboard and pass it on-- not only will you make someone's day, you'll likely inspire them to do the same. It's just one more way to pay it forward (and stick it to the man!).

Oh, Bloody El!

Since my move a couple of months ago, I've had this recurring dream that startles me awake in the middle of the night. I can't remember the details of this dream, and don't know whether it's even the same dream each time or if it's a bunch of different dreams with the same end result. In these forays into my subconscious, I invariably wind up in the path of an oncoming train; my fleeting sense of panic, coupled with the disorientation that comes from being jarred out of a deep sleep, hurtles me from unconsciousness to full attention so quickly that all I can do is blink groggily while I try to figure out where I am.

Thankfully, I'm safe in my bed, but unfortunately, the roar of the oncoming train is all too real. I live right next to an el station -- as in, if I were to fall out of my living room window, I would land on the tracks -- and for some reason, the first trains of the morning are always the loudest. Most of the time, I don't even notice all the transit activity that goes on outside my window; it's like static, or background noise, to me. When the trains come to a stop, their momentum stops as well, and the noise is usually pretty minimal. But when the trains start up again in those dark, silent hours before dawn, a few of them bypass my station and don't start picking up passengers until they're further down the line. While they are supposed to adhere to the speed limit sign that is nailed to my apartment building, with nothing (and nobody) stopping them, these trains literally go careening down the track, uninhibited by the monotony of transporting commuters that bogs down the process any other time of day.

And the noise they leave in their wake is considerable: the window panes rattle, my dishes move around in the cupboards, and I am instantly wide awake. My fear isn't entirely unfounded, though; the only thing stopping the train from careening into my apartment building (should it ever derail) is a flimsy chain-link fence. This is of little comfort to me as I'm lying awake in bed. By the time my heart stops pounding, the birds start singing outside, beckoning in the break of day. As I lay staring at the ceiling at that ungodly hour, I can't help but mutter, "oh, bloody el!" ... pun fully intended.