PARK(ing) Success

After lunch I took off from the ol' office and wandered around the mythical East 9th and Huron intersection (actually E. 9th and Prospect as Huron tends to disappear before intersecting East 9th on either side). I was in search of some sort of art installation and armed with my trusty (and slightly rebellious) digital camera I set forth with the mission to find said installation thing and document it, mostly because I am a geek. As in the previous postings I had mentioned that Cleveland Public Art, Spaces Gallery, Green City Blue Lake and Bruce Hotel were sponsoring the violent and subversive capture and desecration of a perfectly good downtown parking spot. Yes, people, no doubt kids rebelling against their parents, curfews, and green vegetables created a public green space downtown! Not that they were trying to say that Cleveland does not have its share of nice little parks. We have quite a few. I think the whole purpose was to put into perspective how much land is set aside for personal vehicles to sit out in the sun and how little land is set aside for the actual people. Didn't Douglas Adams comment upon how if an alien species were to first step foot upon the planet they would no doubt assume that cars were the most prevalent and dominant life form? Anyway, photos of such activity (probably not gang related) follows....from a distance, basically when I finally found the dang thing.

... as a Plain Dealer photographer was trying to figure out what the caption should read. The huge black SUV in the background had just stopped and looked accusingly at the nice people sitting on the grass. I was wondering what confrontational comments would be bandied about. One of the PARK(ing) people nicely commented that there wasn't enough room for them to share the spot and the SUV moved on. When I left there was over an hour left on the meter. I hope they stayed and enjoyed the sun all day.

...as an added bonus, a nice shot of public square under construction from my office. I think the city is beautiful.

I hope that the whole PARK(ing) day celebration was an enormous success and pray that more people become instigated enough to get involved. If there is anything a city cannot have enough of, it is public art.